advice on new card

[maka12]

hi
i currently have a radeon 6990 was goona upgrade it,
which would be best one to go for
radeon r9 290x 450 pound or
radeon asus 7990 399 pounds

been out of gaming for awhile so not sure what amd are like for there drivers lately for crossfire, i know 7990 is faster but are drivers anygood

thanks

 

[GMac11]

I'll just give my 2 cents worth at this particular moment.

I have a 7970 and have had AMD cards as my last three (including this one) and I am just about ready to go back to Nvidia.

My reason is purely because AMD's drivers are just not up to scratch IMO. Nvidia's cards are much less driver dependent and seem to cause much fewer problems.
The only reason I haven't changed yet is because I lumped out £300 for my 7970 just under a year ago and it does everything I need it do (bar a slight stutter on Crysis 3 at 8xMSAA) but it always manages to throw up some failure when you least expect it.
I made the shift from Nvidia around 6 years ago because AMD were giving much better bang for the buck but the headaches I've had with my 5850 followed by my 5850 crossfire setup were not worth it.

All in all AMD cards are doing the business on a par with Nvidia there's no doubt but the driver problems are getting out of hand I think.

 

[almighty15]

You run 8xMSAA on Crysis with a single 7970 and complain about performance?

OP: AMD drivers are solid, don't listen to any one who says different, for every one person that complains about AMD drivers there's thousands that have no issues.

I personally have more issues with Nvidia cards then AMD ones but that's just me.

I run 7950 Crossfire at the moment and have not had a single issue...

 

[GMac11]

You run 8xMSAA on Crysis with a single 7970 and complain about performance?

I don't see how that constitutes 'complaining'. I was merely pointing out that at full msaa it suffers slightly - I still have the 7970 don't I.

And many people may have no problems with drivers but that shouldn't mean the OP isn't entitled to know about niggles that CAN exist, albeit rare.

 

[mrozik]

Well i have the same problem but with 780 SLI and R290X crossfire after reading a lot about the r290x on "R9 290x owner thread" the performance of r9 is just amaizing for just £450 but there're some problems with card running 100% all the time / sounds like wind blower on fan higher than 55% and some drivers problems and I want to buy 2 of them but ppl that own the cards are happy and not happy with it so it depends if you want to take the risk? If yes R9 if not 7990.

Also to any R290x owner PLEASE record sound of the card from normal gaming position with the card not OC @ IDLE / Gaming like bf3 or Crysis 3 / silent mode / max 100% fan so people will know how it sounds and we can all drop Sound and go to performance or problems with the card and solutions to them if there're any.

Thank you

 

[Warsam71]

Do a quick search for 290x reviews, I think you'll find most of them to be positive and hopefully will help you make a decision. Imo, the card offers best value if you consider price per performance and getting a newest card should reduce the need for upgrading in a year or two (of course, based on your needs)...