- Jul 23, 2014
- 5
- 0
- 4,510
Greetings to all viewing. This is my first post ever here at Tom's Hardware, and I apologise in advance for being a little wordy. I wanted to be specific in order to maximise my chances of great feedback! Thank you for reading, and even more thanks for great replies in advance!
I'll have a budget of 800 or so bucks specifically for my video card, although with the value for money that the R9 290x offers I am seriously considering buying that card, even though I am an NVidia fanboy. After this card I will be buying a psu, as the current one I have will not be sufficient. I will be buying the card that this thread suggests in approximately 2 weeks, and the psu I will purchase within a few weeks of that and I am aware I cannot run the new graphics card until i purchase the higher watt psu.
I'll be using the card primarily for Divinity: Original Sin and FFXIV, as well as a home theatre solution in conjunction with the speakers and television I own, and I hope to run graphically intense games further into the future as well with this particular upgrade. I currently own a Samsung Television and Monitor, which will both run at 1920x1080 resolution, in dual-display mode so that I multi-task with messaging and television watching using a TV-Tuner card while I game. I currently can do this, although I need to limit the frame rate of FFXIV and other games, using EVGA Precision-X software so that the temperature of the GPU doesn't go too high. It normally runs at 85 degrees celcius as the highest I'm comfortabe with in this mode, and normally during peak performance loads runs around 80, not overclocked. I find that 50fps keeps the temperature at an acceptable level for the gaming that I do in FFXIV.
For the life of me I don't know my current psu, however, it is a stock 500w one that came with a thermaltake case, and i currently have an NVidia GeForce 560 Ti, which I believe was a Twin Frozr model, so while I am working I thought that it was time for an upgrade.
I am planning to buy from PC Casegear in Australia this particular psu:
Seasonic XP-760 Platinum 760W Power Supply V2
I believe that the platinum rating will assist power bills and efficiency, and I have read that 600W is theoretically enough I would like to have a little more juice available just in case, although I would consider another psu if recommended. Newegg in Australia only currently sells one brand of psu, and I believe that Seasonic is a more reliable brand (although more expensive additionally) than the only one offered in Australia, so I needed to shop elsewhere. I won't be overclocking nor using SLI or crossfire, as I would prefer a single gpu to multiple, and I think that these particular gpu's I'm considering wouldn't really need to be overclocked to meet my needs.
My System Specs are as follows:
Samsung Series 6 40 inch H6400 3D LEDTV.
Samsung Series 3 24 inch monitor.
I run a Intel Core i7-2600K @ 3.4GHz (factory overclocked Sandy Bridge) on an:
ASUS P8Z68 Deluxe/Gen3 with 16MB of Corsair Vengenance (4x4GB) CMZ16GX3M4A1600C9
I use an inexpensive ThermalTake case, however it has excellent ventillation, 4 fans, and 2 fans on a CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler for the CPU.
I used to just run a stock intel fan and 2 fans in the system, and it used to suffer overheating issues on occasion, forcing me to lower the speed of the CPU. With the extra fans it doesn't seem to and the CoolerMaster installed.
My preferred website for parts is Newegg.com however PCCaseGear has a better alternative for the R9 290x model that I was looking at.
The 2 cards that I am putting side by side are the:
ASUS DirectCU II GTX780TI-DC2OC-3GD5 GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB 384-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card at newegg.com
and the:
ASUS Radeon R9 290X DirectCU II OC 4GB at pccasegear.com
I am also an asus fanboy so both of these models are asus versions, however I am open to alternatives. The 780 gtx ti is AU$741.00, and the R9 290x is listed at AU$629.00, reduced from AU$725.00.
In my purchase I am considering performance, price, operating temperature, operating noise, and the quality of the parts as my purchasing motives.
I have done as much research as I can to make an informed decision without needing to make a post, however the amount of variables and contention made me realise that hopefully a post would be appropriate for me and this is a great opportunity to receive some assistance in my decision.
Hopefully my case has the cooling it needs for the card, I really think it should be ok, until I upgrade a few things in November. I have a temperature monitor, and the highest it ever reached was 58 degrees celcius inside the case, and that was in very hot days during Australia's peak temperatures in summer. The CPU was ok, however this is why operating temperature is a consideration for me. During winter it's ok, right now it's only 21 degrees inside the case.
So basically to cut that long story short, which is the better upgrade considering my system specs, the 290x or the 780gtx ti?
Thank you again for reading this post, and the consideration given in your answers.
stevo-sonic.
I'll have a budget of 800 or so bucks specifically for my video card, although with the value for money that the R9 290x offers I am seriously considering buying that card, even though I am an NVidia fanboy. After this card I will be buying a psu, as the current one I have will not be sufficient. I will be buying the card that this thread suggests in approximately 2 weeks, and the psu I will purchase within a few weeks of that and I am aware I cannot run the new graphics card until i purchase the higher watt psu.
I'll be using the card primarily for Divinity: Original Sin and FFXIV, as well as a home theatre solution in conjunction with the speakers and television I own, and I hope to run graphically intense games further into the future as well with this particular upgrade. I currently own a Samsung Television and Monitor, which will both run at 1920x1080 resolution, in dual-display mode so that I multi-task with messaging and television watching using a TV-Tuner card while I game. I currently can do this, although I need to limit the frame rate of FFXIV and other games, using EVGA Precision-X software so that the temperature of the GPU doesn't go too high. It normally runs at 85 degrees celcius as the highest I'm comfortabe with in this mode, and normally during peak performance loads runs around 80, not overclocked. I find that 50fps keeps the temperature at an acceptable level for the gaming that I do in FFXIV.
For the life of me I don't know my current psu, however, it is a stock 500w one that came with a thermaltake case, and i currently have an NVidia GeForce 560 Ti, which I believe was a Twin Frozr model, so while I am working I thought that it was time for an upgrade.
I am planning to buy from PC Casegear in Australia this particular psu:
Seasonic XP-760 Platinum 760W Power Supply V2
I believe that the platinum rating will assist power bills and efficiency, and I have read that 600W is theoretically enough I would like to have a little more juice available just in case, although I would consider another psu if recommended. Newegg in Australia only currently sells one brand of psu, and I believe that Seasonic is a more reliable brand (although more expensive additionally) than the only one offered in Australia, so I needed to shop elsewhere. I won't be overclocking nor using SLI or crossfire, as I would prefer a single gpu to multiple, and I think that these particular gpu's I'm considering wouldn't really need to be overclocked to meet my needs.
My System Specs are as follows:
Samsung Series 6 40 inch H6400 3D LEDTV.
Samsung Series 3 24 inch monitor.
I run a Intel Core i7-2600K @ 3.4GHz (factory overclocked Sandy Bridge) on an:
ASUS P8Z68 Deluxe/Gen3 with 16MB of Corsair Vengenance (4x4GB) CMZ16GX3M4A1600C9
I use an inexpensive ThermalTake case, however it has excellent ventillation, 4 fans, and 2 fans on a CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler for the CPU.
I used to just run a stock intel fan and 2 fans in the system, and it used to suffer overheating issues on occasion, forcing me to lower the speed of the CPU. With the extra fans it doesn't seem to and the CoolerMaster installed.
My preferred website for parts is Newegg.com however PCCaseGear has a better alternative for the R9 290x model that I was looking at.
The 2 cards that I am putting side by side are the:
ASUS DirectCU II GTX780TI-DC2OC-3GD5 GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB 384-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card at newegg.com
and the:
ASUS Radeon R9 290X DirectCU II OC 4GB at pccasegear.com
I am also an asus fanboy so both of these models are asus versions, however I am open to alternatives. The 780 gtx ti is AU$741.00, and the R9 290x is listed at AU$629.00, reduced from AU$725.00.
In my purchase I am considering performance, price, operating temperature, operating noise, and the quality of the parts as my purchasing motives.
I have done as much research as I can to make an informed decision without needing to make a post, however the amount of variables and contention made me realise that hopefully a post would be appropriate for me and this is a great opportunity to receive some assistance in my decision.
Hopefully my case has the cooling it needs for the card, I really think it should be ok, until I upgrade a few things in November. I have a temperature monitor, and the highest it ever reached was 58 degrees celcius inside the case, and that was in very hot days during Australia's peak temperatures in summer. The CPU was ok, however this is why operating temperature is a consideration for me. During winter it's ok, right now it's only 21 degrees inside the case.
So basically to cut that long story short, which is the better upgrade considering my system specs, the 290x or the 780gtx ti?
Thank you again for reading this post, and the consideration given in your answers.
stevo-sonic.
you'll game on one display EXCLUSIVELY, leaving the other for other tasks.
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