R9 290, gtx 780, Asus vs msi?

FunkyFeatures · Apr 9, 2014

I am planning to do a build using either r9 290 or gtx 780.

The r9 290 quiet mode with asus cooler seems to be extremely quiet (around 25% fan speed) but at about 80c. I have heard about artifacts and such starting at 75c, is that true?
The r9 290 from msi, should be louder, but also lower temps.

Pros about asus - sounds quiet on videos at least, and i like their gpu tweak software.
Pros about msi - lower temps

Where i live, the gtx 780 is a little more expensive, but is it worth it? (I dont care about gsync. Atm its too expensive)

And a myth. Amd tends to have more frame variation than nvidia. Means very bad frame drops.
true or false?

mr91 · Apr 9, 2014

What games are you planning to play?

FunkyFeatures · Apr 9, 2014

BF4, watch dogs, maybe some need for speed. Currently i play bf4 low settings.
I have other games like crysis 3 that i would like to get into, but cant because of low gpu power :S

3Dns · Apr 9, 2014

One of my friend bought the R9 280X Matrix and, ye he has FPS drops some times in League of Legends !!!
But i think R9 290 is good enough and you dont have to pay more for GTX 780.
I am Nvidia's fan because i have GTX 760 but i think AMD did a good job with the new cards.
Go for it

FunkyFeatures · Apr 9, 2014

r9 280x matrix should be one of the best non-reference cards. if it has very bad drops, would the normal r9 290 not have it too?

Eggz · Apr 9, 2014

Frame variance is a bit worse on the AMD cards, but I have never really compared closely enough in person to see whether it's noticeable. Here are the numbers on that if you want to see them: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290x-hawaii-review,3650-14.html

As far as performance, the cards will be pretty similar. The prices are also similar.

List of NewEgg prices for 290: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%20600473877&IsNodeId=1&name=Radeon%20R9%20290

List of NewEgg prices for 780: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%20600440544&IsNodeId=1&name=GeForce%20GTX%20780

From everything I've read, the Nvidia cards (at least between these two cards) tend to run cooler and more stable. Another thing is whether you care about PhysX. I personally love the extra eye candy, but those who can do without it go with AMD. Just compare the features and go for the one with the most. I am pretty sure it's the 780, but go ahead and check for yourself.

3Dns · Apr 9, 2014

How much cost the R9 290 and the GTX 780 there ?

FunkyFeatures · Apr 9, 2014

I dont know in dollars.

r9 290 is about 2800-3000 dkk
gtx 780 is from 3300-3600 dkk
100 dollars is about 600 dkk, but we have extra taxes so it would be around 750.
My full budget is about 9000 dkk for a system

edit - reference cooler saves me 100dkk, but non reference costs about the same as each other.

mr91 · Apr 9, 2014

Watch dogs will probably play better On Nvidia cards and Assuming you're playing BF4 @ 1080p both the 780 and 290 should be adequate.

I suggest you go with the gtx 780 it's a great choice if you have a 1080p monitor however the 290 is also good if you have a decent non reference cooler on it.

The reference cards are cool quiet and reliable, I upgraded to a 780 ti from a 780 in early December.

I suggest you go with Asus which ever card you pick however MSI is also good and in my opinion their after burner is the best software on the market for Graphic cards. " I'm using the beta software and I can monitor 64 bit games like bf4 with it"

If your case doesn't have the best airflow and you're in a hot room a 780 reference card might be your best option.
Because non reference cards tend to recycle the hot air in the case if cooling is not configured properly.

FunkyFeatures · Apr 9, 2014

my room is about 18-24c around the year. even in hot summers.
Case airflow? i dont know. i will be getting the nzxt h440, which is very nice looking.
And somehow, i cant find a single reference gtx 780, and when i wrote the thing about saving 100 dkk i meant radeon cards. forgot to say that. I will keep in mind that nvidias reference cooler is good though

Thanks for the help, but i am not sure what to get. 780 or r9 290.
i am paying quite a bit of money that could be spent elsewhere, for a small upgrade. If anyone can tell me how bad frames drop on both cards, it would help a lot.

Eggz · Apr 9, 2014

FunkyFeatures :

I did. Read the article I posted in my first post. It has loads of detail on exactly that.

Here's the link again, just in case.

WoodenSaucer · Apr 9, 2014

Does anyone have any experience with AMD's Mantle? I know BF4 is one of the few games that support Mantle. I was wondering if that would put the R9 290 ahead for that specific game.

FunkyFeatures · Apr 9, 2014

Thanks for the link again. Totally overlooked it.
So looks like frame times is better on average on the gtx 780, but even better on r9 280x?
Is the r9 290(x) frame time acceptable compared to the others? I have no idea of what is much and too much.

Eggz · Apr 9, 2014

It depends on the game. I'll put the frame variance charts for 1440p next to each other here so they are easy to compare. In the article, you have to flip pages, which isn't as convenient.

I guess what you could do to find out is take an average across the numbers in the red bars to see which card, on average (across multiple 1440p games), gives you the least variance. If someone does that, I'll update this post to fill in the blanks here with that information.

Frame Time Variance across 6 games @ 1440p
Titan: 0.267 ms
280X: 0.27ms
290X(Quiet): 0.328 ms
290X (Uber): 0.332 ms
780: 0.332ms
690: 0.667 ms
7990: 0.948

shehtazruslan · Apr 9, 2014

buy the 780 poseidon $650

mr91 · Apr 9, 2014

Your case is fine if you get a non reference make sure you have intake and exhaust fans in the right places.

I suggest you get at least a 4670k with 1866 kHz ram that is compatible with your system a ssd for faster load times and better reliability.

Crysis 3d will run @ ultra with smaa on both cards @ 1080p and you shouln't experience too many slow downs if your other components are good.

You should be able to play bf4 on ultra with both cards with ocassional dips below 60.

The same goes for the other games that you play, I'm not sure a about watchdogs

FunkyFeatures · Apr 9, 2014

Shehtazruslan why would i do that? 1 it is overpriced. my budget is too low to get 650$ graphics card performing like a 400-500$ graphics card. 2. i am not doing water cooling and definately not custom loop.
Just give me some perfectly good reasons for that please...

FunkyFeatures · Apr 9, 2014

mr91 - Ok thanks for letting me know

I am getting a xeon e3-1230v3 but i havent got to ram yet

Eggz
R9 290x Uber - 0,332ms frametime average over 6 games
R9 290x silent - 0,328ms frametime average over 6 games(i guess they will transfer over to r9 290 since its almost same card
GTX 780 - 0,332ms frametime average over 6 games(same as 290x uber
R9 280x - 0,27ms frametime over 6 games - better than all the others in numbers, and clearly better in crysis 3. Not as good in other games though with both frames and frametimes.

Eggz · Apr 9, 2014

No single-card solution can play Crysis 3 on Ultra (i.e. all max) at 60 fps at 1080p. I'm on a OCed 3930k, 780 ti SC, and 32 GB 2133 Mhz RAM, and I still can't fully max everything unless I accept roughly 40 fps. Turning things down a little can keep it at 60 fps in almost all scenes, but don't let people build up an expectation that either one of these cards (without SLI or Xfire) will max out everything at 1080p for a smooth, constant 60 fps. It just doesn't work like that.

FunkyFeatures · Apr 9, 2014

Yea, i dont expect to crush crysis 3. But i was talking frame times. Are frame time variances high when fps is low? is there a system?

mr91 · Apr 9, 2014

Bf4 mp you might have to turn down the settings on crisis 3d to maintain 60

FunkyFeatures · Apr 9, 2014

mr91 :

Sorry - honestly mindfucked. do you say to lower settings in crysis or in battlefield?

Eggz · Apr 9, 2014

FunkyFeatures :

Great work! I updated the post above to reflect the variances. If you do the other cards, I'll add those too.

FunkyFeatures :

Yeah, there is a relationship. "Good performance" comes from high frame rates with low latency. So, when the GPU isn't keeping pace, you'll see lower fps and higher variance. When the GPU can totally handle what's going on, the fps will remain high without much variance. Theoretically perfect performance looks on a graph like a flat line, and terrible performance looks like a scribly line drawn by a meth addict. Take a look at the graph below. The yellow line would be bad, and the red line would be good.

FunkyFeatures · Apr 9, 2014

Titan - 0,267 (barely lower than the r9 280x)
690 - 0,667
7990 - 0,948 (worst of them all, but expected because of dual gpu)

What have we found out?
780 and r9 290(x) have about the same frame drops and frame time variances.
Dual gpu solutions sucks(as we knew already, it has worse performance than single gpus. Maybe amd is even worse at it than nvidia?)

(leaving some spaces for editing in the future

)

Eggz · Apr 9, 2014

Also, are you willing to spend more on the 780 ti? If you're concerned about frame rate variance, it has the lowest latencies of any card out right now if you look at a different round of tests that included the 780 ti. It's actually strange that the R9 280x gets different numbers in this second round of tests, but maybe there were different testing conditions. In any case, just keep in mind that you can't compare across the tests above and the ones I'm mentioning now.

GTX 780 ti

BF4

Bioshock

Crysis 3

Metro LL

Skyrim

Tombraider

R9 290, gtx 780, Asus vs msi?

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