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!