R9 290

[DoubleY]

<snip>

No, memory doesn't scale when in SLI.

Two 2gb 770's are better than one 780 6gb (unless you're playing at stupid resolutions)

 

God, this is ridiculous.

 

I'm sorry bro but you just sound like a huge fanboy. the R9 290 is a great card, despite it's reference cooler, heat & power consumption. It's still a beast, and you can't do much about that. I don't understand why you keep bashing on the card just because you're an nvidia fan ? Not everybody praises the 780 you know. Just deal with it.

 

OP came here to ask about the 290, and you've turned this thread to a 290 vs 780 never-ending argument. If it wasn't for the miners, i wouldn't be surprised to see more 290's in people's rigs. The main reason people went for 780's is because R9 series were too pricy. 

 

I'm a 290 owner and here is what i think :

 

• Shadowplay ? I actually enjoy playing my games rather than record them. annd -cough- fraps -cough-
• PhysX ? Lol how many games take advantage of that, 3 ?
• 1440p ? I play at 1440p with a single 290. Why would i SLI two 780's when i can get decent performance out of a single card ?
• Aesthetics ? Dude, it's your opinion, don't generalize. 
• Heat ? Noise ? Watercooling. you know, waterblocks n shit
• Power Consumption ? There are PSU's for that
• Mantle ? Why not. A little competition make things change faster. 
• Trueaudio ? Because some people may want to benefit from their useless monitor's speakers.

 

The only thing i can understand is the CUDA cores for rendering. But then again there is also something called OpenCL.

 

just because you own a 780 doesn't make you better than everyone else, there are other cards out there. Respect people's choices. 

The amount of cancer in your post is unreal.

 

For 1: I'm not a fanboy. In my person rig alone I have had an HD 6670, HD 7970, and an R9 280X. 

And, as you can see by my member title, I'm a Litecoin miner. So in my Litecoin mining experience, I have owned 3 R9 290's (which were loud as all hell and used 1100watts...) 3 R9 280X's, 8 R9 270X's.

 

2: Some people like to record/stream their gameplay for FUN. Besdies, FRAPS is a CPU whore and kills your FPS. Shadowplay doesn't do that. I was able to stream Borderlands 2 at 720/60p with no performance hit. Fraps doesn't even allow for livestreaming functions. And if it did, it would suck ass because it's uncompressed 

 

3: PhysX look nice and is eye candy. It's just like another graphical setting to make games look nicer

 

4: I doubt you get "decent" performance out of a single 290 at 1440p. That thing probably barely breaks 60fps in BF4 

 

5: Most people would agree reference 700 series cards look nice

 

6: Waterblocks n shit? You know, not everyone wants to spend close to $1k on a custom loop just so their R9 290 doesn't sound like a vacuum cleaner.

 

7: Yea, PSU's do exist. But the lower wattage the cheaper. And it's more efficient if you only use about 50% of your PSU's power 

 

8: I wasn't dissing Mantle... too badly. It's the same argument that you had for PhysX "lol how many games take advantage of that, 1?"

 

9: If you have a $400 GPU and monitor speakers, you have more things to worry about

[Guest Generallee]

 

 

4: I doubt you get "decent" performance out of a single 290 at 1440p. That thing probably barely breaks 60fps in BF4 

 

5: Most people would agree reference 700 series cards look nice

 

6: Waterblocks n shit? You know, not everyone wants to spend close to $1k on a custom loop just so their R9 290 doesn't sound like a vacuum cleaner.

 

7: Yea, PSU's do exist. But the lower wattage the cheaper. And it's more efficient if you only use about 50% of your PSU's power 

 

 

I'll just bother quoting this since the rest is absolutely non sense

 

1) Refer to the chart i posted before

 

2) Most people doesn't mean everyone

 

3) Not all the WC solutions cost 1K$

 

4) Every decent PSU out there can easily handle a 290

 

And then again, respect other people's choices. This argument is over, OP wanted some opinions about the best 290's, not your opinion about how a 780 is better. There are 290 vs 780 posts for that.

 

Peace man

[DoubleY]

I'll just bother quoting this since the rest is absolutely non sense

 

1) Refer to the chart i posted before

 

2) Most people doesn't mean everyone

 

3) Not all the WC solutions cost 1K$

 

4) Every decent PSU out there can easily handle a 290

 

And then again, respect other people's choices. This argument is over, OP wanted some opinions about the best 290's, not your opinion about how a 780 is better. There are 290 vs 780 posts for that.

 

Peace man

It was originally meant has a joke. Hence the ":p" when I said EVGA 780. Obviously some people don't know what emoticons are for

[Guest Generallee]

It was originally meant has a joke. Hence the ":p" when I said EVGA 780. Obviously some people don't know what emoticons are for

 

Wonderful

[TheSLSAMG]

Well, this thread is a complete fuck up. Seeing as I even bothered to comment, I will tell you where I stand.

 

I for the most part agree with @Generallee, but I object to some of his points:

 

• Shadowplay ? I actually enjoy playing my games rather than record them. annd -cough- fraps -cough-
• PhysX ? Lol how many games take advantage of that, 3 ?
• 1440p ? I play at 1440p with a single 290. Why would i SLI two 780's when i can get decent performance out of a single card ?
• Aesthetics ? Dude, it's your opinion, don't generalize. 
• Heat ? Noise ? Watercooling. you know, waterblocks n shit
• Power Consumption ? There are PSU's for that
• Mantle ? Why not. A little competition make things change faster. 
• Trueaudio ? Because some people may want to benefit from their useless monitor's speakers.

• ShadowPlay. It lets you take a substantially lower performance hit to record media, unlike Fraps, which is highly inefficient.
• Heat/Noise - Not everyone has the money for watercooling, nor do some people have the case capacity. And a lot (but not all) of the R9 290/R9 290X aftermarket coolers have proven to be unimpressive.

 

And you know what? I am an Nvidia fanboy, but would you take from my comment that I was if I didn't tell you? Seriously, this type of bashing is completely useless. If anything, some people have proven to be too immature to be able to integrate into components of society.

[Glenwing]

Stop the argument now.  Create another thread for it if you want.

[nj4ck]

For one, SLI doesn't have issues anymore (or at least nothing game-breaking). Maybe when Fermi was cool SLI had issues but not anymore.

 

Nvidia reference coolers are a lot better than AMD's, and I know plenty of people who got reference 780's just for the aesthetics. 

 

People usually buy dual graphics for higher resolutions. @Lays and @MegaDave91 both have dual 780's for 1440p. That's what you NEED if you want to play 1440p at reasonable settings and frame rates.

 

Besides, Nvidia has better features for their cards;

PhysX (which doesn't make a huge difference,  but at least they have it) ShadowPlay which is HUGE. You can use ShadoPlay features in OBS thanks to Nvidia showing proper ways to use the H.264 encoder on board. GSync is huge.

 

What does AMD have?

Mantle...

And TrueAudio 

 

[DoubleY]

Except I'm not a fanboy. I've owned nearly 15 AMD cards

[nosirrah123]

I like the reference one otherwise I would choose one with Gigabyte's Windforce

wat

[nj4ck]

Except I'm not a fanboy. I've owned nearly 15 AMD cards

Good for you

 

SLI doesn't have issues anymore

 

the 4,690,000 search results when googling "780 SLI problems" beg to differ. Both SLI and Crossfire are, and probably always will be, full of problems. Ranging from microstutter through driver issues to all the games that simply don't support multi-GPUs.

 

Nvidia reference coolers are a lot better than AMD's

 

Comparing cards by their reference coolers isn't a great comparison. The R9 290 is held back in performance by the reference cooler, a problem which can be easily solved by getting one of the partner cards. The fact that the Nvidia reference cooler is better doesn't make the card itself better.

 

@ Lays and @MegaDave91 both have dual 780's for 1440p.

 

...so? You listed two users who use 780s for 1440p, where's the point? I'm pretty sure I could find you several users who use R9 290s for 1440p, would that be a huge selling point for the R9 290, then?

 

 

That's what you NEED if you want to play 1440p at reasonable settings and frame rates.

 

Erhm... I'm pretty sure there are more than one options you could go with to run 1440p.

 

 

Besides, Nvidia has better features for their cards;

PhysX (which doesn't make a huge difference,  but at least they have it)

 

you just admitted that it doesn't make a huge difference. So how does it make the Nvidia card in some way superior to the AMD one? I could just as easily say  "AMD has True Audio, which doesn't make a huge difference, but at least they have it."

 

 

ShadowPlay which is HUGE. You can use ShadoPlay features in OBS thanks to Nvidia showing proper ways to use the H.264 encoder on board. GSync is huge

 

Many people don't use features such as shadowplay, but yes, it is nice. I just wouldn't call it "HUGE". Huge would be GSync if it supported affordable and available monitors, but wait, it doesn't. Just like Mantle would be huge if it where supported by all games and if it where less buggy, but wait, it isn't. Both those features could potentially become huge in the future and while they are entirely different technologies, they could potentially become major selling points in the future for both Nvidia and AMD. Who knows.

 

 

I guess the bottom line here is that AMD and Nvidia are both great options, depending on the features every individual customer values the most, on the prices, and finally on availability. Here in germany the R9 290 with a good cooler costs ~€70 less than a 780 and delivers more fps, so it was a no-brainer for me. For you, the situation might be entirely different.

 

Now exuse me while I try to repair my fanboy meter

[DoubleY]

 

the 4,690,000 search results when googling "780 SLI problems" beg to differ. Both SLI and Crossfire are, and probably always will be, full of problems. Ranging from microstutter through driver issues to all the games that simply don't support multi-GPUs.

 

The 7,410,000 results that show up when you search "no SLI issues" beg to differ 

 

 

...so? You listed two users who use 780s for 1440p, where's the point? I'm pretty sure I could find you several users who use R9 290s for 1440p, would that be a huge selling point for the R9 290, then?

The amount of people who have 780 SLI and 290 xFire is huge... way more people have 780's.

 

 

 

What a coincidence that all the newbies are the ones calling me a fanboy opposed to looking at the facts...

[LOST TALE]

Can I insert a little troll face? Im sorry.

 

So this is pretty much done unless someone comes with meaningfull graphs comparing different r9 290 non reference options?

[nj4ck]

The 7,410,000 results that show up when you search "no SLI issues" beg to differ 

 

Come on, dude. You're a member with almost 4000 posts here, do I really need to explain to you how a google search works? 

 

The amount of people who have 780 SLI and 290 xFire is huge... way more people have 780's.

 

That may be because the 780 is out a great deal longer than the R9 290 and hasn't seen ridiculous pricing due to bitcoin mining in the US. Again, not a point. More people have toyotas than people have volkswagens, doesn't make the toyota a better car.

 

 

And believe me, I am trying hard to look at the facts. It's just that all the facts you are presenting me are completely unrelated to determining which of these cards is the better choice.

[DoubleY]

Come on, dude. You're a member with almost 4000 posts here, do I really need to explain to you how a google search works? 

You brought it up...

[nj4ck]

You brought it up...

Of course I did. I was referring to the fact that adding a "no" to "780 SLI Problems"  won't make google search for "no sli problems" as in "my 780 sli works fine", it will rather just make it search for entries about 780 sli problems with the word "no" in them. Kinda sad that I, the "newbie", need to be explaining this to you, don't you think.

[nj4ck]

Stop the argument now.  Create another thread for it if you want.

oops sorry, didn't see your post. :wacko:

[Recon-UK]

Lol dx11 nvidia fermi gtx 400 series. R9 290 hotter and louder, nv crowd soon turn sour.ex 480 sli owner. Jokers, jokers everywhere

[TheNinjaNextDor]

The EVGA one

If only...

[Lays]

@nj4ck   Those results may be, but I know atleast 5 people that come on my teamspeak everyday from LTT that have SLI/xfire and have never had a single issue with it.

 

I have my cards for an entire year now, and never ran into an SLI related issue.     I honestly think half the issues people think they have with SLI is another issue, like beta drivers, or having a bad rail on a PSU or something along the lines of that.

[GamerDude]

Except I'm not a fanboy. I've owned nearly 15 AMD cards

So what? From your post you obviously are a fanboy. If you like nVidia cards and think they are cool, it's fine, no need to put down the 'enemy', I don't get peeps like you. You obviously feel a need to talk smack about AMD while praising nVidia to high heaven. Can't you like one w/o feeling the need to talk down about the other? I have AMD and nVidia GPU's, I prefer AMD but do you hear me talking smack and putting down nVidia cards? Sure, they have nice features, but features that I don't need, only reason why I had gotten the pair of GTX670 is for S3D gaming, a feature nVidia's better at than AMD.

 

For those talking about CF issues also neglected to mention that they may involve AMD Beta drivers, just like nVidia has issues with their drivers as well. I run both CF and SLi, I can honestly say both have issues, but minor issues to me....nothing game breaking even with those Beta drivers I've installed. I'm on Cat 14.4 for my AMD GPU's, 337.50 for my SLi rig.....so far, both are good. AMD CF drivers, and their drivers in general, have come a long way....the early days were problematic at best, recall having a bad time with driver installs for my 2x HD2900XT's.....almost resulted in me bashing my head against the wall in abject frustration.

 

With all the 3rd party cooled R9 290 series cards, let's not harp on heat anymore. To run two such cards in CF mode in a system, obviously airflow within the case is a huge factor, even for nVidia cards, so obviously those who have dual high end AMD/nV cards would have issues with heat if airflow is insufficient.

 

For the one who insists on derailing the thread, please move on, OP/TS asks about the R9 290 specifically, no need to bring in your AMD hatred into this thread.

[DoubleY]

So what? From your post you obviously are a fanboy. If you like nVidia cards and think they are cool, it's fine, no need to put down the 'enemy', I don't get peeps like you. You obviously feel a need to talk smack about AMD while praising nVidia to high heaven. Can't you like one w/o feeling the need to talk down about the other? I have AMD and nVidia GPU's, I prefer AMD but do you hear me talking smack and putting down nVidia cards? Sure, they have nice features, but features that I don't need, only reason why I had gotten the pair of GTX670 is for S3D gaming, a feature nVidia's better at than AMD.

 

For those talking about CF issues also neglected to mention that they may involve AMD Beta drivers, just like nVidia has issues with their drivers as well. I run both CF and SLi, I can honestly say both have issues, but minor issues to me....nothing game breaking even with those Beta drivers I've installed. I'm on Cat 14.4 for my AMD GPU's, 337.50 for my SLi rig.....so far, both are good. AMD CF drivers, and their drivers in general, have come a long way....the early days were problematic at best, recall having a bad time with driver installs for my 2x HD2900XT's.....almost resulted in me bashing my head against the wall in abject frustration.

 

With all the 3rd party cooled R9 290 series cards, let's not harp on heat anymore. To run two such cards in CF mode in a system, obviously airflow within the case is a huge factor, even for nVidia cards, so obviously those who have dual high end AMD/nV cards would have issues with heat if airflow is insufficient.

 

For the one who insists on derailing the thread, please move on, OP/TS asks about the R9 290 specifically, no need to bring in your AMD hatred into this thread.

How does preferring a product make me a fanboy? I don't get your logic. I don't feel a need to talk down to AMD. Their cards are hot. It's a fact, not an opinion. GTX 4xx and 5xx series were hot cards. That's also not an opinion, but a fact. I am purely comparing current gen Nvidia cards to current gen AMD cards. 

 

I never mentioned anything about AMD having bad drivers, nor anything about Nvidia having better drivers. 

 

I can still harp on heat all I want. Just because they have different coolers doesn't change the fact that they require 300 watts to do what a GTX 780 can do at 250-275 watts. Even when watercooled, I've seen 290X's get up to 50c. That is ridiculous for water cooling. There is still plenty of room to complain about the thermals of each card.

 

In my OP, I said that a MSI lightning 290 was the best 290(x). Then as a joke at the end of my post I added "Or the one that says EVGA GTA 780 Classified :p" it was meant as a joke. Not to be taken practically.  

[GamerDude]

So, do we have to subscribe to your beliefs about heat? Knowing the Hawaii GPUs run hot, 50C under water cooling is acceptable, we don't have to share your particular set of parameters as to what constitute good temps, do we? I am perfectly content at 50C for my water cooled R9 290X....you obviously do not think so, but do I have to share your personal opinion?

Like I had said my nephew's Asus DCU II R9 290X hits about 70C after more than an hour of BF4, don't know about you but that is prfectly fine temps for the R9 290 series. AMD cards run hotter, especially the R9 290's, but they do have great performance and great value, like I had said, my cards cost about the same as two regular GTX780, and I game at 5760x1200, the R9 290/290X is the card for me with their wider memory interface and VRAM.

Anyway, please put me on your ignore list if you find my opinion doesn't jell with yours, I have put you on mine after this post. Tired of such pointless debates...so damn typical, when someone ask about a specific AMD card, someone always has to barge in and talk smack about AMD and recommending an nVidia card while he/she/they were at it.

[nj4ck]

@nj4ck   Those results may be, but I know atleast 5 people that come on my teamspeak everyday from LTT that have SLI/xfire and have never had a single issue with it.

 

I have my cards for an entire year now, and never ran into an SLI related issue.     I honestly think half the issues people think they have with SLI is another issue, like beta drivers, or having a bad rail on a PSU or something along the lines of that.

That may also be because many people don't see microstuttering as well as others do. And if the only games you play are the "big ones" (battlefield, crysis, far cry and so on) I'm sure you'll be fine.

[Sonefiler]

How does preferring a product make me a fanboy? I don't get your logic. I don't feel a need to talk down to AMD. Their cards are hot. It's a fact, not an opinion. GTX 4xx and 5xx series were hot cards. That's also not an opinion, but a fact. I am purely comparing current gen Nvidia cards to current gen AMD cards.

I never mentioned anything about AMD having bad drivers, nor anything about Nvidia having better drivers.

I can still harp on heat all I want. Just because they have different coolers doesn't change the fact that they require 300 watts to do what a GTX 780 can do at 250-275 watts. Even when watercooled, I've seen 290X's get up to 50c. That is ridiculous for water cooling. There is still plenty of room to complain about the thermals of each card.

In my OP, I said that a MSI lightning 290 was the best 290(x). Then as a joke at the end of my post I added "Or the one that says EVGA GTA 780 Classified :p" it was meant as a joke. Not to be taken practically.

Dude, seriously, can you just shut the fuck up? Almost everything you have said is biased, untrue, or completely blown out of proportion. Your arguments have about as many holes as Swiss cheese, and at this point you are probably arguing for the sake of being right. You're being real fucking obnoxious derailing a thread from a user who ASKED FOR SUGGESTIONS FOR THE R 9 2 9 0.

[DoubleY]

Dude, seriously, can you just shut the fuck up? Almost everything you have said is biased, untrue, or completely blown out of proportion. Your arguments have about as many holes as Swiss cheese, and at this point you are probably arguing for the sake of being right. You're being real fucking obnoxious derailing a thread from a user who ASKED FOR SUGGESTIONS FOR THE R 9 2 9 0.

Sounds more like a personal issue.