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Price aside GTX 780 or R9 290?

Doogles

Doogles

Doogles

Soldato
Joined
22 Mar 2014
Posts
3,956
R9 290 seems to have better performance but are Nvidia drivers really that much better?

So where I am looking are a KFA2 GTX 780 with a 1 year warranty for £320 or a MSI Twin Frozr R9 290 for £300 or a second hand R9 290 with reference for £235 :/

Out of those what would you decide? So bloody difficult!

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So I went with the second hand R9 290 for £235, they have been used for mining but I have seen others buy them and say they are great cards. Should be arriving on Tuesday so will look forward to playing with it! Might need to get a cooler though...
 
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You're opening up a can of worms with that one.

Those of us that have been around the houses will mostly tell you that NV tops it for plug and play - game on attitude.

AMDs offerings offer the performance to match, but it's only been in the last couple of years they've caught up considerably. A lot of the driver rubbishing comes from past tense with Crossfire / Power Play and general Catalyst A.I bugs that were a pest, most of which are now resolved on Hawaii.

Both are fairly evenly matched these days to summarise, but NV still have the upper hand when it comes good well rounded consumerism out of the box. If this wasn't the case, then I'm sure the difference in price over the years would have settled itself.
 
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So where I am looking are a KFA2 GTX 780 with a 1 year warranty for £320 or a MSI Twin Frozr R9 290 for £300 or a second hand R9 290 with reference for £235 :/

Out of those what would you decide? So bloody difficult!
 
Doogles said:
Most I want to spend really is £320, can sell my GPU's for £120 so makes it £200 which isn't too bad. Wouldn't be doing it if crossfire hadn't annoyed me over the past few months.
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Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Tri-X 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (11227-03-40G) for 329 if you can get the exrta nine quid if you want a new card or ive seen some nice non ref 780s go on the members market for 280 quid or so
 
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I have mostly been nVidia, which just works but had a 6970 recently which required messing about to games to run properly.
 
If your not concerned about the $$ i'd get a nice 780 tbh
If you work on a price/fps i'd say out of the box 290's win
Buy what one has the features you want there both great cards and withing spitting distance of each other
 
MjFrosty said:
You're opening up a can of worms with that one.

Those of us that have been around the houses will mostly tell you that NV tops it for plug and play - game on attitude.

AMDs offerings offer the performance to match, but it's only been in the last couple of years they've caught up considerably. A lot of the driver rubbishing comes from past tense with Crossfire / Power Play and general Catalyst A.I bugs that were a pest, most of which are now resolved on Hawaii.

Both are fairly evenly matched these days to summarise, but NV still have the upper hand when it comes good well rounded consumerism out of the box. If this wasn't the case, then I'm sure the difference in price over the years would have settled itself.
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This.

Its not like AMD cards are hard to set up and get running. But if you want plug and play i suggest the 780.

If you want to edge the 780 performance wise (Which it will once overclocked because of the better IPC) then get the AMD, but to get results like that you'll have to work with it.

Both are great cards and both will serve you well, its not like it matters much in games anyways, the performance difference is miniscule. If you're not benching and you can find the 780 for a good price i suggest you get that.
 
I have used mainly Amd over the years and its always plug and play. If it aint your fiddling or doing something wrong. 14 years of pc gaming and around 11 of those on amd. The only thing I found when going Nvidia was getting used to there control panel as I was used to the amd one. I played fps competively in the leagues with most matches resulting in a pause here or there due to people crashing with there stupid tweaks on either vendor. If you want plug and play. Buy from either vendor install chosen card and play games.
 
I can only going by my own experience and that of my mates with cards like the GTX650TI Boost,GTX660,GTX670,GTX760,HD7850,HD7870 and HD7950,and they have been all fine. They have pretty much installed the drivers and got on with playing their games. The most you see with "driver problems" is if one company has sponsored a game which means initially they have the performance advantage,but both companies will usually release drivers quick enough.

I would go on price and what feature set you want. Either will do a standup job for you.

Edit!!

I would expect at least a two year warranty on a £300+ card and AFAIK KFA2 should have two year warranties on their cards.
 
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The drivers are basically the same in my experience.
If you get the Powercolor 290 PCS+ it's the same performance as a 290x out of the box.
 
Doogles said:
So where I am looking are a KFA2 GTX 780 with a 1 year warranty for £320 or a MSI Twin Frozr R9 290 for £300 or a second hand R9 290 with reference for £235 :/

Out of those what would you decide? So bloody difficult!
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In real gaming they're so close to eachother it doesnt even matter. AMD and Nvidia specific titles i wouldnt say it matters there either because both cards are powerfull enough to run whatever.

Now in benchmarking you have to get a bit more specific, or is this for gaming only?
 
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