SAPPHIRE Radeon R9 290X 4GB 512-Bit GDDR5 Tri-X OC Video Card $260

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Ducman69

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http://slickdeals.net/f/7992957-sap...edition-260-after-20-rebate-free-shipping?v=1

$260 is cheapest I've seen to date for this.

Sapphire_R9_290X_Tri-X_01.jpg
 
Getting tired of deal hunting for a new card, might actually buy this. My current Tri-X has been good to me.
Although I despise everything about Hawaii.

edit: DOES NOT work with student discount because it's a gift deal (Dirt Rally).
 
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Interesting. Too bad Amazon won't price match. Have some Amazon giftcard balance I could use.
 
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Bit on this.

Just got the Asus MG279q monitor (2560x1440, 144hz, freesync), and my 7970 just wasn't cutting it. I hoping I can get a good overclock on this card and now I will be able to try out freesync.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
Getting tired of deal hunting for a new card, might actually buy this. My current Tri-X has been good to me.
Although I despise everything about Hawaii.

edit: DOES NOT work with student discount because it's a gift deal (Dirt Rally).
Click to expand...

Whelp back to studying instead of blowing money away then :D
 
I was going to get this card to replace my GTX 580, It was this or a 970gtx. I did research and almost decided on that it wasn't worth to spend an extra $50 for a 970 and then I remember something while I was looking at post, benchmarks and info. I had forgotten that AMD stopped putting ramdac inside most of their cards so this would not work with my Sony FW900, There's some adapters with ramdac chipset but most of those barely break 125mhz, nowhere near the 400mhz that comes in video cards.

So it brings me to few choices.
a) Buy this and over-stretch budget to prob get a monitor just to use it, but not necessarily what I want,
b) Gtx 970
c) Wait for pascal and get that when it's time to overhaul my pc completely.

I like Nvidia stuff but I was going to try AMD for the first time. The cost to acquire was $50 cheaper than the 970gtx on sale, I looked at benchmarks and it traded blows with the Gtx970. Nvidia did not compete price wise to this deal.The whole monitor thing might deter me from getting this thou.
 
I would recommend against "trying AMD for the first time" especially after you've been exposed to Nvidia products for so long. But it's definitely time to retire fermi...
 
ellover009 said:
I was going to get this card to replace my GTX 580, It was this or a 970gtx. I did research and almost decided on that it wasn't worth to spend an extra $50 for a 970 and then I remember something while I was looking at post, benchmarks and info. I had forgotten that AMD stopped putting ramdac inside most of their cards so this would not work with my Sony FW900, There's some adapters with ramdac chipset but most of those barely break 125mhz, nowhere near the 400mhz that comes in video cards.

So it brings me to few choices.
a) Buy this and over-stretch budget to prob get a monitor just to use it, but not necessarily what I want,
b) Gtx 970
c) Wait for pascal and get that when it's time to overhaul my pc completely.

I like Nvidia stuff but I was going to try AMD for the first time. The cost to acquire was $50 cheaper than the 970gtx on sale, I looked at benchmarks and it traded blows with the Gtx970. Nvidia did not compete price wise to this deal.The whole monitor thing might deter me from getting this thou.
Click to expand...

I'd just go ahead and upgrade to a 970. Sell the Metal Gear Solid game to recoup some of the price difference. The 970 will be a substantial upgrade over your 580.
 
If you have a cold room get a AMD they tend to work like heaters :)
I had to buy a wall cooler for my kids room as his card would heat up that room in the summer like a hair dryer on high room is in a bad spot light hits it all day but that card wouldn't let the A/C cool his room down.

I have no chip loyalty I buy whatever I feel is best at the time I really like my GTX 970 not even running it on a new board just upgraded my older system for another year or two of life and its runs everything great and much cooler.

I don't think AMD cards are bad but they are hot running.
 
losttech said:
If you have a cold room get a AMD they tend to work like heaters :)
I had to buy a wall cooler for my kids room as his card would heat up that room in the summer like a hair dryer on high room is in a bad spot light hits it all day but that card wouldn't let the A/C cool his room down.

I have no chip loyalty I buy whatever I feel is best at the time I really like my GTX 970 not even running it on a new board just upgraded my older system for another year or two of life and its runs everything great and much cooler.

I don't think AMD cards are bad but they are hot running.
Click to expand...

Well I read reviews and this non reference 290x runs cool enough, it was only the reference design that was supposed to be horrible with 95c temp design, The only reason this looked better had my monitors worked with it was you get the card $50 cheaper and you get 3 games from the never settle program and the rally game from newegg, even then with the money save you can get metal gear if you really wanted it on top of the other games.

Is AMD really that distinct for someone who always used Nvidia? I assemble and program all of my computers so I know my way around a pc, and looked around the forums and saw the things that ppl complained about. Example gta v both nvidia ppl and amd ppl had some sort of stuttering issued with some cards/system combos, and some ppl got shut downs or performance issues on the 290x and it was due to improper PSU and or even that low power setting not getting along with over-clocked factory cards and then chocking the card volt wise once the game switched to 2d clocks.
It just seemed like Nvidia to me could not compete price wise, except my position that I am at, where it seems like I am forced to spend more either way or wait.
This has held up surprisingly well. Farcry 4 has forced it thou, and GTA while I can run a lot of things in respectable settings my view distance is not the best and the textures are limited to normal. I can push 40-50fps but sometimes it doesn't feel butter smooth. I wonder if I should just suck it up and wait for pascal.
Doesn't the 290x hold up better at higher rez due to having more accessible fast memory? I been forced to step down to 1920x1200@85hz, but I can run 2304x1440 @ 80hz.
 
ellover009 said:
Is AMD really that distinct for someone who always used Nvidia? I assemble and program all of my computers so I know my way around a pc, and looked around the forums and saw the things that ppl complained about. Example gta v both nvidia ppl and amd ppl had some sort of stuttering issued with some cards/system combos, and some ppl got shut downs or performance issues on the 290x and it was due to improper PSU and or even that low power setting not getting along with over-clocked factory cards and then chocking the card volt wise once the game switched to 2d clocks.
It just seemed like Nvidia to me could not compete price wise, except my position that I am at, where it seems like I am forced to spend more either way or wait.
This has held up surprisingly well. Farcry 4 has forced it thou, and GTA while I can run a lot of things in respectable settings my view distance is not the best and the textures are limited to normal. I can push 40-50fps but sometimes it doesn't feel butter smooth. I wonder if I should just suck it up and wait for pascal.
Click to expand...
If you're cool with tinkering then buy AMD but just be aware you will almost certainly have to tinker.

AMD doesn't do certain things that Nvidia does. AMD has certain problems that Nvidia doesn't. Driver quirks, missing features, third party tools required, etc.
It's called culture shock.

Some quick examples:
No adaptive sync / FXAA (and more?) in CCC, you can use these with RadeonPro and a few others.
VSR only works with certain resolutions & cards, you can unlock more via registry edits.
"GeForce Experience" is replaced by the Raptr app which is all over the place.
Tessellation tweaks required via CCC.
 
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TaintedSquirrel said:
If you're cool with tinkering then buy AMD but just be aware you will almost certainly have to tinker.

AMD doesn't do certain things that Nvidia does. AMD has certain problems that Nvidia doesn't. Driver quirks, missing features, third party tools required, etc.
It's called culture shock.

Some quick examples:
No adaptive sync / FXAA (and more?) in CCC, you can use these with RadeonPro and a few others.
VSR only works with certain resolutions & cards, you can unlock more via registry edits.
"GeForce Experience" is replaced by the Raptr app which is all over the place.
Tessellation tweaks required via CCC.
Click to expand...

FXAA is an Nvidia technology. Don't expect it to ever show up in AMD drivers as AMD invented MLAA as a substitute for FXAA. Both technologies look like mayonnaise smeared on your monitor in my opinion and don't require a lot of resources.

VSR works in the drivers for the older series of cards that are going to get it as of 15.7. My HD 7950 now has VSR. Yes, it is capped for some cards due to the fact that they don't physically have the hardware for certain resolutions.

Raptr works with Nvidia cards also. And I don't use GeForce Experience or Raptr other than to capture video. I like creating my own settings for a game. Geforce Experience keeps downloading the wrong driver for my Nvidia card. Raptr keeps spamming me about upgrading to the wrong AMD driver also.

Tessellation tweaks are required for certain Nvidia GameWorks titles to get the proper frame rate as AMD didn't concentrate on tessellation when designing Hawaii.
 
Well now I know why you have so many problems with graphics in your games ;)
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
If you're cool with tinkering then buy AMD but just be aware you will almost certainly have to tinker.

AMD doesn't do certain things that Nvidia does. AMD has certain problems that Nvidia doesn't. Driver quirks, missing features, third party tools required, etc.
It's called culture shock.
Click to expand...

Also, AMD's drivers will generally be rock solid while NVidia's tend to be more crashy. I haven't had a game CTD in close to decade due to AMD GPU drivers, where as NVidia drivers tend to be less stable. It's enough to make me second-guess getting a 980Ti after enjoying such consistent driver stability from AMD, despite the 980Ti being the card to get.
 
Climber said:
Well now I know why you have so many problems with graphics in your games ;)
Click to expand...

Oh I never have issues with graphics in games unless running CrossfireX. AMD cards don't have issues with gaming unless it is a GameWorks title. Then it's just low FPS because of 64x tessellation, PhysX, and Nvidia encrypting the corresponding GameWorks folders to keep them from being optimized by AMD's driver team.

Now the Nvidia cards that I have love to spam that "The driver has recovered" repeatedly doing nothing but watching online video. Granted they're older, but it's not like I'm asking them to play games. I finally just yanked it and replaced it with another AMD card I had laying around for now.

AMD drivers have been rock solid since the FCAT debacle. That was the best thing that ever happened to AMD as the fix has made them faster, more stable, and simply awesome. I bet if Nvidia could figure out what is causing the driver recovery spam then their customers would be much happier also.
 
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