AMD or NVIDIA GPU?

[SpecTre12345]

Anyone sane enough wouldn't recommend a GTX 770 given its measly 2 GB RAM. It's begging to be obsolete by next year, lest you want to play on much lower settings just to skim off the framebuffer usage. Might as well buy a GTX 760 if that's the case.

"Simply the best and most expensive" is the GTX 780 Ti.

The i7 920 is still fast... just not that fast. If you look here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-5.html, it belongs on the 3rd tier of their gaming CPU hierarchy chart. It will bottleneck, and it will be apparent in CPU intensive games (i.e. BF4 multiplayer) with cards on the same level as the R9 290 and GTX 780 or higher. My advice would be to just get the best value 1080p card atm, which is the R9 280, and wait it out for the next-gen cards. Same time next year, we'll probably have a card as fast as the R9 290 and GTX 780 at $200.

 

I agree with you on the 770 part, because a 770 will be obsolete pretty soon.

 

But the i7-920 with a 3.8-4.0GHz overclock will not bottleneck a R9 290 or GTX 780 or any card for that matter.

 

Even at stock it's more than fine:

 

 

 

 

That's all at stock frequency of 2.66GHz, at 3.8-4.0GHz it will be fine for at least two more years.

[SymphonyX7]

I agree with you on the 770 part, because a 770 will be obsolete pretty soon.

 

But the i7-920 with a 3.8-4.0GHz overclock will not bottleneck a R9 290 or GTX 780 or any card for that matter.

 

Even at stock it's more than fine:

I see. I wasn't aware his i7-920 was overclocked by that much. At stock though, the bottleneck is very apparent on new titles. I know someone with the same i7-920 and he saw a major improvement when he upgraded to an i5-3570K, even at stock.

Anyway, an R9 290 at around $400 will offer the best value if you demand the best settings at 1080p possible. Personally though, an R9 280 between $200 to $250 would be better value. It can still get 60 FPS on the latest titles on ultra at 1080p (albeit with less niceties such as lower AA and AF). The R9 290 or GTX 780 isn't 50% faster than an R9 280 and the 3 GB RAM will be comfy at 1080p for the foreseeable future. He can save his $150-200 when the new GPUs come out. The new GPUs are long overdue and there might be massive performance gains... although admittedly we might not see those massive performance improvements like we did from the Nvidia 7000 to 8000 series back in 2006/2007 unless they move to the 20 nm manufacturing process. Damn smartphone processors eating the share of the foundries.

[Raxzer]

Anyone sane enough wouldn't recommend a GTX 770 given its measly 2 GB RAM. It's begging to be obsolete by next year, lest you want to play on much lower settings just to skim off the framebuffer usage. Might as well buy a GTX 760 if that's the case.

 

 

It all depends on resolution. For 1920*1080, 2GB is sufficient, and it will be for quite some time. For higher resolutions, it's another story. 

 

But I'm assuming that we're talking only full HD here, you're only correct if we're talking about higher resolutions. Otherwise it doesn't matter, and the card will be good for quite a few years.

[SymphonyX7]

It all depends on resolution. For 1920*1080, 2GB is sufficient, and it will be for quite some time. For higher resolutions, it's another story. 

 

But I'm assuming that we're talking only full HD here, you're only correct if we're talking about higher resolutions. Otherwise it doesn't matter, and the card will be good for quite a few years.

Not exactly. A lot of games are eating over 2 GB of VRAM at 1080p resolution at settings "worthy of the PC master race". Titanfall, BF3, BF4, Skyrim with mods, Metro 2033, Metro Last Light, Hitman Absolution, etc. The list goes on, and many of those games aren't even the latest. The newest AAA titles can even get dangerously close to 3 GB if you don't turn down some settings, such as anti-aliasing and texture quality. The trend is there and it won't go away, particularly now that PS4 and Xbox One game development is in full swing. Why bother when it's too close for comfort? You'll be forced to lower settings just to avoid the framebuffer limit, because when you hit the limit, FPS will be effectively halved because it will start tiling. The R9 280X is a far better choice mainly because of its 3 GB VRAM and 384-bit bus. This is main the reason why the R9 280X has been trouncing the GTX 770 lately on the newest games in an apples-to-apples comparison (same settings, all dialed up). The fact that it's cheaper is only a bonus. 

Basically, a GTX 770 will suffice at 1080p if you're willing to dial down some settings, usually below ultra and using cheap AA methods like FXAA. But some aren't keen on that compromise, so the additional VRAM and bandwidth that the R9 280X provides ensures you won't have to.

P.S. There's a reason why AMD has been investing heavily in stacked DRAM.