7990 or 690

[tomdabomb]

Hi everyone,
ive been saving for a while to do a beastly mini itx system and now i have the money i dont know which graphics card to go for. i know that the gtx 690 performs a touch better than the 7990 although the 7990 comes with 8 games. I'm completely on the fence as to which one to buy. I love physX and the 690's low tdp nearly as much as I would like 8 games. I also dont know how wise it would be spending my precious 1k on a gpu thats already 1 year old.
Any advice would be appreciated.
PS sorry for bad grammar, im writing this on my phone.

 

[jk47]

Its a very close call...
Over the past few years Nvidia has blown AMD out of the water for Drivers, SLI support, etc. which to me makes a big difference. i mean what's the point in powerful hardware if it's software doesn't let you utilise it?

However, the past few months I've noticed a big shift : many AMD optimized titles, that have had issues with Nvidia cards on release. First ones that come to mind are Tomb Raider and Crysis 3.

Also the free games program is pretty cool. It appears to be a strong push by AMD for market share.

In terms of hardware itself, too close to call

 

[tomdabomb]

Have you thought about 670 SLI? By far the better option if you have the motherboard space for it...

As I stated, I am doing a mini itx build. Mini itx motherboards only have 1 expansion slot.

 

[Guest]

I honestly would crossfire 2 7970s. It cost less and it would be slightly better than a single 7990. But again those 8 games are a VERY attractive offer. I played on Nvidia cards for most of my life, and switching to AMD always made me nervous because i too enjoyed PhysX.
But in reality, there's only a hand full of games that you can actually tell the difference (i.e. Batman: AC) and in most cases, like in the instance of Borderlands 2, you can go into the game's files and actually turn on physX for AMD cards. At the end of the day, it's really just a marketing stunt to get an upper hand on AMD. It's kind of like how you can't go onto "Google Maps" on a Windows phone, they block it just to make you go to the other product.

 

[bystander]

It is a tough call.

The mini ATX case made me choose Titan, because it exhausts all the heat out the back. The 690 exhausts some of the heat into the case, it also has less VRAM, which depending on what monitor setup you have, could be an issue in the near future. The 7990 has poor CF drivers atm, and dumps all heat into the case.

 

[Anik8]

May want to wait a month to see how the Titan refreshes come out, though.

Don't think there'll be a new titan,however the titan le that was to come out has been named 780 and has much inferior specs.
I second on this,the titan will be the best option for such a build.

 

[Guest]

ah sorry, didn't know that. If you don't have any of those games though, I think it would be worth it. Far Cry 3 and Bioshock Infinite are some of my favourite titles in the past 2 years. Very good single player games. I bet Crysis 3 would look very fine on that card as well

 

[17seconds]

I guess you don't read reviews before contemplating dropping $1000 on a video card setup? The 7990 shouldn't even be in consideration. You can start with its size, too large for a mini-ITX system; then go on to the well-researched microstuttering and frame latency issues; then bring in the lack of game support for the multiple games that reviewers could not get it to run; then as icing on the cake put in the annoying coil whine noise noted in nearly every review. I guess the game bundle is nice.

On the other hand, the Titan has absolutely none of that, and is ideal for a mini-ITX system (I voted GTX 690 before reading that part). It puts out less heat, uses less power, is very quiet, and is the smallest card of the options.

 

[17seconds]

Sorry to go sideways, but what's the difference between mini-ITX, micro-ITX, and mini-ATX, ATX?

 

[tomdabomb]

I've been searching around to see how much i could get a titan for, and the cheapest i could find was 1190, as appose to the 690 at 1099. I live in Australia and i can't even find the 7990 in an retailers or e-tailers. I would assume they'd be in by the end of the next week.
Would the extra $90 on the titan be worth it?

 

[17seconds]

I've been searching around to see how much i could get a titan for, and the cheapest i could find was 1190, as appose to the 690 at 1099. I live in Australia and i can't even find the 7990 in an retailers or e-tailers. I would assume they'd be in by the end of the next week.
Would the extra $90 on the titan be worth it?

No, get the GTX 690.
The 7990 was a paper launch, meaning they won't be in stores for a couple weeks.

 

[tomdabomb]

I've been searching around to see how much i could get a titan for, and the cheapest i could find was 1190, as appose to the 690 at 1099. I live in Australia and i can't even find the 7990 in an retailers or e-tailers. I would assume they'd be in by the end of the next week.
Would the extra $90 on the titan be worth it?

No, get the GTX 690.
The 7990 was a paper launch, meaning they won't be in stores for a couple weeks.

No wonder i couldn't find any of them anywhere...