GTX 780 SC ACX vs MSI R9 290

NinSegaSoft

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As it stands now, I'd be able to get an MSI 290 for about $90 less than the ACX 780. If what I'm looking at gets snatched up, then it'd be about $50 less instead. Subtract $20 for a rebate on the 780 if I'm fast enough to get that in too.

I was wondering if anyone could weigh in on whether the stability, lower temps, and new "better" NVIDIA features are worth the extra $90. I have some hesitancy with people saying the MSI 290 isn't good in CF and that it runs too hot. The ACX 780 also seems slightly faster. If anyone has experience with either of the two cards, your perspective would be appreciated.

The Sapphire 290 seems too close in price to the ACX 780 for it to be a justifiable purchase over the 780, but if anyone has an opinion to the contrary, I'd be interested to hear it.
 
Solution
Hi,
*I end up recommending either the Asus GTX770, or Asus GTX780 but here's a LONG discussion of why:

I think the GTX780Ti is ridiculous for most high-end gamers. For most I recommend the Asus GTX770 at $320 USD, but think for some the GTX780 (EVGA/Asus/Gigabyte) can be justified.

I'll also address the R9-290.

*Let's start by looking at a SUMMARY BENCHMARK for the Asus GTX770:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_770_Direct_Cu_II_OC/27.html

Accoring to this average, the stock GTX780 is only 15% faster than a stock GTX770 (1080p res; rounded up). Hmm.. I thought the GTX780 was better than that so I'll try another site:

OK, this is at 2560x1440 but my experience tells me it shouldn't be much different from 1920x1080...

NiCoM

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If you plan on dual gpu then i would go for the 780, if you're buying just one card then i would only go for the Nvidia is you personally need any of their features and think they're worth $90 to you.

I use a single asus r9 290 myself (actually own another one for CF which just sits on my shelf lol). I don't think the Sapphire card is worth it, go MSI gaming or ASUS if you want the r9 290. EVGA, ASUS or MSI gaming for the 780.
 

NinSegaSoft

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Yeah, as of right now I don't have a motherboard that would support a second card and I figure a single 290 on one 1080p monitor will probably be enough for several years. So if I were going to go CF/SLI it wouldn't be for a while if I did it at all. Hopefully CF will be better in a few years anyway if I did decide to do it.

How's your ASUS 290 treating you?
 
Hi,
*I end up recommending either the Asus GTX770, or Asus GTX780 but here's a LONG discussion of why:

I think the GTX780Ti is ridiculous for most high-end gamers. For most I recommend the Asus GTX770 at $320 USD, but think for some the GTX780 (EVGA/Asus/Gigabyte) can be justified.

I'll also address the R9-290.

*Let's start by looking at a SUMMARY BENCHMARK for the Asus GTX770:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_770_Direct_Cu_II_OC/27.html

Accoring to this average, the stock GTX780 is only 15% faster than a stock GTX770 (1080p res; rounded up). Hmm.. I thought the GTX780 was better than that so I'll try another site:

OK, this is at 2560x1440 but my experience tells me it shouldn't be much different from 1920x1080 on average so I'll use these numbers. They will be stock vs stock, then Superclock vs stock 770:
1) TWS2 17.3%, 34.2%
2) HA 23.75%, 33%
3) SD 11.6%, 25.8%
4) BF3 20.3%, 35.6%
5) BI 20.6%, 27.9%

**OK, so now I know what's going on... the stock GTX780 runs slower than optimal. Bring in the good coolers and the performance jumps up. The GTX770 also improves but the difference isn't as much so.

I believe a 25% difference is what it ends up being on average if you use comparable coolers like the Asus GTX780 vs Asus GTX770. Unfortunately I didn't have all this data on the same benchmarks.

I had been recommending the EVGA GTX780 967MHz model ($510) but I've switched and now recommend the Asus:
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-video-card-gtx780dc2oc3gd5 ($520)

The Asus GTX770 is currently $320 USD:
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-video-card-gtx770dc2oc2gd5

Thus the price difference is $520/$320 or 62.5% more for the GTX780 for roughly 25% more performance. The extra VRAM in general isn't needed so only YOU can decide if that's worth the money or if you can make better use of that $200 elsewhere. It turns out to be pretty useful for Batman Origins as my 770 keeps dropping below 60FPS unless I turn off a few settings, and VSYNC OFF has lots of screen tearing (I'd still disable the highest PhysX even with a single GTX780 though).

On the other hand, the GTX770 plays most games at full quality. Some games are really demanding like Metro 2033/LL but even these look and run great if you very carefully tweak the quality (nor does the GTX780 make it look much different).

Don't get me wrong, I'd buy the Asus 780 if I was due for an upgrade, but I'm having a hard time recommending it to others.

***Now the R9-290:
This review is for the R9-290X but I couldn't find a better summary and it's the relative numbers we want:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/R9_290X_Direct_Cu_II_OC/24.html

Basically the R9-290 is slightly faster than the GTX780 however I don't believe that holds up under load. Let's just call them roughly EQUAL.

GTX780 vs R9-290:
Having established them as roughly equal (similar cooler like Asus vs Asus) it comes down to pricing and features (I'm ignoring the 4GB vs 3GB since I think that's mostly irrelevent). The Asus R9-290 is $480USD, and the Asus GTX780 is $520USD. Thus, this GTX780 is about 8% more expensive.

FEATURES:
AMD-> Mantle
*There aren't a lot of games that support Mantle, and with DX12 coming and supposedly more efficient I don't know how much value to assign to AMD cards for this. Not much, but some.

NVidia->
- PhysX
- Shadowplay (game recording with minimal performance loss)
- G-Sync (for new G-Sync monitors)
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/64586-week-nvidias-g-sync-monitor.html

In my opinion NVidia wins here. I know a lot about NVidia's G-Sync and it's really awesome. It's a non-issue if you absolutely won't be buying a G-Sync monitor in the lifetime of your card though.

SUMMARY:
Based on today's pricing, and attempting to compare fairly, I really have to recommend primarily the Asus GTX770 for most, and the Asus GTX780 for those who can afford it. One option would be to take the $200 difference and put that towards a G-Sync monitor if a new monitor was on your wish list in the next year.

The GTX780Ti I consider overkill, and the R9-290 (with good cooler) is a valid option, and arguably cheaper, however I think the NVidia features justify its price tag.

So my recommendation comes down to one of two cards:
Asus GTX770, or
Asus GTX780
 
Solution

Avocade

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photonboy. This ia great answer and by all means "Poster" use this to decide my only thing is. Games coming out new for their max settings they require a 3Gb card. In games like titanfall and BF4 at 1920x1080 using Ultra settings ive seen more than 2gb's used the max was 3024 in Titanfall and 2718 in BF4. This is my only reason I'd stretch for the 780 if you have the money. However the 770's are beastly cards themselves.
 


No game "requires" 3GB of VRAM. It also scales with how powerful the GPU is, for example if you properly tweak to maintain 60FPS for these games it's very unlikely you'd use more than 2GB when using a GTX770. Maybe if you cranked up the visuals to the point you're running at 30FPS but then that's not a good idea.

I'm also not hearing any reports of people with GTX770's suddenly hitting a 2GB wall and having a big performance drop.

I read a very detailed article about BF4 and the 2GB issue and the conclusion was very clear that you did NOT need more than 2GB with a GTX770.

Another interesting thing is that many developers are reporting they will be able to use VRAM much more efficiently and that VRAM usage may even be reduce. Microsoft have a new feature coming that will stream data from the System RAM to the VRAM (Shared TIles).

I'm not saying games won't use more than 2GB in the near future as they definitely will, I just don't think it justifies spending a lot more money on the video card.

Also, people with 1GB cards have managed to play most modern games very smoothly, albeit with just lower quality visuals which makes me wonder how much of an issue this "2GB limit" really is.
 
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/11/17/battlefield_4_video_card_performance_iq_review/7#.UzsVx1dBpjI

"Speaking of memory configurations, in most cases, cards with 3GB of memory or more would usually see a video memory usage of about 2.25GB at any given time while gaming. However, for cards with less than 3GB, we typically observed about 1.75GB of memory being used."

*The confusion arises because Windows uses a lot of VRAM for desktop usage, however when you run a game once the VRAM usage goes beyond a certain point (80% ?) the Windows portion is copied to System RAM (i.e. DDR3) and about 99% of the VRAM is used solely for the game.

So when somebody has a 3GB card Windows doesn't bother moving the Desktop data, but in reality (in this example) 2GB was sufficient.
 

NinSegaSoft

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Hey, I appreciate the detailed response. I ultimately have decided on the MSI R9 290 for a few reasons. With regard to the 2gb vs more than 2gb of VRAM, there seems to be a lot of uncertainty and differing opinions. It seems to me like it's a safer bet to just get more than 2gb since I'd like to use my card for around 3 years and potentially do heavy modding for games like Skyrim.

I initially was thinking: "Ok, then just go for a 280x from Sapphire, such as the Toxic." Unfortunately, there seems to be issues with the current 280x Toxic cards people are buying. I'm told the cards have been "nerfed" due to a switch in the RAM used (Hynix replaced with Elpida). Also, the price of a Toxic or a Tri-X-Vapor X isn't much cheaper than that of the MSI 290 I'm scoping out right now. I looked painstakingly at a lot of benchmarks comparing the strength of the 290 to the 280x (which is pretty equal to the 770 as I think you mentioned), and it seems like there's a solid enough performance difference.

As I mentioned in my initial post, the 780 is around $90 bucks more than the MSI 290 I'm looking at, and I don't think the NVIDIA features and advantages justify that cost. G Sync won't be relevant for me because I already have two monitors and probably wouldn't upgrade until I'm out of college which won't be for like five years. I don't really record, so Shadowplay isn't too compelling fpr me. And PhysX I suppose I can deal without. An important factor though would be SLI vs CF. Hopefully in like 3 some odd years, CF is stable enough that I won't regret not having gone with NVIDIA should I choose to add a second card. But that's a hypothetical scenario as of now.

If I'm unable to get the MSI 290 for the lower price I'm looking at, I'd probably go for the 780 instead like you recommended. But as it stands now, $90-100+ more doesn't seem worth it. Sorry for the long-winded conclusion, but hopefully other people might get their questions answered from this.
 

NiCoM

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I Think your choice its a good choice you made, 4GB might even be usable in skyrim, and the MSI card isn't that bad at keeping quiet under load either.

i read some of Photoboys answer so excuse me if im wrong on this:
Photoboy said that the R9 290 was a tad faster but he didn't expect it to hold under load, there i think he is wrong since companies like MSI and ASUS keep their R9 290(x)'s cool. Mine haven't gone over 70 celsius, so no downthrottling in performance under load here.

Though if you KNOW you're going SLI/CF i would still pick 780 because of overall being so much better than CF.. (example Skyrim runs SLI, but with CF enabled, it runs like 1/2 a card, without using a third party program called RadeonPro)

And i would also recommend a 770 for 1080p gaming, but not for 1440p. You will have some sad days in skyrim 1440p with not alot of mods, since 1440p's increased performance & dram needs will probably limit the ammount of mods you can install when only having 2GB, and 4GB version have always been very overpriced in my opinion.


Though be careful because the R9 290 with open cooler just throws the hot air at every other component inside your case, make sure you have decent airflow.
 


Hi,
1) Thermal throttling. I'm not certain on this. I did read a lot of reviews, even with custom coolers, saying issues still existed. However AMD released driver updates that changed the fan profile so cards would run LOUDER but thermal throttling was reduced.

So it's more about the NOISE of the card, so if overclocking works but gets too noisy I recommend dropping the overclock a bit.

Since I don't own one of these I can't speak from experience. As said your CASE cooling (and ambient room temp) is going to affect things as well.

2) GTX770 at 2560x1440:
I agree with not gaming in Skyrim at 1440p, however I have a huge list of games that can run at 2560x1440, max quality, at 60FPS so it's not all games. Top-down, "GOD" games like CIV5, Diablo 3 etc tend to run fine at 2560x1440 but there are others like Bioshock #1 that can also run at 2560x1440 at max/60FPS on a GTX770 or better.

3) A quick comment on SKYRIM. I got rid of SFO ( I believe that's the name. A tree/vegetation mod) because performance would plummet in certain areas and I absolutely hate regular stutter/lag in games.

*I think he'll have a really great time with his R9-290. Whether it throttles a bit or not due to temperature, and whether he actually uses more than 2GB won't change the fact that it's a great card and he'll simply have fun.

All that remains is for him to properly TWEAK the quality in demanding games to achieve his desired goal which is often 60FPS VSYNC (I use adaptive VSYNC), but in some cases VSYNC OFF.