R9 290 v 290x vs gtx 960 for 1080p gaming

[Cheddle]

so the green one is overclocked further yet , than when you just get the card (tri-x 290x)?

 

the thing is , if i buy a 290x i dont have money to put more fans in my system , atm i have a 140 intake and a 120 outake , thats it

 

The blue is the stock overclock and the green is overclocked further yes, I think it was 1145 Mhz on core.

 

fans are something that you don't replace, once you have them you have them... I would buy the best GPU possible and go from there, the problem with taking money from your GPU budget is that you always lose money when you replace a GPU, and the longer you get out of a single GPU the more value...

 

Buy the best GPU that is going to meet your needs for the longest... fans can be bought next month, or the month after, but you cant just drop $50 into your GPU and have it transform from an r9 290 to an r9 290x.

 

FYI the r9 290 is also a great overclocker so there is really only a fairly small gap in performance between the 290 and 290x. read some reviews, look at some where they overclock the two cards - avoid stock coolers in any case as they are very bad.

[Effenbach]

The blue is the stock overclock and the green is overclocked further yes, I think it was 1145 Mhz on core.

 

fans are something that you don't replace, once you have them you have them... I would buy the best GPU possible and go from there, the problem with taking money from your GPU budget is that you always lose money when you replace a GPU, and the longer you get out of a single GPU the more value...

 

Buy the best GPU that is going to meet your needs for the longest... fans can be bought next month, or the month after, but you cant just drop $50 into your GPU and have it transform from an r9 290 to an r9 290x.

 

FYI the r9 290 is also a great overclocker so there is really only a fairly small gap in performance between the 290 and 290x. read some reviews, look at some where they overclock the two cards - avoid stock coolers in any case as they are very bad.

ok , i think i go with a tri x r9 290x then , since it just fits my budget .

 

i´d like to get a new cpu cooler too , since im running the stock cooler , but with idle temps at 40 and 60-70 under load , i guess that can wait .

 

one last thing , since you seem to know quite a thing or two .

 

if i buy an ssd , will it then benefit performance in programs/games except loading times. since im considering to get an ssd soon too.

 

but if i wont gain to much besides faster  loading times i might just wanna go with a 120gb just for OS and a single game like BF4 instead of a 250 gb.

 

 

Thanks for your help , really appreciate it

[Cheddle]

ok , i think i go with a tri x r9 290x then , since it just fits my budget .

 

i´d like to get a new cpu cooler too , since im running the stock cooler , but with idle temps at 40 and 60-70 under load , i guess that can wait .

 

one last thing , since you seem to know quite a thing or two .

 

if i buy an ssd , will it then benefit performance in programs/games except loading times. since im considering to get an ssd soon too.

 

but if i wont gain to much besides faster  loading times i might just wanna go with a 120gb instead of a 250 gb.

 

 

Thanks for your help , really appreciate it

 

no problem!

 

stock coolers are rubbish and loud - there is no real need to water-cool i5's / i7's unless you really want the head directed outside the case (the big bad "x" 6-core and 8-core being excluded from this) - a good air cooler works fine.

 

I don't have any real experience with games on SSD's - SSD's are amazing for boot times though and once you have one you will hate using a PC without one - I have only ever put one game on an SSD - League of Legends... I thought given it has 15,000 files that are not in packages that it might help with "seek" times however it made little to no difference to my load times, and given that a game wont start until everyone has loaded there was no point.

 

I don't believe that there is much benefit from installing a game on an SSD as games generally cache all the required resources into RAM at the start of a "level" any way. so it might slightly decrease your load times between levels but not during gameplay.

 

An SSD would help if you had 4gb of ram (or less) and the page file (windows virtual ram on disk) was used often but again this is more a "system" thing not a "game" thing as the game doesn't need to be installed onto the SSD to take advantage of a page file on an SSD - the greater performance gain here would be to buy more ram, not a large SSD.

 

Good luck with the r9 290x - the Tri-x is reported to be one of the best r9 290x packages available.

[Zulkkis]

I went to newegg and had a look.......... you can get a 290 for 269/249 after rebate......................... the new AMD cards must be coming quick. Think they might want to be trying to cash in on nvidia's faux pas?

Nobody knows when they are coming, but AMD can sell quite a bit of more GPUs this way. Prior to the price drops people could be, "meh, I'm kind of pissed about the lack of 0.5 GB proper VRAM, but if I return it what can I get? ....another GTX 970?" and now that the prices on the Radeons went down, thinking "I'll just get R9 290 / 290 X instead" is a lot more sound. Even if it is just about making a statement.

[LabRat]

think there is copper in this one idle temps is around 40 degrees Celsius

 That's high for idle from my experience. Maybe try cleaning up and reapplying new thermal paste?

 

I'll edit this. 40c isn't a deal breaker but it's not what I'm used to seeing. if it idles high it probably caps out high.

[TiCKLZ]

Hi there, I don't know if anyone here can help me, and if so I'll apreciate that.

So, I saw this post and since I'm building a rig myself I was wondering what to do, is the R9 290 a good buy at this point? Should I wait till AMD realeases their new GPUS like R9 390 or something? I really don't know want to do, and I really want a good card to run 1080p games.

 

Thanks in advance guys!

[SteveGrabowski]

Is the 290x worth the extra money compared to the 290 non x?

 

It's a tough call. Here is a comparison of the reference 290 vs the reference 290x. Aftermarket ones like Tri-X, Lightning, MSI Gaming, ect will perform better.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1068?vs=1056

 

The Sapphire Tri-X R9 290 is one of the best 290s and can be had for $260 after rebate.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202080

 

The MSI Lightning R9 290x is the best 290x on the market other than the 8GB Vapor-X, and if you buy in the next couple of hours you can get it for $300 after rebate.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127787

 

With these cards at these prices the GTX 960 makes no sense whatsoever unless your power supply sucks or you're running an i3 or lower for the CPU. The 290 is pretty close to 970 performance and the 290x can sometimes even approach 980 performance, though mostly it's pretty comparable to the 970.

[SteveGrabowski]

Hi there, I don't know if anyone here can help me, and if so I'll apreciate that.

So, I saw this post and since I'm building a rig myself I was wondering what to do, is the R9 290 a good buy at this point? Should I wait till AMD realeases their new GPUS like R9 390 or something? I really don't know want to do, and I really want a good card to run 1080p games.

 

Thanks in advance guys!

 

The 290 has been an incredible price for performance buy since the price drops in October. I imagine the R9 380x will probably hit the market at $500 or more, seeing that it's supposed to significantly outperform the 980.

[pitprok]

That very much depends on how big the price difference is and perhaps which brand you're choosing

How about sapphire tri-x OC with a difference of 35 euros ?

edit:290 costs 305 euros

[TiCKLZ]

The 290 has been an incredible price for performance buy since the price drops in October. I imagine the R9 380x will probably hit the market at $500 or more, seeing that it's supposed to significantly outperform the 980.

 

holy molly macaroni are you for real? that will be an awesome high-end graphics card.

as the user pitprok said, the card here is also very expensive, it costs 300€ +/- 340$ and still don't know if I go for it.

[bossdre]

I've owned a R9 280x and 2x R9 280x on CF, soo.. a single R9 280x is good for 1080p if you're ok to compromise to take down a notch on some of the settings. If you want more eye candy and want to max all the settings then go with a non-reference cooled R9 290/R9 290x. And this will give you more flexibility since it is a great 1440p performer and a good 4k performer so you had the option to upgrade your display and/or add another one for CF in the future if you do  so desire and if you had the budget.