New Video Card Buyers Help

[mmarsh]

Ugh, I submitted a a thread a few weeks ago in this subject and now 2 more cards have been released and a major nvidia price cut to further confuses matters.

I am looking to replace my Geforce 570. I am a heavy gamer and am toying with the idea of going the 3 monitor route.

I am looking for best bang for buck, with heat/noise a consideration as I don't want a snowblower for a graphics card. Nvidia is great for this in the past, AMD not so much but AMD offers great value.

Will probably Crossfire/SLi and somepoint, but am starting with one card for the moment.


Here are the list of choices and the problems I have with each

1. R9 290x. I have read that its hot/noisy. Performance difference is small compared to 290 and $150 more expensive.

2. R9 290. Excellent Performance/Price but according to most reviews very noisy. This might have sealed the deal except that too many reviewers dinged the noise issue, seeming worse than the 290X. Maybe new drivers solve?

3. Nvidia 780. Slowest of the offerings but reasonably priced, good heat/noise issues and a excellent games bundle

4. Nvidia 780TI. Everything seems fanstatic it terms of performance, noise, heat, games bundle...but the price is like paying mob protection money. Even if it dropped as little as $50 it would be a more tempting offer but $699 is just nuts. I am hoping Nvidia will drop prices to complete close to the 290 series but there is no promise of that.

So what do you think I should do?

 

[cortexodus]

I think a lot of folks here would suggest waiting for the 3rd party cooler 290's to come out just based on sheer value vs performance. 3rd party coolers will likely alleviate any noise concerns. I suggest this route as well based on bang for buck. I feel like the 290s are this gen's 8800GTs.

I went with the 780 because I actually do play a fair number of games that use PhysX and I had my heart set on the HOF version. The prices are not as low right now as they got for a day or so (The Asus DCU II was at $499 on Amazon and it's back up to $520 now).

*Edit to say that I replaced 570s in SLI with the 780 and have been very happy with it. I suspect the 290 or 290x would have been just as awesome excepting my desire for flying chunks of parts n' gooey bits. Not to mention future X-fire performance gains.

 

[narupls]

Honestly what I'm probably going to do is just get one 290 with an aftermarket cooler either twin frozr or windforce maybe DC2. Then get a second one down the line. It's like you said 290x has similar performance but costs a decent amount more. 780 is the slowest out of the 4 (not by that much though), but it is relatively priced and does come with games which is a potential option. 780 TI is basically highway robbery to be honest.

I'd go with an aftermarket 290 whenever they come out, either by the end of this month or next month. I've personally had both types of Nvidia and AMD cards and both have down great jobs (I don't favor one over the other), never had driver issues with AMD cards or Nvidia cards and both ran fast and cool (I never buy reference). My current card is the Windforce GTX 760 which does great for what I need it to do, but I'll probably upgrade to a single 290 in the near future.

 

[Nenu]

If you are going SLI/XFire you should be looking at aftermarket cooling.
You can fit your own, the Arctic Accelero Extreme III and Prolimatech MK-26 are available, check the space needed between the cards.
You will need sinks on the VRMs and memory too.
Or wait for aftermarket kits designed for the cards that come prefitted.

Water cooling is the best but the cost of the blocks is quite high.
The EK blocks for the 290 cards are £90 each! But they cover the memory and VRMs as well, so do a good job.

 

[Sodapopjones]

Wait for the 290's with aftermarket coolers, like the rest of us that aren't fools with our money.