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Which top end card is better out of these 2?

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  • Graphics
Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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January 9, 2014 4:46:41 PM

the GTX 780Ti outperforms the R9 290x by a small ish margin I believe
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January 9, 2014 4:48:17 PM

Depends on the game. There both good high end GPU's it basically comes down to personal preference on which one you choose.
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January 9, 2014 4:51:18 PM

yes, it's basically a wash between them 2. They both have their advantages

GTX 780Ti is the fastest single GPU gaming card in existence in general atm. And Nvidia has (in my experience) more stable drivers, and some goodies like TXAA where it applies, and ShadowPlay.

R9 290x on the other hand has more memory and kills OpenGL applications. newer AMD cards are also very good for litecoin mining if you're into that.
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January 9, 2014 4:53:00 PM

^ Agreed. NVIDIA also has better SLI drivers then AMDs crossfire so 2 780 ti's in SLI would probably destroy 2 R9 290s in Crossfire
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January 9, 2014 5:26:45 PM

Since those specific two cards are the same exact price, I would reccoemnd the 780 Ti. As others here have said, the 780 Ti is the fastest single GPU on the planet and Nvidia is better with drivers and extra features (Game Optimizer, Shadowplay, Advanced PhysX) than AMD. While you may think the 290X's extra gig of VRAM is tantalizing, the 2GB of video memory I have in my GTX 770 is still well more than enough to run most games on ultra/max settings at 1080p, including Battlefield 4, which recommends 3GB VRAM. In short, the extra memory on the 290X will not be used until long after the card is heavily lacking in power in its other specifications. If I were you, I would get the 780 Ti. Good luck!
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January 9, 2014 5:32:37 PM

Keep in my mind the extra gb of VRAM will most likley boost performance in higher resolutions than 1080p. Also mantle will be coming out soon and that is another thing to consider. With that being said, I would go with the 290x as in the future the 3 fans are going to achieve better temps than the 2 twin frozrs so you can overclock pretty well if needed.
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January 9, 2014 5:38:36 PM

SlaKer440 said:
Keep in my mind the extra gb of VRAM will most likley boost performance in higher resolutions than 1080p. Also mantle will be coming out soon and that is another thing to consider. With that being said, I would go with the 290x as in the future the 3 fans are going to achieve better temps than the 2 twin frozrs so you can overclock pretty well if needed.


You make some good points, but I would argue that unless you look to be gaming at 4K and buying a $2,000 monitor now, 4GB of VRAM is way excessive. While its not bad to have a lot, 3GB should be much more than enough for most resolutions. Also, with that cooling bit: AMD cards (especially R9 290 and 290X) run way hotter than Nvidia cards, so the extra fan on the AMD card would maybe keep temps down only a few degrees. Besides, OP could get a 780 Ti MSI Lighting edition, which has Tri-Frozr fans (3 of the Frozr fans) and comes with some other awesome features, for only $50 more than a reference 780 Ti and is worth the addon for such an expensive card already.
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January 9, 2014 5:43:24 PM

for gaming only i personally would go with the 780ti. they are both very good cards and you wont notice any difference in games between the two except where certain games are coded to take advantage of amd's vastly better opencl compute performance. mantel is a whole different story and all we can do is speculate on that so i wont go there. for those who say the 780ti is the faster single gpu blah blah blah... well at what i ask? synthetic benchmarks are the only benchmarks that matter. synthetic benchmarks are equal to a ufc fight as a gaming benchmark is equal to a street fight. amd holds a considerable lead over nivida in compute and gpgpu functions and performance. if you consider a 4fps lead in games a single fastest gpu with mature drivers compared to a near virgin drivers on the amd, then so be it. but i still agree for gaming i would perfer a 780ti in my system if i had the choice.
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January 10, 2014 8:36:33 AM

Hey so this here shows that Sapphire card in particular does a good job of cooling the 290x. They played Metro: Last light and it topped out at 72 °C.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/r9-290x-case-perfor...

This review of the MSI 780 ti Gaming is what made me consider this card. I really like the look of the Nvidia reference cooler but I wouldn't sacrifice peformance for it, especially when it's priced equally.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_780_Ti_Gamin...

I know both AMD and Nvidia have their own advantages like Mantle(remains to be seen) and that AMD is in the new consoles which may translate into more games running better on AMD GPUs. And Nvidia has Shadowplay, TXAA, Gsync, and that feature that makes explosions and the stuff that falls to the ground after you shoot a wall look more realisitic ( can't remember the name). Don't know what half of those things are anyway.

I'm mostly interested in better FPS and smoother gameplay. I currently have 2 Sapphire 7950 Flex in my computer and for the most part Crossfire has been great. I only got the second one after I saw some feedback on the frame pacing driver. I know some still say that SLI is far better than Crossfire though. Then there's this review of the R9 290X in Crossfire... http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_290X_CrossFir...

"things aren't that great from a pure-performance perspective. The overall performance upscale over a single R9 290X "Uber" is 47% at 2560x1600. On the upside, though, more games are taking advantage of CrossFire than we're used to seeing, thanks to AMD's improved developer relations."

Only 47% upscale over one 290x? Doesn't sound so good to me but I looked at some of those benchmarks and while a few games didn't seem to benefit much from second card, others did benefit greatly.

At any rate, I've had AMD GPU for the last 5 or 6 years and I do want to try Nvidia to see what all the fuss is about lol. Ultimately though I will take the card that gives the best performance regardless of brand. I'll only be getting 1 card now but I plan on adding a second sometime soon after so the Dual-GPU aspect is very important to me. I only play on 1080p at the moment and I know a lot of people would say you are crazy for wanting to put two massive GPUs like that in a 1080p rig but hey, if you look at the benchmarks on some games such as Crysis 3 you will see that a single GTX 780 ti gets only 41 or so average FPS. I prefer to be at 60 fps and was told that even with 2 or 3 780 tis some games will still make you dip under 60fps.
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January 10, 2014 11:54:07 AM

Pavel Pokidaylo said:
Hey so this here shows that Sapphire card in particular does a good job of cooling the 290x. They played Metro: Last light and it topped out at 72 °C.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/r9-290x-case-perfor...

This review of the MSI 780 ti Gaming is what made me consider this card. I really like the look of the Nvidia reference cooler but I wouldn't sacrifice peformance for it, especially when it's priced equally.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_780_Ti_Gamin...

I know both AMD and Nvidia have their own advantages like Mantle(remains to be seen) and that AMD is in the new consoles which may translate into more games running better on AMD GPUs. And Nvidia has Shadowplay, TXAA, Gsync, and that feature that makes explosions and the stuff that falls to the ground after you shoot a wall look more realisitic ( can't remember the name). Don't know what half of those things are anyway.

I'm mostly interested in better FPS and smoother gameplay. I currently have 2 Sapphire 7950 Flex in my computer and for the most part Crossfire has been great. I only got the second one after I saw some feedback on the frame pacing driver. I know some still say that SLI is far better than Crossfire though. Then there's this review of the R9 290X in Crossfire... http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_290X_CrossFir...

"things aren't that great from a pure-performance perspective. The overall performance upscale over a single R9 290X "Uber" is 47% at 2560x1600. On the upside, though, more games are taking advantage of CrossFire than we're used to seeing, thanks to AMD's improved developer relations."

Only 47% upscale over one 290x? Doesn't sound so good to me but I looked at some of those benchmarks and while a few games didn't seem to benefit much from second card, others did benefit greatly.

At any rate, I've had AMD GPU for the last 5 or 6 years and I do want to try Nvidia to see what all the fuss is about lol. Ultimately though I will take the card that gives the best performance regardless of brand. I'll only be getting 1 card now but I plan on adding a second sometime soon after so the Dual-GPU aspect is very important to me. I only play on 1080p at the moment and I know a lot of people would say you are crazy for wanting to put two massive GPUs like that in a 1080p rig but hey, if you look at the benchmarks on some games such as Crysis 3 you will see that a single GTX 780 ti gets only 41 or so average FPS. I prefer to be at 60 fps and was told that even with 2 or 3 780 tis some games will still make you dip under 60fps.


You make a few good points about how each company has their own advantages, however I would really like to see where you found the result for the Crysis 3 benchmark, because a 2GB GTX 770 averages about 37 fps (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zoBtnTn5Fo , see for yourself) with 4xMSAA, 4xAF, and all other settings maxed, and there is no way the 780 Ti and the 770 are close to equal. The 780 Ti is more than capable of running Crysis 3 at all max settings, save for maybe antialiasing which you can still crank up to near max and stay around 60 FPS. Besides, IMO, the 780 Ti is a ton of overkill for 1080p gaming, I would say the 280X or 770 is the peak of what you need for just 1080p. If you have the budget for a 290X or 780 Ti and are building a new rig I would recommend getting a very high power CPU (i5-4670K or i7-4770K) with a good cooling system and maybe get a GTX 670 for now, because gaming system requirements are going to jump up a lot higher in the next few months-a year when the new consoles start getting up to speed, and that way in a year when the 670 is struggling, you could either sell it and get either a 780/780 Ti/ even maybe a 770/equivalent 800 line GPU if its out, or SLI it with another 670 for crazy power, more than a single GTX 780 Ti or Titan. Good luck deciding!
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January 10, 2014 3:49:13 PM

Ok so with 4XAA that particular 780 ti gets 53fps average. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_780_Ti_Gamin...
The benchmark I saw that showed the 780 ti getting 41fps had the AA at X8.

A 770 or 280x is definitely not the peak for what I need for 1080p. I currently have Crossfire 7950s and while the Crossfire runs great in most games, it's still not enough for me. I want to play games at 60fps not 40 or 30. Granted, it's only the most demanding games that demand such power from the GPU but those are the ones I tend to play lol. I really enjoy playing games at 60fps. There is no stutter at all with 60fps. But I notice the stutter as soon as it dips below 60fps and when it reaches around 30fps I start to get really aggravated. I hate 30fps :( 

I have the 4670k right now. The 780 ti is faster than my 7950 Crossfire setup. Maybe not much faster but it is faster. And I plan on adding a second 780 ti when funds allow.
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January 10, 2014 4:10:17 PM

Pavel Pokidaylo said:
Ok so with 4XAA that particular 780 ti gets 53fps average. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_780_Ti_Gamin...
The benchmark I saw that showed the 780 ti getting 41fps had the AA at X8.

A 770 or 280x is definitely not the peak for what I need for 1080p. I currently have Crossfire 7950s and while the Crossfire runs great in most games, it's still not enough for me. I want to play games at 60fps not 40 or 30. Granted, it's only the most demanding games that demand such power from the GPU but those are the ones I tend to play lol. I really enjoy playing games at 60fps. There is no stutter at all with 60fps. But I notice the stutter as soon as it dips below 60fps and when it reaches around 30fps I start to get really aggravated. I hate 30fps :( 

I have the 4670k right now. The 780 ti is faster than my 7950 Crossfire setup. Maybe not much faster but it is faster. And I plan on adding a second 780 ti when funds allow.


Hm, I wonder why you have issues with your setup? I know that Crossfire isn't perfect, but that performance seems pretty lacking than what it should be. My 2GB 770 runs any game on ultra/max depending on the game at 60 FPS + at 1080p, and I am even running an FX-6350 @ 4.4 Ghz. Considering I almost never get drops below 60 and the lowest I have seen ever was 34 fps for a half second in Battlefield 4 on ultra, which was a terrible un-optimized mess. so I would argue that that is just perfect for 1080p, unless you have a 120Hz monitor, but even then, the difference between 60 and 120Hz is so minute I don't think it's worth it, and with any video card out to date you are not going to get consistent frames of 120 fps at high/ultra settings on demanding titles. But if you do look at most benchmarks and statistics, a 280X or 770 can run any game maxed besides AA and stay above 60 FPS, or at least that is what I'm getting.
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January 10, 2014 7:53:57 PM

That's incorrect. You see right there that the MSI 780 ti Gaming which is the fastest GPU right now only gets 53fps average in Crysis 3 with 4XAA.
It's safe to assume that it probably dips as low as 30 at times. Most games are not as demanding as Crysis 3 though and will run perfectly on a 770 or even a 7950. But I play enough demanding games to warrant an expensive setup like SLI 780 ti.
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January 10, 2014 8:57:53 PM

Pavel Pokidaylo said:
That's incorrect. You see right there that the MSI 780 ti Gaming which is the fastest GPU right now only gets 53fps average in Crysis 3 with 4XAA.
It's safe to assume that it probably dips as low as 30 at times. Most games are not as demanding as Crysis 3 though and will run perfectly on a 770 or even a 7950. But I play enough demanding games to warrant an expensive setup like SLI 780 ti.


I really think that for 1080p nothing warrants $1500 for just graphics, especially for only gaming, but its certainly not going to be my money spent on that, its your choice! What is true however is the performance with your crossfire is wacky. I can prove to you the performance I get with my GTX 770, and two 7950's in crossfire should crush a 770 by at least 20-30 fps depending on the game and situation. The only games that I do not get a consistent 60 or above FPS is Battlefield 4, which has good days of 70+ fps ultra and bad days of crazy fps jumps from 60-45-55-48-60 etc... and Crysis 3, because I don't own the game and benchmarks have shown me that 60fps is impossible with a 770.
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