Best Over clocking card on water for 400-450.

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Makeroflostsouls

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I'm looking to pick up 2 new video cards for my new build. Cards will be under full cover water blocks. Also running a HX1050 pay and cpu is a 3930k. I was looking at either getting 2 780gtxs or 2 and 290's. Right now I have dual 7950's@1100mghz. Wonder what you all thought would be the better cards for running over clocked on water? Thanks.. and I'm not a fan boy at all just get what's fastest for my money.
 
Makeroflostsouls said:
I'm looking to pick up 2 new video cards for my new build. Cards will be under full cover water blocks. Also running a HX1050 pay and cpu is a 3930k. I was looking at either getting 2 780gtxs or 2 and 290's. Right now I have dual 7950's@1100mghz. Wonder what you all thought would be the better cards for running over clocked on water? Thanks.. and I'm not a fan boy at all just get what's fastest for my money.
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The best card for water is a custom PCB GTX 780 such as the classified. Of course, none of these cards you mention are in the 400-450$ price range right now. The 290 is in the 500$+ range due to miners, and the custom PCB 780s are ~520-530$. Of course you can use masterpass at newegg if you act quick for 50$ off. But the best bet right now for under water proven overclocking is a custom PCB 780 - those cards have full voltage control and have reached 400-500mhz over stock clocks for quite a few users. Comparatively speaking, most 290s are reaching 50-100 mhz over stock with reference (on average) and 100-200mhz over stock with aftermarket cooling - and 150-200 with water. I haven't seen any custom PCB under water results for the 290X, but the DC II 290X is hitting roughly 150-175mhz overclocks on average per review websites. I haven't seen any results that are anywhere near as good as the custom PCB 780s (which go WELL above stock clocks), but the custom PCB 780s are quite expensive as well.

Perhaps some of the other custom PCB 290X's will do better. Mind you, all of these cards perform very well when overclocked. You probably can't go wrong either way.
 
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As a 290 owner I'd likely go with the 780s if you're doing SLI and looking to over clock.
 
Do you not like the 290's or not very good over clock's ? Thanks and yes it will be at least a dull card setup and maybe a tripple setup later.
 
Makeroflostsouls said:
Do you not like the 290's or not very good over clock's ? Thanks and yes it will be at least a dull card setup and maybe a tripple setup later.
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They don't seem to be overclocking all that much better than aftermarket under water - 1150-1200 is what I generally see for 24/7 stability. Of course you can do a suicide benchmark run higher but that is worthless. (if anyone has verified game stable 24/7 numbers, please share. Not suicide runs, mind you). On LN2 the maximum overclock i've seen was 1400mhz, this was at OC UK. LN2 is obviously a much more extreme overclock than water - On water, it is roughly 1150ish to maybe 1200. The reference PCB could be holding it back, I don't know. It is plausible that custom PCB 290s could do better. It is actually very likely they would do a bit better, but none of the custom 290 cards have water blocks yet.

As of right now, custom PCB 780s are proven for overclocking, going 400-500mhz beyond stock, and most custom PCBs have blocks available. I haven't seen proven results for the 290, but like I said. If anyone does have results with verified 24/7 stability i'd love to see them. All of these cards perform very well and you'd be fine either way. I do feel custom 780s are the better OC'er, though.

The other thing to consider is that currently, there is no price difference between the 290 and GTX 780, and none of them are in the 400-450 price range. You'll want to up your budget to 500-550 or thereabouts for these cards. They're roughly the same price given the price gouging that etailers are doing because of the mining craze. I feel like you'd have fun with either card, but they are all roughly the same price.
 
I would get the 290s. if you are going to buy 290s, you should wait for the prices to be back to normal. probably a month or two, basically when retailers restock and there is enough units to satisfy the demand.
 
Yea I had planed on waiting I'm not paying 100-130 over msrp for a card.. that's the price of a full cover water block.
 
If you had to buy today, the 780gtx would be my choice unless you are able to get the 290 at or under msrp. I got my 290 for $385 shipped right before thanksgiving.
 
Get the 290s, the extra VRAM and memory bandwith help at 4K and are over $100 cheaper than a 780ti
 
If you're going with a GTX 780 then I'd get the ASUS Direct CU II GTX780-DC2OC-3GD5 which has a great custom PCB. I'm assuming you already have the block or will be getting that separately.

Personally, I'd wait for the prices of the R9 290's to drop and grab one of those. They are beasts for the price and if you're putting them on water they are worth getting. I would not recommend one with the reference cooler but definitely on water.
 
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xoleras said:
They don't seem to be overclocking all that much better than aftermarket under water - 1150-1200 is what I generally see for 24/7 stability. Of course you can do a suicide benchmark run higher but that is worthless. (if anyone has verified game stable 24/7 numbers, please share. Not suicide runs, mind you). On LN2 the maximum overclock i've seen was 1400mhz, this was at OC UK. LN2 is obviously a much more extreme overclock than water - On water, it is roughly 1150ish to maybe 1200. The reference PCB could be holding it back, I don't know. It is plausible that custom PCB 290s could do better. It is actually very likely they would do a bit better, but none of the custom 290 cards have water blocks yet.
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R9 290/290x is doing 1200-1300mhz on water and +1500mhz on LN2.
 
LordEC911 said:
R9 290/290x is doing 1200-1300mhz on water and +1500mhz on LN2.
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How many 1200+ game stable 290's have you seen? Because I can't think of a single one, and I haven't seen any examples in the thousands of posts over on the OCN 290/290X club. Neither of mine went past 1125 on water, they could bench at 1150 but they weren't stable for gaming. I ended up selling the water loop and just running them on air now at 1050 with a 55% fan profile as it just wasn't worth it.
 
LordEC911 said:
R9 290/290x is doing 1200-1300mhz on water and +1500mhz on LN2.
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Well that's just not true. Unless you look at some ridiculous 2 minute valley suicide run by a freak at OCN who can get a benchmark score but the card crashes 2 minutes afterwards while artifacting during the benchmark run. That is status quo for those guys. All they do is suicide runs so that data is worthless. Anyone in the know over there, knows that stability means jack shit, they jack the clocks up until an overclock is borderline unstable (with artifacts) and keep going until they get lucky enough to get a Heaven or Valley score to get into a top 30 list. In terms of real world overclocking, how many 290s have been 24/7 stable above 1200mhz as measured by review sites? None. That includes the Asus DC II 290X as well. Most reviewers can't get the DC II 290X stable past 1125-1150, which is about 150mhz above stock. This is aside from the fact that many 290X users seem to complain that they can't get very good overclocks even on water. That could be due to reference PCB, but I will say that even the GK110 reference PCB overclocks very well on water with the voltage unlock.

Whereas many review sites have overclocked the 780 well above stock, many times exceeding 1300mhz. That is 400+ Mhz above stock for a total of 20% faster than Titan performance. These cards are getting 400-500mhz above stock ON AIR. If you get a classified on water, it just gets better than that. Sorry, don't get me wrong. The 290X at 1125-1175MHz performs very very well. But in terms of overclocking headroom? The GTX 780 is proven and tried in the field by tech reviewers, and it is the better overclocker. It also performs better than the 290/X at those clockspeeds by a very good margin. If you get the right unlocked card under water, there are guys getting 24/7 stable game benchmarks higher than 1300MHz. Until a tech reviewer can get a good overclocking result to prove otherwise, the GTX 780 just has more data in support of being the superior overclocker IMO.

Don't misunderstand. I think the 290X performs great in the range of 1100-1200MHz. But in terms of overclocking past stock clockspeeds, even under water, the GTX 780 has way more proven data to substantiate being a better overclocker. And we know the GTX 780 also scales VERY VERY well in terms of performance when the clockspeeds are increased. Maybe this will change in time with a better BIOS (isn't the 290 already voltage unlocked?) or better PCBs. But this is how things are now. The 780 has way way more data in support of being the better overclocker, whereas the 290X isn't proven yet. Most reviewers hit a wall at 1100-1200mhz even with aftermarket 290X cards.
 
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I think you'll are missing the point and the OP is also. What resolution are you running?. I would believe that would impact his purchase the most. What kind of monitor are you already running? Are you going to do 3D? Are you going to keep the same monitor? Are you going to expand and add more screens at a later date?

Then decide which card overclocks the best for the given circumstances.
 
LigTasm said:
How many 1200+ game stable 290's have you seen? Because I can't think of a single one, and I haven't seen any examples in the thousands of posts over on the OCN 290/290X club. Neither of mine went past 1125 on water, they could bench at 1150 but they weren't stable for gaming. I ended up selling the water loop and just running them on air now at 1050 with a 55% fan profile as it just wasn't worth it.
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They are out there. Seen some people running ~1225-1255mhz gaming.
People are now getting that on air with aftermarket cards shows the benefits to beefing and cleaning up the power delivery.

xoleras said:
Well that's just not true. Unless you look at some ridiculous 2 minute valley suicide run by a freak at OCN who can get a benchmark score but the card crashes 2 minutes afterwards while artifacting during the benchmark run. That is status quo for those guys. All they do is suicide runs so that data is worthless. Anyone in the know over there, knows that stability means jack shit, they jack the clocks up until an overclock is borderline unstable (with artifacts) and keep going until they get lucky enough to get a Heaven or Valley score to get into a top 30 list. In terms of real world overclocking, how many 290s have been 24/7 stable above 1200mhz as measured by review sites? None. That includes the Asus DC II 290X as well. Most reviewers can't get the DC II 290X stable past 1125-1150, which is about 150mhz above stock. This is aside from the fact that many 290X users seem to complain that they can't get very good overclocks even on water. That could be due to reference PCB, but I will say that even the GK110 reference PCB overclocks very well on water with the voltage unlock.

Whereas many review sites have overclocked the 780 well above stock, many times exceeding 1300mhz. That is 400+ Mhz above stock for a total of 20% faster than Titan performance. These cards are getting 400-500mhz above stock ON AIR. If you get a classified on water, it just gets better than that. Sorry, don't get me wrong. The 290X at 1125-1175MHz performs very very well. But in terms of overclocking headroom? The GTX 780 is proven and tried in the field by tech reviewers, and it is the better overclocker. It also performs better than the 290/X at those clockspeeds by a very good margin. If you get the right unlocked card under water, there are guys getting 24/7 stable game benchmarks higher than 1300MHz. Until a tech reviewer can get a good overclocking result to prove otherwise, the GTX 780 just has more data in support of being the superior overclocker IMO.

Don't misunderstand. I think the 290X performs great in the range of 1100-1200MHz. But in terms of overclocking past stock clockspeeds, even under water, the GTX 780 has way more proven data to substantiate being a better overclocker. And we know the GTX 780 also scales VERY VERY well in terms of performance when the clockspeeds are increased. Maybe this will change in time with a better BIOS (isn't the 290 already voltage unlocked?) or better PCBs. But this is how things are now. The 780 has way way more data in support of being the better overclocker, whereas the 290X isn't proven yet. Most reviewers hit a wall at 1100-1200mhz even with aftermarket 290X cards.
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You were just saying that people were getting 1500mhz on GTX780... now I see why you said that, trying to mislead people.
You also said 1400mhz was the highest for 290x on LN2...
 
LordEC911 said:
They are out there. Seen some people running ~1225-1255mhz gaming.
People are now getting that on air with aftermarket cards shows the benefits to beefing and cleaning up the power delivery.
Click to expand...


Seems like they are few and far between though on the reference cards. The custom PCB cards seem to be helping a lot, I'm considering trying to sell my reference cards and waiting for some more of the non-ref to come out, and the price to come back down a little. Since I'm staying on air for the time being anyways. I really like the look of that sapphire card with the three fans like the 7990 has. After they finally ironed out some of the black screen issues and BF4 was patched, I'm getting 100+ fps at 1080 Ultra with 4xMSAA and 150% scaling and on smaller or indoors maps I'm constantly at the 200fps limiter. Very fast cards for the price (I got mine when they were $385 with the discount).
 
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