Gtx 780 or r9 290x?

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Evan Troxel

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Jun 8, 2014
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I am looking at getting a new gaming desktop and I have looked around online but cannot seem to find a definitive answer. I am looking at either a gtx 780 or r9 290x

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202079&cm_re=r9_290_x-_-14-202-079-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130951&cm_re=Gtx_780-_-14-130-951-_-Product

I plan to use CFX or SLI in the future. My main questions are: which card will produce better results, and which are better overall when it comes to heat and power consumption and noise. I know the 290x is more than likely going to outperform the 780, but is the power consumption and efficiency of the 780 a better option? Thank you.
 
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Karadjgne

Karadjgne

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Dependson what resolutions you are after, multiple monitors etc. If you are after a single monitor, then the g-sync, shadowplay and drivers of the nvidia are far superior, if you want multiple monitors then the r9 with eyefinity is superior
 
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Evan Troxel

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I plan on using one monitor but may get a high resolution one. And I have seen many benchmarks and the 290x seems to perform better in every scenario. Just curious how is the nvidia drivers better if the benchmarks show the 290x is better? Thanks
 
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photonboy

photonboy

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My quick answer is to recommend the EVGA GTX780 967MHz model (ACX cooler).

(Watch Dogs is still included it seems with the GTX780, however you should wait for the patch to fix the issue of the VRAM buffer filling even at 3GB. They ARE working on it.)

My long answer needs a bit more info:

1) The EVGA GTX780 I linked is likely to be quieter than any R9-290X in its price class.

2) There is a performance difference but it needs to be analyzed carefully:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/R9_290X_Tri-X_OC/24.html

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_780_SC_ACX_Cooler/26.html

So the EVGA 780 SC is 3% faster than a Titan on average, and the R9-290X OC'd card is 2%. So, let's just call things EQUAL?

Some of the R9-290X cards may throttle with temperature. However, the Sapphire I card I link has great cooling but is also far more expensive than the GTX780. So the BEST CASE scenario seems to be equal performance.

3) 4GB vs 3GB (not important IMO since more than 2GB isn't really needed if we ignore Watch Dogs which has issues that are being fixed. So I think 3GB is plenty even with SLI for quite a while.)

4) Other features:
AMD-> Mantel (I really think this will be mostly a non-issue but hard to say)

NVidia->
- PhysX
- Shadowplay
- TXAA
- SteamOS streaming (using NVENC hardware encoder)
- G-Sync (for new monitors. Makes games run smoother)
 
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Karadjgne

Karadjgne

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Like I said, for a single monitor, the 780 even at 1440p, is more than enough, sli is stable, the gpu is cheaper, quieter, runs lower temps. For 3x monitors the 290x is advised as the AMD cards tend to do much better with the high resolutions 3 monitors entail and eyefinity is much easier to use. AMD still has driver/comparability issues, they are stll working on and haven't quite fixed, yet, and mantle is not supported on a majority of slightly older games as it is still too new a tech, so is only supported on the newest games like watchdogs and BF4.
 
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