PNY GTX 780 XLR8 OC Edition Video Card Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

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PNY GTX 780 XLR8 OC Edition Video Card Review - It has been 13 years since we last reviewed a PNY brand video card, but today ends that streak. We have the PNY GTX 780 XLR8 OC Edition video card, and will put it to the test against both a Radeon R9 290X and a Radeon R9 290 in our full game suite. We'll push its limits with overclocking, and check out PNY's cooling design.
 
I purchased a GeForce 4 MX 440-SE from PNY back in 2002...

The noise kills it for me. The extra-long cooler design could also be an issue for a lot of people. There are cards with better coolers on the market at the same price point. There is really no compelling reason to go with this over anything else.
 
Interesting review. An OC'd 780 manages to pull more power than a 290x !

Never been a big fan of PNY, but was curious if their QA had improved. From the reviewed sample, that tells me no...
 
I've never had a problem with PNY Products. their quality to me has always been on-par with other tech companies.

They built a pretty bad name for themselves during the Geforce 4 days. There was a high failure rate on those chips and just after they were launched PNY started Re-canting their lifetime warranty on their products to mean Lifetime being the life on the product as sold on the market (not for as long as you live), also their warranty required proof of purchase from a authorized reseller. I think they took these measures because these things also contributed to the death of their biggest competitor BFG. And from the looks of it, these policies saved the company because they are still alive and kicking and BFG... isn't :(

I remember people were pissed when their geforce 4 failed and PNY refused to replace it, never mind the fact it was 7 years old and PNY was currently selling GTX2xx cards.
 
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I picked up one of these this weekend and have been quite impressed with it. I am not experiencing the noise issue that you guys experienced, but I am still seeing what this card is fully capable of.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
I've never had a problem with PNY Products. their quality to me has always been on-par with other tech companies.

They built a pretty bad name for themselves during the Geforce 4 days. There was a high failure rate on those chips and just after they were launched PNY started Re-canting their lifetime warranty on their products to mean Lifetime being the life on the product as sold on the market (not for as long as you live), also their warranty required proof of purchase from a authorized reseller. I think they took these measures because these things also contributed to the death of their biggest competitor BFG. And from the looks of it, these policies saved the company because they are still alive and kicking and BFG... isn't :(

I remember people were pissed when their geforce 4 failed and PNY refused to replace it, never mind the fact it was 7 years old and PNY was currently selling GTX2xx cards.
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Did BFG make anything else? Because I'm pretty sure that PNY has a large market in other places. I doubt some warranty savings on an enthusiast card saved PNY.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
Did BFG make anything else? Because I'm pretty sure that PNY has a large market in other places. I doubt some warranty savings on an enthusiast card saved PNY.
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IIRC, BFG Tech also made power supplies, but nothing else. I remember the initial announcement was they were not going to make video cards anymore and just concentrate on the PSU business, then shortly thereafter they shut the whole thing down. It's a shame, I thought they were a great company. I bought nothing but BFG Tech cards after purchasing a Ti4200 until they went belly-up.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
Did BFG make anything else? Because I'm pretty sure that PNY has a large market in other places. I doubt some warranty savings on an enthusiast card saved PNY.
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BFG made power supplies and they also sold the PhysX card by Ageia. I'm not sure if anything else, keep in mind though I said that the warranty policy helped their demise, it wasn't the only thing that caused it.
 
raynman68 said:
I picked up one of these this weekend and have been quite impressed with it. I am not experiencing the noise issue that you guys experienced, but I am still seeing what this card is fully capable of.
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That is good, like we mentioned, it may have only been our card that had the issue, glad someone else with the card is not having this issue.
 
Good to see some reviews on PNY. In the past I always thought of them as the "reference card" GPU company, but it seems their custom cards are very very good. I'm just curious about this noise issue though.
 
Grady
" This is an appealing video card in terms of performance for your dollar. It makes the AMD Radeon R9 290 seem less relevant, and the R9 290X seem not as appealing somehow, and that is a hard thing to do. We look forward to evaluating further enthusiast level PNY video cards."

Your conclusion is rubbish. the R9 290 has become more relevant after the price stabilization

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202080

you are Nvidia biased while Brent Justice and David Scroth have a more balanced view. Did you even try a R9 290 OC to GTX 780 OC comparison before making such a ridiculous statement

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...1-xfx-r9-290-double-dissipation-review-8.html

R9 290 OC can easily match or beat GTX 780 OC. at 80 bucks less its a much better buy. so your conclusion is nonsense.
 
You know, this isn't the first max OC vs max OC review HardOCP has done. You could pretend these tests don't exist, which I suspect you will do (and these are better tests since they compare cards within the same test bed as a basis of comparison - and compares aftermarket to aftermarket). The card in question here (GTX 780 non TI) is beating the 290X, not the 290, because the GK110 usually does the overclocking thing better. There are no less than 3 reviews here on H showing this, what happens at stock changes entirely at overclocked settings, the GK110 is generally coming out on top with that in mind. Not to mention the reference 780 is just more elegant and refined than the reference 290.

That doesn't mean the 290 is bad, if one doesn't plan on overclocking certainly it's a good alternative. Great price/performance. To me that is offset by AMD's software which isn't worth the price discount, but back to overclocking: For enthusiasts that overclock, if you compare the best overclocked GK110 to the best overclocked Hawaii in a similar test bed, the GK110 card will generally come out on top. Not always, but the vast majority of the time, this is the case. And that has happened more than once on this very website. There's also the issue of software and features with the NV side which I feel is simply head and shoulders better than the AMD side, but that's another issue altogether.

It's all up to the buyer. If you want better software/drivers and better overclocking, NV is (IN MY OPINION) the better choice. If you value having a few more bucks in your wallet and don't mind doing without downsampling / monitor overclocking / SGSSAA / shadowplay / etc , then AMD offers a good alternative with the 290 which is priced right. Personally, I would be more excited if AMD stepped it up more on the software and features side - AMD is certainly always a great competitor in terms of performance, but software wise.....they're certainly doing way better now than they were during the 7970 days, but they aren't where they need to be. IMO. Hopefully they keep plugging away to improve in that respect.
 
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raghu78 said:
Grady
" This is an appealing video card in terms of performance for your dollar. It makes the AMD Radeon R9 290 seem less relevant, and the R9 290X seem not as appealing somehow, and that is a hard thing to do. We look forward to evaluating further enthusiast level PNY video cards."

Your conclusion is rubbish. the R9 290 has become more relevant after the price stabilization

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202080

you are Nvidia biased while Brent Justice and David Scroth have a more balanced view. Did you even try a R9 290 OC to GTX 780 OC comparison before making such a ridiculous statement

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...1-xfx-r9-290-double-dissipation-review-8.html

R9 290 OC can easily match or beat GTX 780 OC. at 80 bucks less its a much better buy. so your conclusion is nonsense.
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FYI, I wrote that part of the conclusion myself. I stand by my statements and our conclusions in this review. I stand by Grady's conclusion in this evaluation, and his testing was spot on. I do not take kindly to insulting our editors, two people's input has gone into this conclusion, we are both on the same page r.e. the outcome.

Data in this review shows the PNY 780 performing better than R9 290. Like was said in the conclusion, the 780 vs. 290 started at equal competition, but that has changed, the results tell a different outcome now.
 
Brent_Justice said:
FYI, I wrote that part of the conclusion myself. I stand by my statements and our conclusions in this review. I stand by Grady's conclusion in this evaluation, and his testing was spot on. I do not take kindly to insulting our editors, two people's input has gone into this conclusion, we are both on the same page r.e. the outcome.

Data in this review shows the PNY 780 performing better than R9 290. Like was said in the conclusion, the 780 vs. 290 started at equal competition, but that has changed, the results tell a different outcome now.
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Brent I respectfully disagree with your conclusion that the 780 is a faster card than R9 290.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...5715-pny-geforce-gtx-780-oc-3gb-review-7.html

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...5715-pny-geforce-gtx-780-oc-3gb-review-7.html

I even more strongly disagree with the statement that R9 290 is now less relevant when it competes with GTX 780 at 80 bucks less.
 
Brent_Justice said:
That is good, like we mentioned, it may have only been our card that had the issue, glad someone else with the card is not having this issue.
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One of my two in SLi is this PNY and I don't have the noise/whine issue either. Mine is quiet, cool and fast. Overclocks awesomely. I paid less I think also, like $480 from Tiger Direct.
 
I have two of these cards in SLI. Neither of them has the coil whine issue, although I can't overclock them worth a damn. Still they're fast and I've never had any issues with them.
 
Looks like a good card. stock R290X does not OC very well, so not sure why that was brought up unless that changed from the first wave of reviews.
 
xoleras said:
If you value having a few more bucks in your wallet and don't mind doing without downsampling / monitor overclocking / SGSSAA / shadowplay / etc , then AMD offers a good alternative with the 290 which is priced right.
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A quick correction for you, the 290(x) is capable of monitor overclocking as I'm using mine to run 120hz @ 1440p. You need only use the pixel clock patcher to enable that function. Pretty sure downsampling can be made to work as well, but I haven't tried it. Shadowplay and PhysX are the main things you'll miss out on if you don't have an Nvidia card.
 
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