New Video Card

[zorplex]

So I'm finally biting the bullet and upgrading from my 2 Radeon HD5770s in crossfire. Looking for $300-$400 range and want something that will last several years. I have little brand loyalty and prefer to maximize performance per dollar over everything else. I thought it would be relatively easy to decide with all the price drops and new cards being introduced recently, but I'm starting to go crazy with all the choices and would love some objective opinions.

So obviously the $300 R9 280x would be my choice, right? It's a rebranded 7970 with slight improvements and has lots of overclock overhead if I choose to overclock. I can also possibly pick up another 280/7970 in the future when the price comes down.

But wait! For just $30 more I can get a 770 overclocked that comes with 3 brand new games that I'm actually interested in, is 5-10% faster than the 280x, has better driver support and build quality as Nvidia and supports Physx which I've always wanted, so that's obviously a better deal!

Then again, the 770 only has 2GB of VRAM and for a mere $40 more I can get the 4GB edition which will last far longer as I'll eventually move on to higher than 1080p screen resolutions.

But now I'm sitting at $380 and for only $100 more I can go the full monty and grab a 780! But now I'm paying nearly $500 for a card that is overkill for a single 1080p monitor...

Then again... for only $300, I can get a 280x with 3GB of VRAM and will supposedly have better BF4 support, my obvious game of choice, once Mantle drops.

But for only $30 more I can get a 770... And thus the vicious cycle continues.

Someone please save me from this insanity!

[matsif]

I wouldn't base your video card choice off of BF4 performance since it's still crappy. honestly I'd hold off until after mantle drops to see if it makes a larger performance boost on supported titles than having physx does and go from there and see what price drops occur around the same time.

[expandas]

I wouldn't base your video card choice off of BF4 performance since it's still crappy. honestly I'd hold off until after mantle drops to see if it makes a larger performance boost on supported titles than having physx does and go from there and see what price drops occur around the same time.

[zorplex]

The only problem with that plan of action is that all the best prices will hit in November, the month before Mantle is released. I'm leaning toward getting the first 280x that goes on sale this month. Unfortunately, it seems there are no more manufacturers that offer lifetime warranties. BFG is gone and XFX stopped offering lifetime. Is Sapphire still good?

[Bock]

I'm quite happy with my Sapphire 7970. I haven't had any hardware issues so I can't really speak to the quality of their customer service.

[Ash2Dust]

BF series is CPU based as far as I can tell since BFBC2. Buying a better GPU is less bang for the buck.
My perspective comes from BF4 looking and better running than BF3 which BF3 really wanted a quad core with 8+ GB ram.

My wish list is for a 120 MHz monitor and keep my BF3 system. I do want a new GPU as my 580 has issues, but still runs pretty good for needing a voltage overclock to not crash.

[Fields]

BF series is CPU based as far as I can tell since BFBC2. Buying a better GPU is less bang for the buck.
My perspective comes from BF4 looking and better running than BF3 which BF3 really wanted a quad core with 8+ GB ram.

My wish list is for a 120 MHz monitor and keep my BF3 system. I do want a new GPU as my 580 has issues, but still runs pretty good for needing a voltage overclock to not crash.

I need to disagree with you, Ash, having upgraded from my HD 5770 to a 7870 and experienced massive improvement during BF3 while sticking too the same i7 processor.

[Ash2Dust]

I went the other route, I upgraded video card and barely made improvement. Upgraded CPU from a dual core and it was night and day difference. Could be that having a good quadcore sets you up for a good GPU

[Bock]

If you have a CPU with 4+ cores made in the last 3 years, upgrading your CPU won't give you noticeable gains in game unless you're streaming or something. Otherwise, it's all about the graphics card.

[TheYonderGod]

Get the 280x.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-ZU3ty63rg

[Sirslicey]

Forget about buying cards with additional VRAM, I don't think you'll notice a single difference and those cards are almost never worth it. I would consider either the 280X or the GTX 770.Don't worry about the GTX 770's 2GB of VRAM, the 770 excels at high resolution gaming and is better than the 280X. It is definitely the better route as far as I can tell, especially if you're interested in the three games it comes with. If you SLI down the line, you shouldn't have any problems. The only thing I can see the 280X has going for it is Mantle.

Also Matsif, I think comparing the advantage of Mantle against PhysX is a really bad comparioson. PhysX isn't even used in BF4 or really any games for that matter. I would be more interested in G-Sync, the price/performance, and driver support.

Yonder, the 280X does play BF4 better, but I would advise waiting until Mantle and optimized drivers are released if his primary game is BF4.

Ash, there's no doubt in my mind that your Dual-Core was probably bottlenecking your GPU.

[zorplex]

Get the 280x.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-ZU3ty63rg

He's wearing a Day[9] shirt, I like him arleady! I'm surprised the 280x had such an advantage over the 770. Unless the clock speeds were not stock, they should be very comparable performance wise.

Forget about buying cards with additional VRAM, I don't think you'll notice a single difference and those cards are almost never worth it. ... I would be more interested in G-Sync, the price/performance, and driver support.

Yonder, the 280X does play BF4 better, but I would advise waiting until Mantle and optimized drivers are released if his primary game is BF4.

All good points. I think if I decide to get a 770 over the 280x, I'll stick with the 2GB version unless I find some amazing deal on the 4GB. I don't plan on upgrading my monitor any time soon and only play on a single 1080p screen, so the memory seems to be a secondary concern.

I do appreciate all the features/quality that Nvidia seems to have over AMD. However, I found some review somewhere that claimed the 280x has generally more stable frame rates than the 770 even though the 770 had higher frame rates overall. I can't find the link at the moment, but I did think it was interesting if a bit odd considering the power advantage the 770 has. It may be related to the extra VRAM/memory bandwidth, but I'm not certain.

I'm trying not to let the bonus games sway my opinion as I can always wait to get them later and it would be a bit of pain to try and resell them.

As an aside, VistionTek sells AMD cards with limited lifetime while ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI both offer 3 year. All the other manufacturers only offer 2 year which isn't terribly important, but is something I'm considering as I tend to hold on to cards for a long time.

At this point, I think I've narrowed it down to either a 2GB 770 (preferably EVGA) or a 280x (preferably VisionTek, ASUS, Gigabyte or MSI). I'm going to try my best to be patient and wait through November and see if I can't find a decent sale on one of these cards.

[zorplex]

... Damn it all to hell...

So here I was. Satisfied with my selection. A 770 EVGA SC with a $15 rebate. G-Sync, Shadowplay, driver support, quality build and 3 games, 2 of which I'm actually interested in playing if not reselling. With only a ~$30 premium over the 280x, I decided it was worth it. In fact, I had gone ahead and ordered a card from Amazon with free shipping to come in next week! (No prime on the account I had credit on) I could sleep well having finally made a decision.

And then this(1)happened(2)earlier today. For those not aware, Star Citizen is the biggest crowd funded game to date and is launching next year, alpha to come in a few months. It's probably my most anticipated forthcoming game though it is still a large unknown. (I can't wait to play it with an Occulus Rift) And now it's officially going to support the Mantle API. The two games I'll likely be playing the most for the next couple years are BF4 and Star Citizen, and now they both are going to support Mantle. (Besides every other Frostbite game, which was already known, including SW:Battlefront and Mirror's Edge 2, both of which I'm looking forward to.)

"No big deal," I thought. "The 770 still outperforms the 280x by a decent margin. Even if it doesn't have Mantle, the DirectX performance will suffice. Plus all those secondary benefits!" I was still satisfied with my decision. All was well.


...

Until about half an hour ago.

I was just about to head to bed when I happened to noticed a link on reddit to a new card review.

"Well that's funny timing," I thought to myself. "Another AMD card at $400. I wonder how it compares to the 280x." So I read on out of curiosity.

Funny that. It doesn't "compare" to the 280x in any meaningful way; it blows it out of the water. In fact, according to that source, it has overall performance at approximately 106% a GTX 780 and 97% of an 290x. In several benchmarks shown, it outperforms the Titan.

"Well that review says the noise is unbearable and the power consumption is incredibly high," I tried to console myself.

But then I started looking at some other reviews like Tom's Hardware and HardOCP which I was more familiar with. The power consumption isn't that outrageous. And while the card is loud, it's a reference and no doubt third party cooling solutions will prove better.

I know it's overkill for what I'm doing right now. I know it doesn't really show it's benefit over a 770 until you introduce higher than 1080 resolutions. But I try to keep cards for at least 4 years and the 4GB VRAM mixed with 780/290x/Titan like performance will likely last me for a long time even once I upgrade to a higher resolution/frequency monitor. (I doubt I'll want to Crossfire it anytime in the near future which I was already considering with the 770.)

The 770 is definitely sufficient for what I want... but the 290 is cutting edge performance at a mid(ish) level price. Excluding incredible sale/discount prices on entry level cards that don't quite have the performance I want, the 290 probably offers the best performance to cost of this years graphics cards.

...

I've cancelled my 770 order. So it goes... T_T

Edit: Funny thing I noticed, the 290 beats the 290x in several benchmarks in the reviews I'm reading and the reviewers are a little wary of it all and commenting as such. AMD may have done something like cherry picked the silicon for the review boards. The retail cards may not be nearly as good. I'll just wait and see how they fare given a bit more time; it certainly looks a little too good to be true. From here:

The R9 290 is a bit confusing when compared to the R9 290X. Both are based on the Hawaii GPU, though the R9 290 has 10% few stream processors and a 5% lower maximum clock, the R9 290 is often at performance parity with the 290X and actually comes out ahead in several instances, particularly around the 4K resolutions. Why? The R9 290 is running at a maximum fan speed of 47% thanks to AMD's last minute adjustment while the 290X maximum is set at 40% by default. Because of that, and for the many technical reasons outlined in my story posted yesterday (AMD Hawaii - Configurable GPU?), the R9 290 is able to run closer to its maximum clock rate more often than the R9 290X.

[Jokerle]

Didnt you know the 290 was about to launch?

[zorplex]

Didnt you know the 290 was about to launch?

I just kind of... forgot about it. I guess I was aware of its existence. I remembered AMD mention it when they announced the R9 series a month ago. But they hadn't released any information on the 290 since then and it just fell off my radar.