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390 or 290x?

M

MaliciousMan

Guest
I'm ready to upgrade my video card. It's the last upgrade I wanna do to my system for a couple years or so. I've been eyeing the 290x on ebay for awhile now. I was gonna upgrade over the winter but decided to wait for the 300 series. Now I can't decide if I wanna get the 290x or the 390. I just can't decide if the extra ram and improvments ont he 390 are worth it over a 290x that I can get for about 240-270 off ebay. 330 bucks is the most i can dish out for a video card. It was 250 but I can put another 80 bucks into the upgrade itch.

The card I want

My current specs are:

SAMSUNG BX2331 Glossy Black 23"
Sapphire 7870 ghz edition
4790k cooled by a prolimatech megahalem rev. b
msi z97 pcmate
16gb pc1600 team vulcan
120gb sandisk extreme (windows)
1tb samsung ssd (games)
Rosewill CapStone 750 watt psu
CoolerMaster HAF 922 full atx case
 
What games do you play, and do you mod them with aftermarket textures?

You can use GPU-Z to monitor your GPU mem usage while playing games to determine if you need more VRAM.

At your 1080p res on a single screen it is rare that you will need more than 4GB VRAM unless you are doing extreme texture modding.
 
If you can wait a bit I am sure AMD will have a game bundle or lower the price of the 390 soon enough, The 390x per [H]'s review is a 290x so it would be safe to assume the 390 is a 290 with 8gb and some clock bumps. I personally don't think 8gb is necessary even for 1440, so I would go with a 290x or if you want to save even more an overclocked 290 is great too.
 
If you plan to go crossfire in the future rather than just jump on the 16/14nm bandwagon, then get the 390. Otherwise save a few bucks and get a stopgap second hand 290x.

Looked up your monitor. Being only an HD, I would go with the 290x, as long as its a good (non-reference) one. You aren't going to get much more out of the 390 as you can pretty much already max out HD. Really not worth the hassle to Xfire in this instance, either.

Note that if it is a reference 290X on ebay, then yeah just go for a well cooled non-X 390.

PS: that PC is going to last you a long time so all your uprades should be able to go toward video :)
 
I think its a solid choice as well but as others have said if you can find a nice 290x i would be shocked if its possible to run it out of vram with 4gigs. Dont get me wrong the new cards are nice and i like them but its pretty much proven they run well out of gpu power way before running out of vram.

Ill use my card as an example....anything over 3gigs of vram and the gpu is not power enough anyway...were talking fps in the teens....the extra vram alone doesn't help...but the higher clocks on the 300 series do help a lot;)..just keep that in mind
Oh and one last thought....say if you bought a new 290 card now and 2 years from now you had to rma...you would almost surly be sent a 390 for replacement:D
 
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