980 on sale; acer xb270hu (G-sync) & asus mg279q (free-sync) same price right now in Aus, what should I buy??

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lubey

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Aug 12, 2010
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Please help, I have analysis paralysis and a limited time to act!

Trying to summarise quickly for you guys:

  • ■ So there's a 20% off sale on at Ebay at the moment, meaning I can get a Gigabyte Windforce GTX 980 for $AU 600 from Kogan (normal price $709 from MSY).
    ■ OR a GTX 970 for $400, or a R9 290 for $345.
    ■ This sale is ending tomorrow.
    ■ My current monitor res is 1680x1050, so I want to upgrade to a 1440p one soon (skip 1080p)
    ■ This means I'd want a GTX980, 980 Ti (better value for money according to Tom's), Fury or Fury X to produce decent frame-rates in the near future.
    ■ Fury (X) may end up having better price: performance vs Nvidia where I live, but it's too early to know. Currently Fury X is >$1000.
    ■ To make matters more complicated, choosing the 980 right now locks me into G-sync (obviously) and who knows how future-proof that is.
    ■ Any savings from this graphics card sale would be eroded with G-sync being more expensive than free-sync
    ■ BUT WAIT. The acer xb270hu & asus mg279q (both 1440p IPS 144Hz) are both $999 here right now. Are we just getting ripped off by Asus in Australia?
    ■ I can't buy the monitor off amazon/newegg and I'd prefer to buy locally anyway for ease of warranty.
    ■ In the future, the asus free-sync monitor might come down in price to match US relative pricing, but I can only speculate and have to choose video card right here, right now.

So what should I do? Take the plunge now and get a well priced 980? Or wait for Fury to be released and fury X and freesync prices to stabilise?

PS I know my nehalem CPU in my signature will bottleneck a 980, I'm gonna upgrade this when skylake hits.

 
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renz496
This is just my opinion but as it is using FreeSync monitors will lock you to AMD cards. Yes it is based on open standard but right now there is no ther than AMD actually use the standard. Intel for their part has been quiet about it while it might benefit them the most since they have weaker igpu.

Right now nvidia are confident that their solutions are better than AMD. Just recently they add more feature to GSync like enabling GSync to work on windowed games. And there is no need to do anything on the monitors side. Just need to upgrade the drivers. I don't know if AMD able to do that with current freesync or need new scalar for it.
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lubey

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So I ended up buying the 980, it will arrive in 2 weeks or so. Right now, I think Nvidia + G-sync is the better option for me after weighing up all the info.

So while future free-sync monitors will no doubt be cheaper and ebay will no doubt have more sales in future, who knows when that will be, and I don't want to wait around forever. I speculate that the fury (non-X) will beat the GTX 980 for around the same price when it comes out, but then I wouldn't be able to get it on sale.

I think most Asus parts are just plain overpriced outside the US. For example, the ROG Swift monitor is $50 more expensive than the Acer XB270hu over here, despite having a TN panel type instead of IPS. Asus non-reference video cards are also the most expensive compared to gigabyte, MSI, etc. So that might be why the free-sync MG279Q one is barely any cheaper than the acer G-sync.

And it would have been cool to get a 980Ti or Fury X, but this will still be a massive upgrade over my old ATI HD 5850! No point spending too much either cause after 14nm or whatever node parts come out with HBM everything may change.
 
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renz496

renz496

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Jun 16, 2009
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This is just my opinion but as it is using FreeSync monitors will lock you to AMD cards. Yes it is based on open standard but right now there is no ther than AMD actually use the standard. Intel for their part has been quiet about it while it might benefit them the most since they have weaker igpu.

Right now nvidia are confident that their solutions are better than AMD. Just recently they add more feature to GSync like enabling GSync to work on windowed games. And there is no need to do anything on the monitors side. Just need to upgrade the drivers. I don't know if AMD able to do that with current freesync or need new scalar for it.
 
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