Debating between a used R9 290, a new GTX 780, or waiting for later

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OUberLord

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Jun 6, 2008
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Hello,

I was hoping to get some opinions on whether or not to get a new video card. I currently run a GTX 660, and it seems like even at 1080p some games can struggle in performance. As such, I am debating getting a new card.

A coworker used some R9 290's for Bitcoin mining, and is now looking to sell them. I suspect that I could offer him $200. However, the obvious downside is that it was a card used for Bitcoin mining.

On the other hand, for another ~$80 I could get a GTX 780, which would be a new card out of the box, but there's the memory debacle that I haven't followed enough to know if it matters.

On the metaphorical third hand, I'm looking forward to the Oculus Rift, and I don't know that I'd want to get a card now only to find that it isn't powerful enough to meet the Rift's recommended requirements a year or so from now.

Thoughts?
 
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JackNaylorPE
Resolution would help....

At up to 2560 x 1600, the 780 overclocked beats the 290x overclocked while being quieter, running cooler and using less power.

There is no memory debacle in this discussion. Many claimed that because some games could "allocate" more than 2 GB of RAM that somehow having 4 GB would be better and so bought 4 GB 970s. No article showing such has ever been published to my knowledge and his one says the opposite.

http://alienbabeltech.com/main/gtx-770-4gb-vs-2gb-tested/3/

There isn’t a lot of difference between the cards at 1920×1080 or at 2560×1600. We only start to see minimal differences at 5760×1080, and even so, there is rarely a frame or two difference. If we start to add even more AA, in most...
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OUberLord

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Jun 6, 2008
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You're right; I got my wires crossed. I'd also previously been thinking about the 970, and somehow got the two confused. My gut was to avoid the used cards, so I'm glad to hear you say the same.

Now though, any thoughts between the 780 and the 970? The price difference between the two is tiny so I'd rather not kick myself down the road for not spending $40 more, but with the 970's memory concern (assuming how much merit it holds) I also don't want to buy into a problematic card.
 
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JackNaylorPE

JackNaylorPE

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Resolution would help....

At up to 2560 x 1600, the 780 overclocked beats the 290x overclocked while being quieter, running cooler and using less power.

There is no memory debacle in this discussion. Many claimed that because some games could "allocate" more than 2 GB of RAM that somehow having 4 GB would be better and so bought 4 GB 970s. No article showing such has ever been published to my knowledge and his one says the opposite.

http://alienbabeltech.com/main/gtx-770-4gb-vs-2gb-tested/3/

There isn’t a lot of difference between the cards at 1920×1080 or at 2560×1600. We only start to see minimal differences at 5760×1080, and even so, there is rarely a frame or two difference. If we start to add even more AA, in most cases, the frame rates will drop to unplayable on both cards.

Let’s only look at the games where there is more than a single FPS difference between the two GTX 770s..... This leaves five games out of 30 where a 4GB GTX 770 gives more than a 1 frame per second difference over the 2GB-equipped GTX 770. And one of them, Metro: Last Light still isn’t even quite a single frame difference.

Of those five games, two of them are unplayable at 5760×1080 although in these cases, 4GB GTX 770 SLI would finally make some sense over 2GB GTX 770 SLI. That only leaves Lost Planet 2 and two racing games that gain some advantage by choosing a single GTX 770 4GB card over the single GTX 770 2GB. And in Lost Planet 2, we were able to add even higher anti-aliasing – from 8xAA to CSAA8XQ and to CSAA32X – but the performance difference was greatest with 8xAA.

There is one last thing to note with Max Payne 3: It would not normally allow one to set 4xAA at 5760×1080 with any 2GB card as it claims to require 2750MB. However, when we replaced the 4GB GTX 770 with the 2GB version, the game allowed the setting. And there were no slowdowns, stuttering, nor any performance differences that we could find between the two GTX 770s.
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