780 vs 290

Z

ZrRock

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 31, 2011
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Assuming I could get either at the same price, both reference design, which would you choose and why?
 
290 is slightly faster. I just went from 780 SLI to 290 CF, single card the 290 is very nice but I've been having a lot of problems with two of them.
 
naticus said:
Both reference? 290.
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At the same price:

The 290 is going to have better performance, period.
The 780 will probably be quieter (arguable, multiple variables), cooler running and supports PhysX (if you care about that sort of thing).

Even if you're not willing to pop the top on the 290 and replace the TIM with something better than the out of box crap, I'd still say the 290 is the way to go all other things being equal.
 
Except its not equal. The 780 cost $100 more than the 290. My advice, buy the 780 (obviously, you are not paying full price). Sell it to one of those nvidia suckers who cares so much about a little fan noise, use the money to buy a 290 and pocket the difference.
 
trungracingdev said:
Except its not equal. The 780 cost $100 more than the 290. My advice, buy the 780 (obviously, you are not paying full price). Sell it to one of those nvidia suckers who cares so much about a little fan noise, use the money to buy a 290 and pocket the difference.
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OP said: "Assuming I could get either at the same price, both reference design, which would you choose and why?"

No need to steer the conversation toward anti-fanboy anger ;) We're just talkin' 'bout GPU stuff :)
 
cortexodus said:
OP said: "Assuming I could get either at the same price, both reference design, which would you choose and why?"

No need to steer the conversation toward anti-fanboy anger ;) We're just talkin' 'bout GPU stuff :)
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I believe I gave him sound advice. If you can buy 2 cards at the same price, buy the one that's worth more, sell it and then use the money to buy the cheaper one.

lets say both can be bought for $400

buy the 780, I believe selling it for $450 shouldn't be too hard (its listed as $500 with no discounts)

then use that money to buy the 290

so in the end, he bought the 290 for $350
 
trungracingdev said:
I believe I gave him sound advice. If you can buy 2 cards at the same price, buy the one that's worth more, sell it and then use the money to buy the cheaper one.

lets say both can be bought for $400

buy the 780, I believe selling it for $450 shouldn't be too hard (its listed as $500 with no discounts)

then use that money to buy the 290

so in the end, he bought the 290 for $350
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Well, I certainly can't argue the selling point if someone is willing to go through the buy/sell/buy hassle :)

Although... I don't think it would be easy to get $550 for a card that sells for $509 even with 3rd party coolers

*looks like I read your post as $550 instead of $450. So yea, what you're saying makes sense.
 
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trungracingdev said:
I believe I gave him sound advice. If you can buy 2 cards at the same price, buy the one that's worth more, sell it and then use the money to buy the cheaper one.

lets say both can be bought for $400

buy the 780, I believe selling it for $450 shouldn't be too hard (its listed as $500 with no discounts)

then use that money to buy the 290

so in the end, he bought the 290 for $350
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I said with all things equal because I'm able to get a used 780 for the exact same price as a new 290, and no one is selling their 290s. 780 market is pretty bad atm. There's really no flipping to be had on 780s.
 
trungracingdev said:
I believe I gave him sound advice. If you can buy 2 cards at the same price, buy the one that's worth more, sell it and then use the money to buy the cheaper one.

lets say both can be bought for $400

buy the 780, I believe selling it for $450 shouldn't be too hard (its listed as $500 with no discounts)

then use that money to buy the 290

so in the end, he bought the 290 for $350
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I had a rough time selling my ACX 780's for $425, so this may not work well. I would just go straight for the 290 unless you're a quiet/cool freak (like me haha) :cool:
 
LigTasm said:
I had a rough time selling my ACX 780's for $425, so this may not work well. I would just go straight for the 290 unless you're a quiet/cool freak (like me haha) :cool:
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Yea, my original response really didn't have any factoring in terms of the buy/sell market on this gear. I looked at it from the perspective of "if I bought it right now to keep and use and they were same price, which one?".

Some folks might be willing to go through the rigmarole of buying/selling but I'm pretty lazy about that sort of thing.
 
ZrRock said:
I said with all things equal because I'm able to get a used 780 for the exact same price as a new 290, and no one is selling their 290s. 780 market is pretty bad atm. There's really no flipping to be had on 780s.
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well then what matters to u more? a card that's faster but louder/hotter or a slower card that's more quiet and cooler

the difference in speed isn't that great....but then so is the heat/noise

I think u win either way
 
I had a 780, sold for $420 last week. Got my vanilla 290 and BF4 runs somewhat better in some cases. The Mantle patch in December should make the 290 even more worthwhile since I never use PhysX in games (I already beat Metro: LL and Borderlands 2). Plus more game developers are giving Mantle a chance so this could help the 290s shine even more. I game at 2560x1440 @ 110Hz.
 
Stryker, exactly what I was curious to hear about. How about temps? I have almost exactly the same setup you do and am playing a lot of the same games on 1440p at around 120hz.
Why'd you sell your 780 and what kind of temps are you seeing?
 
Since I'm deaf (80% in both ears) I always crank all of my fan speeds to 100%, so I may not be the right person to ask. Reason I sold the 780 is because 1.) Mantle is looking great, like at least a 15-25% performance increase with games that I would spend most of my time on (BF4 for example) and 2.) the 512-bit memory is better for higher res gaming. That said the 780 was also a sweet little card but I just have more fond memories with ATI so I wanted to go back to the red camp. The 780 would peak at 61c with a 1137mhz boost and the 290 hits about 63c with the 1100mhz overclock (from 947) and that's with reference coolers on both cards. I'm thinking of applying MX-2 thermal paste on the 290 to see if that would help a bit with the temperatures in the long run.
 
When both are overclocked, the GTX 780 has the potential to be much faster than any OC'ed 290. The 780 has tons of OC headroom with TDP to spare while the 290 is extremely limited - the 780 gains 20% or so from overclocking and easily passes the Titan by 15% or more.

IMHO, the AMD reference design is severely lacking - the fans (IMO) are loud at 47/55% and I have used 3 generations of AMD cards and ..It isn't quiet to me, especially after having used the 780 reference cooler. My case is a Cosmos II sitting 3 feet from me. To top if off, if you lower then fan speeds below this on the 290 - the card will throttle excessively and lose up to 25% of its performance. Anandtech has a chart in their 290 review outlining the effect of quiet fan speeds on performance, and that shit aint pretty. 25% performance loss for quiet fan speeds. To put that into perspective, if you use quiet fan speeds on the 290 - it will perform on par with the 7970GHz. Stupid fucking design? Yes, yes it is.

With that said, I think the 780 is the clear winner if it is the same price as the 290. Easily. And you can OC it to be faster than the Titan by a large percentage. Now, the 290 will become much, much more attractive once aftermarket designs hit, but I would suggest avoiding the reference model - I'm actually looking forward to the 290 aftermarket designs. A 290 without the compromises of the existing reference design would be a fantastic product and definitely worthy of purchase. As of now? It's hard to overlook the compromises presented by the ref design.
 
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why are some acting like the 290 is the better card? the 780 and 290 are basically even out of the box at 1080 and the 780 has way more overclocking headroom. if they were actually the same price then when in the heck would the hotter, louder, more power hungry 290 even be considered?
 
cannondale06 said:
why are some acting like the 290 is the better card? the 780 and 290 are basically even out of the box and the 780 has way more overclocking headroom.
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Yeah. And the OP noted he can get both at the same price. That makes the decision REALLY easy - the 780 wins by a mile in terms of overall quality.
 
xoleras said:
Yeah. And the OP noted he can get both at the same price. That makes the decision REALLY easy - the 780 wins by a mile in terms of overall quality.
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I edited that to say at 1080. at higher resolutions, the 290 pulls away slightly but again the much better overclocking ability of the 780 would wipe that out and then some.
 
cannondale06 said:
why are some acting like the 290 is the better card? the 780 and 290 are basically even out of the box at 1080 and the 780 has way more overclocking headroom. if they were actually the same price then when in the heck would the hotter, louder, more power hungry 290 even be considered?
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I ran my 780's at 1242 24/7 and the 290's are faster at 1075 which isn't even all they will do on the stock cooler. Just sayin. The mountain of problems I have had with the 290's are not worth the little extra performance, but I'm stuck with them now. :mad:
 
LigTasm said:
I ran my 780's at 1242 24/7 and the 290's are faster at 1075 which isn't even all they will do on the stock cooler. Just sayin. The mountain of problems I have had with the 290's are not worth the little extra performance, but I'm stuck with them now. :mad:
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What's going on with them? Out of curiosity
 
xoleras said:
What's going on with them? Out of curiosity
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Black screen crashes, white frames (imagine playing a game and suddenly a full white frame is inserted, very jarring), poor crossfire performance usually to include negative scaling in almost every game that I have. Very picky drivers that will suddenly give you a black desktop with nothing but a mouse cursor, etc. 780's were plug and play.
 
LigTasm said:
Black screen crashes, white frames (imagine playing a game and suddenly a full white frame is inserted, very jarring), poor crossfire performance usually to include negative scaling in almost every game that I have. Very picky drivers that will suddenly give you a black desktop with nothing but a mouse cursor, etc. 780's were plug and play.
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I hate to call BS, but negative scaling in almost every game you have?!? Unless you are cherry picking the few games where crossfire has an issue, I sense significant exaggeration here.
 
MrC4 said:
I hate to call BS, but negative scaling in almost every game you have?!? Unless you are cherry picking the few games where crossfire has an issue, I sense significant exaggeration here.
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I understand what you mean, and I really wish I was making some shit up. Then I could just type some BS rather than spending the last week troubleshooting instead of playing games. I'm not big into the huge AAA titles which is where I think the problem is. I don't do BF3/4, Bioshock, etc.

I've played Planetside 2, Far Cry 3, Mass Effect 3, Borderlands 2, Skyrim, EvE and Crysis 2 with them so far. BL2 is the only one that shows significant advantage to the second card. EvE doesn't even get detected as a game somehow and the cards stay at idle, I tried creating a custom profile for it but it didn't seem to help. PS2 and FC3 showed bad negative scaling (20-30fps less in CF), the rest were just a few fps less with crossfire enabled or no change at all.

FYI, this is with a 3930k at 4800mhz, so I don't think CPU is the issue. They bench strangely too, I get 100% scaling in 3Dmark but in Heaven/Valley I get a crossfire score similar to what a single OC'd 7970 can pull.
 
LigTasm said:
Black screen crashes, white frames (imagine playing a game and suddenly a full white frame is inserted, very jarring), poor crossfire performance usually to include negative scaling in almost every game that I have. Very picky drivers that will suddenly give you a black desktop with nothing but a mouse cursor, etc. 780's were plug and play.
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I have 2 290's in Crossfire and not a single issue... Contact the manufacturer instead of guessing.
 
It's interesting as to how anyone with 290 issues automatically gets blamed for "user" issues. When I had 7970CF, I remember several games did not have CF profiles at all, including all assassin's creed games (up to revelations at that point), none of the mass effect games, scaling not so well in blizzard games, and other such anomalies. Planetside 2 is also pretty much outright broken in CF.

CF is pretty good for huge AAA titles, but SLI does have more mGPU coverage than AMD does. And even for less demanding games, they still have SLI coverage so you can use SSAA with no performance hit - what I found on AMD's side is that they don't even bother adding SLI support to some games like Darksiders, ME 1/2, and some of the older assassin's creed games. With SLI they're supported and you can up the image quality as a result. With CF, you're basically using a single card.

At least, that was my 7970CF experience. Maybe things have changed since then, but I do feel SLI has better support - AAA titles seem to get CF support, while AMD doesn't support other non AAA titles. Which kinda sucks, because with mGPU you can up the image quality in games with mGPU even if it isn't super demanding. This is what I did in Assassin's creed brotherhood for instance - but CF support in that game was extremely spotty.
 
At same price, I would get 780 hands down. I could care less if an OC-ed 290 beats out an OC-ed 780 considering the noise and heat by 3-5 frames.

Also I don't want to play the blackscreen lottery that is still going on. :rolleyes:
 
KickAssCop said:
At same price, I would get 780 hands down. I could care less if an OC-ed 290 beats out an OC-ed 780 considering the noise and heat by 3-5 frames.

Also I don't want to play the blackscreen lottery that is still going on. :rolleyes:
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Sorry, I've seen that used incorrectly too many times for today.

"I couldn't care less".
 
Yes, grammar Nazi. That is what I meant :p.
Also git with the times. Using English incorrectly is cool on internets.
 
KickAssCop said:
At same price, I would get 780 hands down. I could care less if an OC-ed 290 beats out an OC-ed 780 considering the noise and heat by 3-5 frames.

Also I don't want to play the blackscreen lottery that is still going on. :rolleyes:
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You compare $500 to $400. If $100 is not an issue to you then by all means. For the price and performance, the 290 is the better choice.
 
iGrooCk said:
You compare $500 to $400. If $100 is not an issue to you then by all means. For the price and performance, the 290 is the better choice.
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.....
KickAssCop said:
At same price, I would get 780 hands down. I could care less if an OC-ed 290 beats out an OC-ed 780 considering the noise and heat by 3-5 frames.

Also I don't want to play the blackscreen lottery that is still going on. :rolleyes:
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ZrRock said:
Assuming I could get either at the same price, both reference design, which would you choose and why?
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Why do you need the reference only design? If they have a 290 option in a few weeks with a much better cooler for 20 dollars more than stock, why not have that as an option rather than only stock?


I'd say go with the 290 partner boards with better cooling built in. Mantle seems like a bigger deal and technical feat than the current nvidia tech, and should allow new life for many games that can use the extra power.
 
I still think that the 290 wins. Why? Because some of them can be unlocked to 290X. And you can always get aftermarket coolers later. And Mantle support is looking pretty good. Its only 50W more TDP than the 780.
 
Get the 290 and flash it to a 290X.

The 780 is old news. If you're going Nvidia, it's 780Ti or bust. Anyone buying the 780 right now are people that can sleep at night knowing they bought a 780ti with 25% of its cores disabled.
 
I think people will be shocked once the AIB release there boards with better cooling as the Nvidia fans will only have power useage to complain about after that because I have seen first hand what it can do with the icy 2 cooler as it got 30c idle and 61 c full load under Crysis 3 and BF 4 gaming.
 
Cool Vibrations said:
Get the 290 and flash it to a 290X.

The 780 is old news. If you're going Nvidia, it's 780Ti or bust. Anyone buying the 780 right now are people that can sleep at night knowing they bought a 780ti with 25% of its cores disabled.
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I could. Easily. GTX 780 GHz Edition is really, really close to 780 Ti but has better cooling and costs way less. At least where I live.
 
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