My 7990 failed, need something comprable

[elJarmen]

So my £399 7990 failed and I was refunded by OcUK today after 1 month in RMA. I knew snatching that beast at that price was too good to be true, unfortunately the card had CF issues and I missed on what was the bargain of the year for me

Anyhow, I am looking for a new card now and I don't know what would be the smartest course of action to take for my situation. I will be gaming at 1080 with a 120Hz monitor. 4670K @ 4.5 and a GA-Z87X-D3H mobo. I know this isn't a high resolution but I'm kinda of an FPS freak.

Plan is to go powerful single card now and pair it with another later down the road. But what should I go for? 780 or 290 (and which model in particular). Budget is 400-500 but obviously the lower the better.

What would you do if you were me? I'd rather avoid AMD because of the 7990 debacle tbh, and not sure that Mantle would have a huge performance improvement on higher-end cards (correct me if I'm wrong). Also I won't be buying BF4 anyway.

Thanks!

 

[elJarmen]

290X or 780Ti tbh, and as you obviously want to keep the cost down then 290X

(OR a pair of 290's if you can stretch )

Would the price of a 290x CF set-up beat a 290 CF set-up by a long margin for example? A margin that justifies the cost difference I mean?

 

[elJarmen]

Hmm, not too sure about that 290. From what I gather reference cards have heat/noise issues, and considering I'll be going CF at some point, I would rather avoid the hassle.

 

[elJarmen]

Thanks all for your suggestion. I believe it's a matter of 290 vs 780 for me now. You are right the premium doesn't justify the marginal increase in FPS.

Yes I am leaning towards the 780 more, especially since the only AMD card I had owned was that troublesome 7990. But I just don't want to miss on a decent performance boost if Mantle indeed turns out to be a success.. guess I could wait until hopefully some benchs come soon!

weewyum: Mine had trouble acknowledging its a dual GPU in the first place, so wan't able to enable CF all together.

 

[elJarmen]

I know mate. I'd have preferred to get a replacement as it is a beast of a card but I should have had my expectations set right in light of this mining madness. So you're running 290 CF? What brand?

 

[elJarmen]

VTX 290 crossfire £560.

9th highest dual gpu score on the firestrike thread, on the reference cooler.

Would have no trouble passing 25k+ if my psu was better.

Is the heat/noise level OK? I'm generally not overly fussed by that, but wouldn't mind paying a bit extra for reference cooling (the Sapphire Tri-X looks like a good candidate) if it would allow a bit more room for OC not to mention sanity.

 

[elJarmen]

Ah quite different then! Thanks though and I hope you find a suitable replacement, quite hard considering the pure brute power of the 7990. Think mine may find itself on a certain auction site soon though. I can hear crossfire 290's calling

Glad to see more people thinking of 290 CF. I hope this bloody Mantle is released soon so I could make a decision soon.