AMD or nVidia cards?

Performance wise, they're just about equal. It'll come down to which manufacturer you buy from (for cooling and pre-OC reasons) and budget. For the cheaper option, go with the r9 290.

Radeon also has Mantle, albeit a new optimization software not yet supported by many games, it could help make your decision.

EDIT: Additional insight- http://www.game-debate.com/gpu/index.php?gid=1859&gid2=880&compare=radeon-r9-290-vs-geforce-gtx-780

That 780 beats a r9 290 in a few ways, yeah. The biggest difference between the two cards for me is the 3gb of VRAM on the 780 vs. the 4gb of the r9 290. That's what made the same decision for me (I use a water cooled r9 290). I can OC to change up any differences in core clock/memory clock, but you can't add more VRAM. haha

From a frequent forum users perspective, AMD cards are a pain in the rear. I NEVER see people with GeForce cards complaining about lag issues in BF4 or Titanfall. I see at least 2-3 threads a day about lag/driver issues with AMD cards. The drivers for Nvidia cards are just...better.

I would take what others are saying into consideration, but just for future reference, SLI won't add up the VRAM of two cards. Two 780's will still give you 3gb VRAM.

That Superclocked version will serve you well. I've been working with EVGA graphics cards for a long time and they've never died on me. And even if they did, EVGA's support team is second to none. They will take good care of you. You will not be disappointed when buying an EVGA product.

Ditto dude. One of my cards is a GTX460 made by EVGA. Thing is a tank.

I have two Asus 780s overclocked.....26% on core / 20% on memory. But if I were to buy today, I'd buy the MSI.





Historically, well thru 5xx, 6xx and 7xx series at least, the SC has stood out among the competition from the big 4 as it was simply a "reference" card with a big cooler. Starting with the 5xx series, Gigabyte, Asus, MSI and others used custom PCBs with beefier multi-phase VRMs which allowed for better overclocking while EVGA stuck with the reference PCB and stock VRM. The 570's with reference PCBs were well known to be easily fry-able and all manufacturers with reference PCBs were plagued with burnt up cards when users tried just moderate OCs. With the 560 Ti.... Asus and Gigabyte had a 7 phase VRM, MSI went w/ 6 .... EVGA had 4

As everyone knows since, nVidia has taken great efforts both legally and physically to prevent adding additional voltage beyond their spec. Now we are seeing some of the best cards go back to the reference design (Asus is non reference / MSI is reference) but nVidia in making this move has since beefed up the reference design VRM which will diminish the difference between cards if this is widely adopted.

As for EVGA's vaunted support..... I fought with them for 18 months, 20 support calls, 5 RMAs where they took the tactic of just trying to tire us out with endless repetition and useless efforts. Evey call began anew as if it was the 1st call I made..... had to go into BIOS and read the RAM voltages, CPU speeds and voltage sand dozens of things that had nothing to do with the problem.

I could understand them doing this the first time but their card simply would never run at the advertised factory overclock. Making us repeat the same steps on each of the 20 calls was designed to frustrate the user into giving up. Each of the 5 RMAs meant a user going w/o his PC for 2 weeks or more. I have had other users experience the same thing to the point where they just got tired and gave up, content to set the card at reference speeds. Getting tired of them blaming everything else in the system, I showed them the system running two Asus cards in SLI at 27% OCs that were destined for another build. They finally sent a next generation "reference card" ..... at least that was able to run at advertised speeds.

I have had good and bad experiences with most vendors ....including an Asus RMA that took 2-1/2 months.... but in 25 years of PC building, this was the worst experience

290 is a good choice, and cheaper, but Nvidia runs cooler.

Msu lightning or the asus platinum

Hit the reviews and reach your own conclusion...

That's the best way since it gives ACTUAL data and not "I bought MSI so they are best otherwise my ego cries "

I prefer EVGA, they have great RMA and support service.
Got my 1000W supernova PSU sent and returned to me in the same week.
Flawless.

I'll be getting a EVGA 760 ACX soon for an SLI in Terraria.
300FPS IS NOT ENUFF

Ummmm.... you have been given a lot of anectotal experience and opinions and been offered numerous reviews. The reviews are pretty consistent and conclusive and they are linked to above. At this point, anything you get is going to be a rehash of the above.

As far as the fanboy comment, I have to admit to an Asus bias as I have pretty much used their MoBos and cards almost exclusively for almost 10 years simply cause they topped the charts. In te < $200 segement for MoBos, I'm now using exclusively MSI as the equivalent asus models can cost $50 - $75 more and their MoBos have aBIOS bug.

With GFX, I steered away from the EVGA series because of bad customer service experiences but more so because while everyone else was using custom PCBs and beefed up VRMs, EVGA SC was a straight reference PCM with stock VRM.... as a result, Asus, MSI's Giga's factory overclocked cards clocked higher. If ya tried to match their performance by raising the voltage using a reference card (this includes the SC) you got fried VRMs. Now nVidia limits what ya can do voltage wise (both physically and legally) so I think you will see a wholesale switch back to the aftermarket cards using the reference PCB from this point out....already started with the 780 Ti.

The way I saw it, based upon the reviews when the 780s first came out, Asus had the best one based upon a consensus in the majority of reviews (links above) and that's why I put 2 in my rig and about 20 or so in other rigs..... But since the retooling, I switched to the MSI card and today I would buy the MSI for my own rig based upon the test results shown above..... best cooler, quietest cooler, best fps overclocked..... the numbers are the numbers. While familiarity is nice, I tend to be basically a "hardware whore" ...... my money goes to the guys with the biggest / best numbers.

In overclocking .... as you can see in the pics above, MSI had the best number
In noise .... as you can see in the links above, MSI had the best number
In overall rating .....as you can see in the pics above, MSI had the best number
In cost .....as you can see on newegg, MSI has consistently offered the best number but alternates sales weeks with off sales weeks ... the sale weeks are $40 - $450 for the 780 and $600 for the 780 Ti .... make sure to buy in the right week

But again, **I** drew those conclusions reading the tests and reviews and the reasoning reflects experiences and factors important to my selection. I have done builds for users where the card selection was "because it was yellow" and "because it was blue".

You might read those reviews and come up with some other aspect that strikes a chord to you and come away with w/ a different conclusion. At this point, if nothing you have heard has "tipped the scales" as yet, I'd suggest reading those links "cover to cover" as we used to say and perhaps doing a web search for a few more.