R9 280X

[lescarpio]

I currently have a PNY GTX 680. I know the 280X (MSI revision specifically) is just a re-branded 7970 GHZ Ed. But I was looking at the specs and they're slightly better than the 680: PNY 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 vs MSI's 3GB 384-bit, as well as Cuda cores/SPUs, PNYs 1536 vs MSI's 2048.

Now theoretically, the R9 should perform better, but that all depends on drivers and plain efficiency at running programs (mainly games in my case). Does anyone think this would be an upgrade of sorts, to go from the 680 to the 280X?

Thinking of price to performance, gaming, and future benefits (Mantle, GCN).

[M-ursu]

yes, but save some money and buy 290.

Or wait for Maxwell.

[Wferr]

yes, but save some money and buy 290.

Aka save some money and get even a hotter card!

[SkilledRebuilds]

If you have a 680, and buy a 7970 or 280x without stating you NEED the compute performance, your an idiot. plain and simple.

Reason I say this...

The performance jump in most games will not be that noticeable, the performance jump in games that are noticeable, still won't be that much higher.

When the 680 was released it was pitted against the original 7970, drivers over time squeezed more out of the 7000 series from AMD and saw the ghz editions at most times,.. equal or beat the 680, depending on games tested.

 

So your trading card for card, no real visual improvement looking at it very basic, fps numbers, which were already decently fast , go a little higher.

 

For rendering you have Cuda, no need for Opencl, shadowplay GPU capturing, compared to raptr or dxtory capturing on AMD's side, which is CPU based...

 

Seems in your case your losing out too much or not gaining enough, withstanding... you can go higher to the 290/290x or 780/780ti

Their the LOGICAL upgrade paths.

[WoodenMarker]

Not worth it. It's more of a side grade than an upgrade.

[needmorewood]

dont do it bud unless you are 1440p gaming. even then save up for a 290. if its just 1080p gaming then stay with your 680 for now

[FernandoTeixeira]

one more 680 or a 780/290

 

680 isn't so far from a 280x, so you'll waste money  

[James_AJ]

Maxwell. </discussion>

[lescarpio]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions! So I've decided to hold off for now, maybe until next year's lineup, as long as they boost in performance similar to how this year's flagships did.

Or once the aftermarket cooled 290s are released, and we can see some benchmarks, I may dive into those. I've read and saw benchmarks for the 290 vs 290X and I think the price to performance isn't all too great when getting the 290X, but I guess we'll see when vendors get their custom coolers installed =D

[TheGhostVII]

Aka save some money and get even a hotter card!

280X doesn't have cooling issues, so saying "even hotter card" is pretty stupid.

 

 

Save some money and wait for the nonreference coolers.

[Wferr]

280X doesn't have cooling issues, so saying "even hotter card" is pretty stupid.

 

 

Save some money and wait for the nonreference coolers.

was refering to the 290x

[TheGhostVII]

was refering to the 290x

Yes, but saying "even hotter card" implies the 280X has cooling issues.