Is there more to a GPU than FPS?

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DudeMartin

DudeMartin

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Oct 8, 2013
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I know this sounds open-ended. I am doing lots and lots of research to pick out the best card for a build that I will be putting together soon. My price range is between $250 and about $400. Right now, the R9 280X seems to be the best card for my price range because it is at a nice $300 price point and it performs as well as the $400 GTX 770, which leads to my next question. If the R9 280X is cheaper and performs the same, why would you ever want to buy a GTX 770 (except when buying another to SLI)? I mean the price/performance for the R9 280X is definitely higher so how does one justify purchasing the GTX 770? Are there some features of the card which make it somehow better that raw FPS benchmarks don't show? Or is the R9 280X just always better?

I'm interested to hear what people have to say about this.
Thanks.
 
Solution
manofchalk
There is a bit more than FPS at play, for instance the issue of FrameRating or Pacing was found relatively recently. Though if your only looking for a single card, then you dont need to be worried about that.
Both sides have various features up their sleeve, Nvidia have CUDA, PhysX and ShadowPlay as exclusive features on their cards. AMD have superior OpenCL and general compute performance, support for their Mantle API (how useful that will be, time will tell) and stuff like their TrueAudio. Whether any of those features appeals to you depends on what your doing.

As for Nvidia's response to the 290X, it happened yesterday :p
The announcement of the 780Ti. How that will work no one knows yet, but a common theory is that it will take...
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hapkido

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Nvidia really hasn't been responding to AMD's prices at the high end. It's possible they're selling what they're producing anyway right now. I don't really know, but anyone that gets a $400 770 instead of a similarly-performing $300 7970/280x is probably a pretty big Nvidia fan. That $100 is the difference between an i7 and i5 or a bigger SSD and that's not insignificant.

To answer your title question, unless you have a specific need for a certain type of architecture, what cards get what framerates in the games you play/want to play is pretty much it when picking a card. I personally go for the best performing card in my budget, but some people like to spend more on specific manufacturers or brands.

I really would hold off on buying until the 290 comes out because hopefully that pushes prices down even further on both sides. I would like to think the 770 settles nearer to $300 with 780 and 290 sitting somewhere around $400.
 
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DudeMartin

DudeMartin

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How long would you say it would take for Nvidia to respond to the R9 290X release? Obviously I don't expect you to know, but based on the past, can you come up with a ballpark estimate?
 
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manofchalk

manofchalk

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May 11, 2012
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There is a bit more than FPS at play, for instance the issue of FrameRating or Pacing was found relatively recently. Though if your only looking for a single card, then you dont need to be worried about that.
Both sides have various features up their sleeve, Nvidia have CUDA, PhysX and ShadowPlay as exclusive features on their cards. AMD have superior OpenCL and general compute performance, support for their Mantle API (how useful that will be, time will tell) and stuff like their TrueAudio. Whether any of those features appeals to you depends on what your doing.

As for Nvidia's response to the 290X, it happened yesterday :p
The announcement of the 780Ti. How that will work no one knows yet, but a common theory is that it will take over the 780's pricepoint and everything else will be bumped down a price tier. Though TBH I have no idea of what the card will be, there isnt much of a difference between the 780 and Titan as it stands, I cant see how they will fit a card between the two and have it be a good option (see 670 and 680 last gen).
 
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hapkido

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Price shifts are almost immediate, which is kind of strange why the 770 hasn't dropped yet. (I'm guessing they're selling everything they can produce at $400, and don't need to cut prices yet.) If you ask me, I'd say both companies have spies/informants which is why you see pre-emptive price cuts a couple days in advance of competing new releases that just so happen to be exactly where the competitor will release at.

This is pure speculation on my part, but 290 will compete with 780 performance-wise, 290x will be as powerful as Titan but at a much lower price, and Nvidia has to respond with 780ti at the top end, which will basically be Titan but with less VRAM and more inline with the 290x's pricing. I think before long 780ti and 290x sit at $500-600 and Titan is completely forgotten. And when the next gen cards truly come out next spring, we'll FINALLY start to see high-end cards back in a normal price segment (~$350 for top stuff) instead of the ridiculous prices that have persisted the past couple years.
 
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