GTX 780 Lightning VS. R9 290X Lightning @ 1080p

[Final8y]

Rtsurfer and I decided to have a friendly Lightning vs. Lightning competition. Because of monitor/TV limitations we are only testing 1080p today. We also have different PC configurations, so we had to make some changes to make this as equal as we can. Rtsurfer disabled HT on his 4770K and dropped the cpu clocks to 4.6GHz. He also bumped his memory speeds down a little. We are using different operating systems as well, but the performance difference for the games we benched is negligible. We only benched games that have built-in benchmarks. This leaves very little room for variation between runs. See the system specs below.

Rtsurfer's Rig

Core i7 4770K @ 4.6GHz (HT Disabled)
GSkill Trident X @ 2133MHz 10-12-12-31 8GB
Asus Z87 Maximus VI Hero
Windows 8.1 Pro
MSI R9 290X Lightning 4GB – Stock cooler

Face2Face's Rig

Core i5 3570K @ 4.8GHz
Samsung 32nm @ 1866MHz 9-9-9-24 16GB
Gigabyte Z77X-UD4H
Windows 7 Pro
MSI GTX 780 Lightning 3GB – NZXT G10 bracket with TT Water 3.0

We benched all of the games below at three different clock speeds for each card.

Out of the box clock speeds

R9 290X Lighting stock boost clocks = 1080MHz core and 1250MHz memory
GTX 780 Lightning stock boost clocks = 1124MHz core and 1502MHz memory

We also wanted to measure clock per clock performance as well. Because of the memory interface differences the memory bandwidth is not equal.

R9 290X Lightning = 1189MHz core and 1603MHz on the memory
GTX 780 Lightning = 1189MHz core and 1603MHz on the memory

Last, we wanted to run both of our cards at their Max OC.

R9 290X Lighting = 1260MHz core and 1625MHz on the memory
GTX 780 Lightning = 1450MHz core and 1656MHz on the memory

Now the GTX 780 wasn’t blessed with Hynix or Samsung memory, so it’s scaling beyond 1300MHz+ on the core leaves little to be desired. I would also think its performance would be impacted more so as the resolution increases beyond 1080p. This is due to lack of memory bandwidth.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2384167

 

[Final8y]

Lol i hope that's sarcasm judging by how close the 290X and 780TI are in that video.. 290 cards have had a nice performance boost in Crysis 3 since that video as well.

They are both Ref cards.

 

[Final8y]

Interesting, 290X may have been throttling then.

Possible

But look at the stock R290 v Stock 780 columns.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-nvidia-geforce-gtx-780-ti-review

 

[Final8y]

Interesting, a stock Ref- 290 (947/1250) is baisically as fast as a GTX Titan, considering the price of that GPU when it came out not long ago, it puts a big on my face.

Just had another look and they are close.

 

[Final8y]

Some very nice scores there. Pretty much shows that anything over R9 290 will give similar performance. You need to have an FPS display in the corner of your screen to see the difference.

It has always been this way in GPUs though. The law of diminishing returns for you money, that's why the majority aim for a good price/perf ratio. For me the R9 290 and GTX780 are right at the sweetspot, with the R9 290 coming out slightly ahead.

I would be nice if there was a R9 290X2 at £650-700.