Gpu Tough decision

grimmjow660 · Jul 19, 2014

GTX 770 4gb or R9 290?
I'm gaming at at 1080p.
People tell me the 779 can handle games at ultra at 1080p and the R9 290 can too except it's hotter even without rhe aftermarket coolers. My. Budget is about $380, and there's the Gigabyte 770 4gb and MSI R9 290 for the same. Which should I get?
Also what about the evga 770? Or even Gigabyte R9 290?
Does the extra ram help?

Gam3r01 · Jul 19, 2014

I would take the 290, it is on par with the 780, rather than the 770.
Pretty much any aftermarket cooler fixed the temps, I would prefer a sapphire card, but MSI or Gigabyte are good secondary options.

prit87 · Jul 19, 2014

290 is faster and better that the 770 ....but its hotter and has a higher tdp gtx 770 tdp 230 watt and 290 -300watt

DroneDroneDrone · Jul 19, 2014

The r9 290 is better. It will max out all, if not most games. Only reason you'd get the 770 is if you don't have enough watts for the r9 290. Otherwise get the 290. R9 280x competes with the 770 the r9 290 competes with the 780

Gam3r01 · Jul 19, 2014

DroneDroneDrone :

FRIEND

grimmjow660 · Jul 19, 2014

How much hotter does the 290 get?

DroneDroneDrone · Jul 19, 2014

I think the 290 goes somewhere around 80c. You'll be fine if your case has good cooling

prit87 · Jul 19, 2014

but its okk you should not worry about the heat the amd cards are made like that and handle heat...
r9 290 max temp at furmark test 94c and 770 max at 81c .... if the temps seems too much for you then u can install a side intake fan in your case which directly blows cold air into your gpu and make it few deg cooler..
just dont buy the reference version of the card ..

Gam3r01 · Jul 19, 2014

As above, the 290 does get hotter, but they are designed to take said heat
~81C vs ~90C

grimmjow660 · Jul 19, 2014

How good are the sapphire cards compared to gigabyte or msi for the r9 290?
What about the drivers?

DroneDroneDrone · Jul 19, 2014

They perform similarly. Sapphire is a bit better however. Get vapor-x or tri of you're going with sapphire. The difference isn't that huge as I stated so either will do fine

stunningvisualneeds · Jul 19, 2014

Pick a good aftermarket r9 290 solution and you're all good to go. It's just the reference amd cooler is so bad it shouldnt exist. Sapphire r9 290 tri-x or vapor-x. Or asus r9 290 directcu ii. Or Powercolor r9 290 pcs+. Or HIS r9 290 iceqx2. Xfx and gigabyte ones have heat issues.
You gotta invest just a bit more and get mindblowing performance

6R1M01R3 · Jul 19, 2014

Either of these are a safe bet:

Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 290 4GB TWIN FROZR Video Card ($369.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $369.99
Video Card: Asus Radeon R9 290 4GB DirectCU II Video Card ($379.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $379.99

MSI and Asus have the better performance and cooling solutions in my opinion.

grimmjow660 · Jul 19, 2014

How good are the Amd drivers? I hear the 290 gets a lot of blackscreens.

DroneDroneDrone · Jul 19, 2014

nVidia's better at providing you with good drivers, AMD is not that bad though

DroneDroneDrone · Jul 19, 2014

Gam3r01 :

Was on mobile so I didn't see your profile pic so I did not know why yo usaid friend. On pc now and see it.

<3 Carbot

prit87 · Jul 19, 2014

previous amd drivers used to have some problems so people loose trust on them but current drivers are not like that they are really good but if u compare it to nvidia i will give nvidia the upper hand .....and the black screen problems u find mostly because of faulty card or inadequate psu and not because of drivers..

Gam3r01 · Jul 19, 2014

Most of the black screens were caused by reference cards and some faulty hardware, cards included. The drivers are still not as good as nvidia, but they arent bad anymore, persay.

Fananagram · Jul 19, 2014

As a person who prefers Nvidia (most of the time) yet believes the roll of AMD is important I would say that the 290 is the more powerful card overall.

Currently the Premo (yet not stupidly priced) GTX 770 is the EVGA dual ACX Superclocked 2GB which runs about the same price as a low-end 290. The benefits of the 770 in this case would be the 3 Year Warranty that isn't voided if you overclock, swap out the cooler, or do some light tinkering (EVGA only) and it's amazing reliability on a well tested platform (GK104, formerly the GTX 680 heavily modified).

Look up your favourite games and compare benchmarks from the two on the 770 and 290, just keep in mind from most benchmarks I've seen the 770 is infinitely better at getting much cleaner frame time results which gives you a very noticeable smooth experience. In contrast to this there are a lot of games that the 290 and 290x have notorious 30 FPS or bad frame times in. Like I said research on what games you plan to be playing and make your purchase based off that.

While the 290 is a fine card DO NOT purchase it with it's stock cooler. It is quite possibly the worst stock cooler shipped with a high-end card that AMD have ever put out. Look up what the card sounds like at 50%, and 100% fan speeds.

Sources: 2 builds for clients using 770 and hand-overclocking it, 1 build for a client using stock cooler 290 (we bought the 290 right when it came out, for her, she came back a week later and said she didn't care how much it would cost she needed an aftermarket cooler ASAP).

It literally sounds like a hairdryer at full blast inside of your computer, I'm not over exaggerating.

marooner · Jul 19, 2014

Get the Sapphire Tri-X R9 290. It is far superior to any GTX 770 (or any R9 290, in that case).

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