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Which GPU should i get

Tags:
  • Graphics
  • AMD
  • Gigabyte
  • Nvidia
  • GPUs
  • Graphics Cards
Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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April 17, 2014 5:25:38 PM

i have made a similar thread before i know that

anyways i am buying a new GPU i have selected these two:
1) Gigabyte windforce 290 ) $450au ($80 off for a special)
2) Gigabyte windforce 770 GTX 2gb) $415au

So is the extra $15 worth it?

More about : gpu

a b U Graphics card
April 17, 2014 5:30:49 PM

Between the 770 and the R9 290? I would go for the R9.
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a b U Graphics card
April 17, 2014 5:35:58 PM

290 games at 780 levels so I'd say it's a no brainer for a $15 difference.
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April 17, 2014 5:39:51 PM

ok sounds like a plan the 290 it is!!! Thanks for all the help
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a c 373 À AMD
a c 165 Î Nvidia
a c 1430 U Graphics card
April 17, 2014 5:41:38 PM

With $15 price difference well worth it!
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April 17, 2014 5:41:41 PM

290>770, Especially if higher resolution means something to you. I personally have only used Nvidia in the past, but other than the stock cooler, the 290 seems great. Personally, I'd get the 770, despite it not being quite as strong, because of EVGA's customer support and the cooling on Nvidia cards. Either way, you'll get great 1080p performance.

EDIT:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290-revie...
Article further supporting 290
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April 17, 2014 5:46:03 PM

I am a 770 fan because I own one and I love Nvidia......but the 290 is very nice for the price (%10-%15 faster than a 770 on average). My only concern is heat but the Windforce cooler should cool it reasonably well. Plus, I am not a fan of AMD drivers......they've always been a bit shakey but they are much better as of late. If your a 1080p gamer......either card will run great for you......if your 1440p gamer, then go with the 290.
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a c 373 À AMD
a c 165 Î Nvidia
a c 1430 U Graphics card
April 17, 2014 5:48:02 PM

I have had AMD cards for years and no driver issues ever!
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April 17, 2014 5:54:59 PM

OP, are you looking to game in 1920x1080?
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a b À AMD
a b U Graphics card
April 17, 2014 6:08:25 PM

Stickem said:
I am a 770 fan because I own one and I love Nvidia......but the 290 is very nice for the price (%10-%15 faster than a 770 on average). My only concern is heat but the Windforce cooler should cool it reasonably well. Plus, I am not a fan of AMD drivers......they've always been a bit shakey but they are much better as of late. If your a 1080p gamer......either card will run great for you......if your 1440p gamer, then go with the 290.

Yeah make it more like 40-45% percent faster, the r9 290 is almost as fast and competes with the GTX780 wich is 50% faster than the GTX770, it would be a no brainer to pick the 770 at these prices no matter what resolution the OP is playing at, benchmarks :
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1068?vs=1037

The 770 is the old GK104 gpu from the 680, nothing more...this radeon card compete with the all mighty GK110 found in the 780's and titans, it's top of the line from AMD...

This card is very well rounded and supports mantle and true audio, i would not pick it over the 780 because of heat and power draw but i would defenetly pick over the 770 anyday even for 25% more $ it would still be worth it.
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April 17, 2014 6:29:40 PM

Woah, not %40-%50..........depends on reference vs oc and a lot of other factors. My MSI Lightning 770 with my overclock is running just slightly behind a reference 780. If he's 1080p gaming........a 780 or 290 will only really net him around %20-%25 more in most games. You ain't going to see %40 more until you start reaching the 290X or 780Ti range big boy. You can't base a decision just off one comparison chart either.........some sites and tests are very partial towards one brand.
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April 17, 2014 6:35:28 PM

Yeah, usually you'll see 20-25% more performance out of a 780 compared to a 770, not 50%. But, these performance numbers don't mean too much, as the overclocking and cooling of a card changes it performance drastically, so its hard to compare two cards without being specific on the type.
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April 17, 2014 6:40:42 PM

Swanson said:
OP, are you looking to game in 1920x1080?


yes

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Best solution

April 17, 2014 6:54:50 PM

At 1920x1080, they both will be very capable cards. The has more VRAM, and higher clock speeds, but the 770 may be more reliable, based upon reviews. In the end it is up to you, but although the 290 is superior in performance, I would personally go with the 770. I'd put reliability and quality over a little bit of horsepower anyday.
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a c 373 À AMD
a c 165 Î Nvidia
a c 1430 U Graphics card
April 17, 2014 7:07:37 PM

Lol the 290 is just as reliable! At least it is new tech not just revamped older tech (GTX680) like the GTX770!
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April 17, 2014 7:09:34 PM

newegg.ca has Gigabytes 290 with 20% 5-egg (5-star) ratings. Gigabytes 770 has 78% 5-egg. It may seem reliable on paper, but judging from real-world use, it does fall short.
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a c 373 À AMD
a c 165 Î Nvidia
a c 1430 U Graphics card
April 17, 2014 7:20:20 PM

Swanson said:
newegg.ca has Gigabytes 290 with 20% 5-egg (5-star) ratings. Gigabytes 770 has 78% 5-egg. It may seem reliable on paper, but judging from real-world use, it does fall short.


And how many % of happy buyers do you belief post reviews on newegg vs unhappy ones? I take user reviews with a grain of salt!
And any day I can get a card with that more performance for $15 I will jump on it!
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a b À AMD
a b U Graphics card
April 17, 2014 7:20:24 PM

gtx770 - 1536 cuda cores
gtx 780 - 2304 cuda cores

50% more cuda cores take out your calculator big boy and explain to me how this worl equal to 20% more performance...
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a b À AMD
a b U Graphics card
April 17, 2014 7:23:03 PM

now for the OP...make sure you pick the 290 no matter what this new hawaii gpu from amd is battling in another league up there with the gk110 from nvidia housed in the all mighty gtx780's and titans, that's it...end of discussion.
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April 17, 2014 7:29:19 PM

A GPU is more than just cuda cores, real world tests show performance increases of roughly 20-25%. I own a 780, and know it's a great card, but benchmark tests show that the performance isn't just based on the amount of CUDA cores. If it was, overclocking the speed wouldn't increase performance as drastically as it does. I'm not saying the 290 is a bad card, I'm just giving my opinion that the 770 is more reliable based upon what I have read.
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a b À AMD
a b U Graphics card
April 17, 2014 7:37:12 PM

nvidia gpu's are not ''more reliable'' in any way if that even means anything to begin with...these gpus are top notch the drivers are up to date perhaps even better then nvidia with mantle research going on and everything...also those gpu from amd are covered by the same warranty and everyting i really dont see how nvidia would be ''more reliable'' in any way..sorry. these are plain and simple nvidia fanboy claims and to recommand a gtx770 over a radeon r9 290 you must really dont know anything about gpu's or you are just out of your mind, i'm sorry again...

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a b À AMD
a b U Graphics card
April 17, 2014 7:43:16 PM

...oh and yes its defenetly all about cuda cores counts (called stream processors on amd), texture units counts, core clock speed and memory speed...so the fact that the 780 has 50% more cuda cores and 50% more texture unit does make it 50% overall faster clock for clock...now educate yourself.
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April 17, 2014 7:51:33 PM

If you read my first post, I clearly stated the 290 was a steal for that price. It is without a doubt a much better performing card. I merely said that my PERSONAL preference would be the 770, whether or not you listen to that is up to you. Although I am somewhat partial to Nvidia, I want OP to have the best performance possible. With the windforce cooler on the 290 to cool it to good temps, it will without doubt out-perform a 770. Although, both will run games in 1080p at 60 fps, the 290 would be smart to future-proof. That said, the 770 does have PhysX. You claim I recommend a 770>a 290, yet I stated the 290 will be 25% faster multiple times. I simply said that the 290 is faster, but I'd take a 770 due to my like for nvidia drivers, the g-sync monitors soon to be released, and physx. Take from it what you'd like, good luck on the decision! Both are quite good cards.

EDIT:
http://media.bestofmicro.com/2/W/421304/original/Perfor...
Percentage difference between 290's and a 770. Highest difference is 22.5% in this test, and that was a liquid cooled 290.
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a b À AMD
a b U Graphics card
April 17, 2014 8:18:31 PM

Swanson said:
If you read my first post, I clearly stated the 290 was a steal for that price. It is without a doubt a much better performing card. I merely said that my PERSONAL preference would be the 770, whether or not you listen to that is up to you. Although I am somewhat partial to Nvidia, I want OP to have the best performance possible. With the windforce cooler on the 290 to cool it to good temps, it will without doubt out-perform a 770. Although, both will run games in 1080p at 60 fps, the 290 would be smart to future-proof. That said, the 770 does have PhysX. You claim I recommend a 770>a 290, yet I stated the 290 will be 25% faster multiple times. I simply said that the 290 is faster, but I'd take a 770 due to my like for nvidia drivers, the g-sync monitors soon to be released, and physx. Take from it what you'd like, good luck on the decision! Both are quite good cards.

EDIT:
http://media.bestofmicro.com/2/W/421304/original/Perfor...
Percentage difference between 290's and a 770. Highest difference is 22.5% in this test, and that was a liquid cooled 290.


ok now you seem like an intelligent individual so let me explain this...do you think that 1 frame per second require x amount of computing power...how to explain this clearly...a card X that can calculate 110 frames per second over the Y card that produce 100 frames is not necesseraly 10% faster, because the frames 101 to 110 are harder to reach then the frames 90 to 100...to reach those 10 extra frames per second the so called X card has to be maybe 15 to 20% faster overall than the card Y...so you can't look at framerate X vs framerate Y in a game and say yes this card is 10% faster, that's not how things work...some cards that are 200% slower then say a 780 achieve 30 frames per second where the 780 reach 65 frames per second, so the 200% faster card does not perform 200% better in terms of framerates but it is indeed 200% faster OVERALL...do you get that is it simple enough for you to understand this way?
so like i said, the amout of computing cuda cores and texture processing units on a card are directly proportional to the overall performance of the card in regard to clock speed... not the amount of frames per second a GPU can reach in a game...i tell you this, the GTX780 is 50% more powerfull in calculation power than a 770 and a r9 290 is 45% faster than a 770...hence the reason why it's the better pick especially if both GPU's are at the same price.

Now please do me a favor and unselect the solution that was picked in this thread to make sure no other user on this forum that are facing the same situation won't take this as a ''best answer'' cause really it's not, if you don't do it i'll ask a moderator via PM to do it for me, i would do it myself but it is not a good thing to do in here...
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April 17, 2014 8:28:35 PM

Aah, I see our misunderstanding. I was referring to the cards ability to run the games at a certain speed (the frames they can produce per second AKA 22.5% figure), not the actual speed of the cards themselves (45% figure). I understand the computing power is demanded at an exponential rate, much like cars operate. But much like I prefer to see a cars actual top speed over its horsepower, a cards in game FPS performance means more to me than the cards processing power, as external forces such as drivers and optimization can impact in-game performance. Albeit, its not the true speed of the card, but its the difference I'll notice in game, which is what I personally prefer, and I think others likely do too.
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a b À AMD
a b U Graphics card
April 17, 2014 8:42:38 PM

i can understand your thinking, framerates is what you notice, but processing power is what makes the frames appear on the screen and for me when i shop a video card that is what i'm looking for...specs...how good a card is, how many cuda cores/stream processors, how many texture units, reference clockspeed (and overclockability of a chip of course) memory speed (and overclockability) and memory bus width...when you understand the basics of this it's a dream as you no longer have to go search the net for benchmarks and look at different drivers versions and tons of games ran at 10 different resolutions on 20 different machine configurations on 12 different websites by 14 different reviewers...well...i think you get the point...you do the calculation for yourself and then you know wich GPU is the best pick for the money, that's it ! So for me when a new GPU hit the market i log on to AMD or Nvidia website and do the math and i know exactly how many frames per second a certain GPU will hit in battlefield 4 for example on ultra settings @1080p provided it is not stranded by CPU restrictions...hope you get my point on that. ...and your best answer is still selected BTW
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April 17, 2014 8:47:34 PM

When buying my 780 I made sure to pay attention to clock speed and the memory bus width. When I bought my first graphics card years back, I asked a store supervisor what the "***-bit" meant. He said it was the amount of colours the card produced, and since that, I've done research. I actually was looking into the 290 and 290x heavily when buying, the VRAM and memory bus width was appealing for a high res., but the stock coolers were so bad I doubted I could OC much past stock without overheating, or installing a waterblock.
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a b À AMD
a b U Graphics card
April 17, 2014 8:53:06 PM

yes those card do draw more power then nvidia competition, AMD clocked those GPU's very agressively out of the box to make sure they would get good press and make good figure in the benchmarks agains nvidia competition...hence why they draw more power and produce more heat, they are basicaly already overclocked to almost max clocks out of the box...and the reference cooler they launched those hawaii board with was really not adequate...but now the third party cooler that are bolted on these are just fine to cool down those mighty chips and provided users have a good airflow in the case to vent that heat out it's basicaly a non-issue now...but yes those card disapoint in the overclocking department. but the performance out of the box is really really good and for most users this is where the value lies...not that many gamers take the time to properly overclock the chips anyway..
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April 17, 2014 8:55:57 PM

And good press they got, 290x was labelled "Titan killer". But then again, so was the 780 Ti. I think if they toned down the factory power draw and clock speeds to the point that the heatsinks could cool them sufficiently, they would've gotten even better press. Given, people who spend upwards of $500 on GPU hardware will likely want to OC it to get maximum performance, but I'd say they're in the 5-10%.
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a b À AMD
a b U Graphics card
April 17, 2014 9:01:33 PM

i think the mistake they made was to go with such a poor quality reference cooler...if they would have put 5 more $ on the cooler for each cards they would have had much better press feedback at release...now if you check at reviews on these produtcs 95% of those where made at launch and what they say : those cards run's way hot and consume so much...it's sad. They are awesome GPU for the price is every country but USA and canada where they are priced equal to nvidia offerings due to mining, otherwise i would run a r9 290 if i could have had a non-reference one for a better price than a i got my 780 for...
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