R9 280x or GTX 770?

[jaffacakes]

Hi, i'm building my self a gaming PC, and I'm not sure between the Asus R9 280x DC2, Asus R9 280x DC2 Top and the Gigabyte GTX 770 2GB version.
My budget is about €270 and I'm buying from QmaxTech, since i live in Italy and it has great pricing.

Thanks in advance,
TheSlimyPig

[ZetZet]

I personally would go 770 because of the Nvidia gimmicks and because mining has died.

[miyabwah]

GTX 770

[Cubit481]

Hi, i'm building my self a gaming PC, and I'm not sure between the Asus R9 280x DC2, Asus R9 280x DC2 Top and the Gigabyte GTX 770 2GB version.

My budget is about €270 and I'm buying from QmaxTech, since i live in Italy and it has great pricing.

Thanks in advance,

TheSlimyPig

For both gaming performance and compute performance, u should get the 770...and why not asus gtx 770...???

[Izaya Orihara]

Same price?  770 http://www.qmaxtech.it/en/nvidia-video-cards/37088-asus-2gb-d5-x-gtx770-dc2oc-r-4716659514930.html

[WyvernAbstracts]

770 for a single monitor and 280 for multi monitors

[Red Harbinger]

gtx 770

[Fluffinator]

GTX 770 for sure.

[austin541]

Gtx 770.

[jaffacakes]

770 for a single monitor and 280 for multi monitors

I havo only one monitor so i'll go for the 770

[Recon-UK]

Whichever one has the better price, you get more stuff with Nvidia currently, if PhysX is something you care about.

[TechFan@ic]

I definitely recommend the Asus DC2 R9 280X over the Gigabyte GTX 770 because the Asus 280X runs significantly quieter than the Gigabyte 770 & the largely because of memory & memory bandwidth disadvantages of the 770.

And before you say 2GB is enough, I want you to check out PCPer's podcast.

In PCPer's testing both the GTX 770 and GTX 760 experienced numerous lag spikes that Ryan described as being "very noticeable" in Bioshock Infinite, both in 1920x1080 and 2560x1440, these lag spikes did not exist with an R9 280X, the conclusion was due to the 770 and 760 running out of memory
This time-stamped link will take you to when Ryan talks about it : http://youtu.be/_sl__2PEHRI?t=22m40s

 

Both the PS3 and the XBOX360 had 512mb of memory available for the GPU, in contrast both the PS4 & XBOX1 have 8GB of memory shared between the CPU & GPU. The majority of game development starts on the consoles due to quality & framerate targets and then trickles down to the PC, developers only had 512mb of VRAM to work with just two years ago and now they have 6-8 times as much, we'll start seeing much higher resolution textures in games and more memory intensive effects that the developers could not have implemented before, this includes global illumination and other forms of ray-tracing, longer view distances, more complicated depth of field effects, sub-surface scattering, more tessellation and so on.

And this issue becomes even more detrimental in SLI because as the game becomes more demanding the higher memory it will require and so you will run into a memory brick wall before you can make use of the additional performance of the second card.

And it's not just Bioshock Infinite, a lot of modern games like Tomb Raider, Batman Arkham Origins, Rome 2 Total War, Skyrim with high-res textures & BF4 in specific multi-player levels & generally in single-player.
 

[MegaTechPC]

This is basically the old choice between the 7970 and the 680.  The 280X is a bit stronger at higher OC's and has the VRAM advantage but the 770 is a bit more reliable and better in multi-card situations.  I've had two different CF 7970 setups and they both worked great for me.  If I were choosing between these two today I'd probably go for the 770 Lightning myself...

[MattDaemontools]

This is basically the old choice between the 7970 and the 680.  The 280X is a bit stronger at higher OC's and has the VRAM advantage but the 770 is a bit more reliable and better in multi-card situations.  I've had two different CF 7970 setups and they both worked great for me.  If I were choosing between these two today I'd probably go for the 770 Lightning myself...

XFX still offers lifetime warranty on their 280Xs so reliability is still top notch.

[CarlosRex]

The Asus DC2 280X does beat out the 770 by a good margin.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7400/the-radeon-r9-280x-review-feat-asus-xfx/9
The Gigabyte 770 has locked voltages so you can't overclock it nearly as well as the 280X.
I'm also surprised no one mentioned Mantle which does allow the 280X to compete with a GTX 780 in BF4 multiplayer.
You can run PhysX off your CPU just fine as well.
 

[jaffacakes]

I definitely recommend the Asus DC2 R9 280X over the Gigabyte GTX 770 because the Asus 280X runs significantly quieter than the Gigabyte 770 & the largely because of memory & memory bandwidth disadvantages of the 770.

And before you say 2GB is enough, I want you to check out PCPer's podcast.

In PCPer's testing both the GTX 770 and GTX 760 experienced numerous lag spikes that Ryan described as being "very noticeable" in Bioshock Infinite, both in 1920x1080 and 2560x1440, these lag spikes did not exist with an R9 280X, the conclusion was due to the 770 and 760 running out of memory

This time-stamped link will take you to when Ryan talks about it : http://youtu.be/_sl__2PEHRI?t=22m40s

 

Both the PS3 and the XBOX360 had 512mb of memory available for the GPU, in contrast both the PS4 & XBOX1 have 8GB of memory shared between the CPU & GPU. The majority of game development starts on the consoles due to quality & framerate targets and then trickles down to the PC, developers only had 512mb of VRAM to work with just two years ago and now they have 6-8 times as much, we'll start seeing much higher resolution textures in games and more memory intensive effects that the developers could not have implemented before, this includes global illumination and other forms of ray-tracing, longer view distances, more complicated depth of field effects, sub-surface scattering, more tessellation and so on.

And this issue becomes even more detrimental in SLI because as the game becomes more demanding the higher memory it will require and so you will run into a memory brick wall before you can make use of the additional performance of the second card.

And it's not just Bioshock Infinite, a lot of modern games like Tomb Raider, Batman Arkham Origins, Rome 2 Total War, Skyrim with high-res textures & BF4 in specific multi-player levels & generally in single-player.

 

 

 

The Asus DC2 280X does beat out the 770 by a good margin.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7400/the-radeon-r9-280x-review-feat-asus-xfx/9

The Gigabyte 770 has locked voltages so you can't overclock it nearly as well as the 280X.

I'm also surprised no one mentioned Mantle which does allow the 280X to compete with a GTX 780 in BF4 multiplayer.

You can run PhysX off your CPU just fine as well.

 

Thank you for the explanation. I'm leaning twards the R9 280X because i will be playing Bioshock Infinte and BF4 (I've known BF4 gives advantages to Mantle), but I'm still not sure between the Asus R9 280x DC2 and the Asus R9 280x DC2 Top. The DC2 Top from what i heard has a "better" bios and has a better OC capability. So is it worth for €20 more?

[Nickolas47]

R9 280x is absolute beast especially with mantle you can almost reach the 780 performance

[jaffacakes]

R9 280x is absolute beast especially with mantle you can almost reach the 780 performance

Thanks, I will buy the R9 280X.

[Prokart2000]

i have a 280x and its good so far (need to get mantle though!)

[nj4ck]

I had an XFX R9 280X and was very happy with it. I would recommend it over the GTX 770 as it does have more VRAM and will perform slightly better at higher resolutions. Even at 1080p some games like Crysis 3 are getting pretty close to 2GB of memory usage, so having the additional 1GB in the 280X might become important in the future.  From what I've heard, the R9 280X also OC's better.

[sacredl]

As others said it depends on what you care for OP. More VRAM is certainly more "future proof" (I know I know lol). On the contrary you've got features like PhysX or HBOO in some games, but it's rather in terms of the short run. And yeah, the 280X OC's like a MF'er.

[Recon-UK]

I don't really miss physx and i own loads of physx titles like all batmans, alice madness returns, borderlands 2, physx is just graphics, gameplay>>>graphics.

[_Shaho]

I don't really miss physx and i own loads of physx titles like all batmans, alice madness returns, borderlands 2, physx is just graphics, gameplay>>>graphics.

For me it is GAMEPLAY ~ GRAPHICS

[jaffacakes]

I had an XFX R9 280X and was very happy with it. I would recommend it over the GTX 770 as it does have more VRAM and will perform slightly better at higher resolutions. Even at 1080p some games like Crysis 3 are getting pretty close to 2GB of memory usage, so having the additional 1GB in the 280X might become important in the future.  From what I've heard, the R9 280X also OC's better.

Thank you, I will buy the R9 280X and, as previously said, I'll run PhysX off my CPU.

[jaffacakes]

I don't really miss physx and i own loads of physx titles like all batmans, alice madness returns, borderlands 2, physx is just graphics, gameplay>>>graphics.

I car a little about graphics but i can run PhysX off my CPU since it's got integrated graphics.