reccomend me an alternative card to XFX Radeon R9 290 DD Edition

[ssharp59]

Hi Guys

Im an avid gamer with a half decent i5 setup

I purchased a XFX Radeon R9 290 DD Edition however have been plagued with the driver issues and black screens related to this card, the cards been tested as working but ive tried every fix under i can find with no joy.. As such im cutting my losses and going to purchase another card this time from Nvidia.

So my question is what would you guys reccomend as somthing thats a decent card for reasonable money.

thanks in advance.

 

[faheemrazzaq]

What is your budget?

 

[ssharp59]

ideally id like to top it at around £300 but cheaper if theres not much extra bang for the buck, it was an unplanned spend really.

 

[Poneros]

If you want only Nvidia then a 970 is your only option really (ignoring used/refurbished deals).

Is your 290 out of warranty though? Otherwise just send it back. Document your issues and hand it off, they won't have a leg to stand on. XFX has ****** customer service, I'll admit, which is why I think in reality the choices of who to buy from are limited. For AMD I'd stick to Gigabyte & MSI.

 

[faheemrazzaq]

As above gtx 970 is a great choice. If you don't mind buying used then gtx 980 can be bought around 300£.

 

[nashathedog]

If you got a bad card you got a bad card, I did the same with Hawaii and just spent the best part of a year with a Twin Frozer 290x that needed 80/90% fans to keep from throttling with the most demanding titles. So it was loud and hot. Don't rule out AMD because of it though. They've made important improvements to Hawaii and as Grenada it appears to be a much better chip. I would consider a 390 rather than a 970, A Sapphire 390 Nitro is 276 quid and it is faster. Plus the drivers are great, If you was talking crossfire not so much but for a single card build drivers are fine and you won't go wrong with a decent 390. Even after my awful 290x experience I stayed with AMD and I'm glad I did. Don't get me wrong both are fine I just think the 390 is a much better choice than a 970.

 

[faheemrazzaq]

If you got a bad card you got a bad card, I did the same with Hawaii and just spent the best part of a year with a Twin Frozer 290x that needed 80/90% fans to keep from throttling with the most demanding titles. So it was loud and hot. Don't rule out AMD because of it though. They've made important improvements to Hawaii and as Grenada it appears to be a much better chip. I would consider a 390 rather than a 970, A Sapphire 390 Nitro is 276 quid and it is faster. Plus the drivers are great, If you was talking crossfire not so much but for a single card build drivers are fine and you won't go wrong with a decent 390. Even after my awful 290x experience I stayed with AMD and I'm glad I did. Don't get me wrong both are fine I just think the 390 is a much better choice than a 970.

390 is a good choice. but it is not a much better choice than 970. I see people bothering themselves a bit too much about vram but in the real world benchmarks and gaming performance 970 is as good and even better in some cases. Also has a much lower TDP if you care about that.

 

[shankly1985]

If the GPU been tested and working fine then the issue is something else..
They is all kinds that can give driver errors or crash a system.

System RAM is one of the most common to give display driver stopped responding, overclocking also ram, cpu and gpu.

Psu can also give black screens if the gpu loose power..
My advice would be to test each bit of your system before making a GPU change.

 

[ssharp59]

Ive tried all sorts diffrent ram being one of them.. The black screen is on immediate start up after installing the drivers, a quick search on google shows its a super common problem, never had any issues with the rest of the system and the other 2 graphics cards ive ran in it over the years, its been rock solid stable, and now cant even give me a display.

Tried a reformat of windows, 4 diffrent drivers, diffrent ram, diffrent psu, hdmi and both dvi ports still all the same.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=x...0....0...1c.1.64.serp..15.11.1238.VOztCSpy4Tk

 

[nashathedog]

390 is a good choice. but it is not a much better choice than 970. I see people bothering themselves a bit too much about vram but in the real world benchmarks and gaming performance 970 is as good and even better in some cases. Also has a much lower TDP if you care about that.

Everyone's entitled to an opinion and mine is that as we go forward with DX12 and Win 10 the 390 is a better proposition than a 970. I'm not getting into semantics because I said much better, I think the 970 is a much better option that the 290. The reasons for that are issue that were fixed for Grenada which makes the 390 a much better option than both in my eyes. If you disagree make a case for why don't jump on a word.

 

[faheemrazzaq]

Everyone's entitled to an opinion and mine is that as we go forward with DX12 and Win 10 the 390 is a better proposition than a 970. I'm not getting into semantics because I said much better, I think the 970 is a much better option that the 290. The reasons for that are issue that were fixed for Grenada which makes the 390 a much better option than both in my eyes. If you disagree make a case for why don't jump on a word.

I have already said why 970 is a comparable choice to 390. To me what matters most is the performance with the benchmarks and games that are available at the present. And I do not see 970 lacking behind a 390. Your assumptions about dx12 may be correct but by the time anything usable on a dx12 is available, there will be other better choices at may be a better price point. Mantle is another factor that swings in direction of 390 but anyone buying must ensure that games he/she wants to play make use of it.