290 Crossfire Vs. 780 SLI Vs. 780Ti

[richiegore]

Hi all,



I've been mulling over the following choice, see end of post, for some time, please remember these are UK prices so please no references to the egg and price gouging!



There are so many factors at play between AMD and NVIDIA right now that genuinely choosing between the two is really hard. GSync seems really amazing to me but I have a dell u2711 (1440p IPS) which I will unlikely replace. As I won't be using gsync, is adaptive vsync any good or a waste of time? I wish games would just all support triple buffering and it wouldn't really be an issue... I know there is till lag but it's not much unless you competitively gaming... I also kind of like the Shield but I think the screen seems to be too small on the current one and streaming over WiFi would require me to get a new router and even then it has issues....



Similarly Mantle has alot of promise and if the current generation of consoles last as long as the last then it will remain relevant for quite some time! Also I like the idea of true audio and the extra gig of vram... Finally they seem to scale a good bit better than SLI these days?



I have some technical issues though, I have a 2500k @ 4.5 GHz which should be adequate but I only have a PCI Gen2 x16 lanes on a Gigabyte UD4 to share with the two cards (x8, x8). I worry that it will limit the 290s performance due to the lack of crossfire bridges and reduce the advantage that the new crossfire has over SLI... That said I could get an ivybridge processor to enable Gen 3 or upgrade my cpu/mobo in the future as I do do some CPU intensive rendering work. Additionally, I have an Corsair AX850 Gold, I'm a little worried the 290s extra power draw vs the 780s will push it too far? Anyone have any experience with 290s on a similar psu?



Finally noise is an issue for me, it seems the 290s are a bit noisier under load due to the extra wattage being dissipated, anyone have a 290 windforce? I want a near silent idle as my PC is on my desk that's why I chose the windforce. I had an evga 780 acx and the fan wouldn't go below 1300rpm and I returned it, it was quiet under load though, so I won't buy any classifieds etc...



I want these cards to last me a long time as other factors will be limiting my spend on computers in future, this will be my last big spend! Ps I may be a bit slow at posting as I am a bit busy at the moment!



Thanks,

Richard







Gigabyte windforce 290 crossfire @

£736



Gigabyte windforce 780 SLI @

£792



Gigabyte windforce 780Ti @

£528

 

[KaRLiToS]

Obviously the best is R9 290 CrossFire or GTX 780 SLI

 

[Majcric]

Grab blower style 780's for sli.

 

[richiegore]

Yea, but in certain games like battlefield and bioshock infinite the Ti seems like a beast, especially with a bit of an oc... What is it about those games, the heavy use of shaders or what? Are they a sign of what's to come from a game design and performance point of view?

 

[richiegore]

Likewise crysis 3, I would think a forward looking game, is faster on NVIDIA... Unless you hit 4k when the tables are most definitely turned.... I can't see myself going 4k soon though, my current monitor is very nice!

 

[Majcric]

The ti is a beast, but it can't pass crossfire or the sli combo's you mentioned. It isn't even close

 

[krumme]

Hi all,



I've been mulling over the following choice, see end of post, for some time, please remember these are UK prices so please no references to the egg and price gouging!



There are so many factors at play between AMD and NVIDIA right now that genuinely choosing between the two is really hard. GSync seems really amazing to me but I have a dell u2711 (1440p IPS) which I will unlikely replace. As I won't be using gsync, is adaptive vsync any good or a waste of time? I wish games would just all support triple buffering and it wouldn't really be an issue... I know there is till lag but it's not much unless you competitively gaming... I also kind of like the Shield but I think the screen seems to be too small on the current one and streaming over WiFi would require me to get a new router and even then it has issues....



Similarly Mantle has alot of promise and if the current generation of consoles last as long as the last then it will remain relevant for quite some time! Also I like the idea of true audio and the extra gig of vram... Finally they seem to scale a good bit better than SLI these days?



I have some technical issues though, I have a 2500k @ 4.5 GHz which should be adequate but I only have a PCI Gen2 x16 lanes on a Gigabyte UD4 to share with the two cards (x8, x8). I worry that it will limit the 290s performance due to the lack of crossfire bridges and reduce the advantage that the new crossfire has over SLI... That said I could get an ivybridge processor to enable Gen 3 or upgrade my cpu/mobo in the future as I do do some CPU intensive rendering work. Additionally, I have an Corsair AX850 Gold, I'm a little worried the 290s extra power draw vs the 780s will push it too far? Anyone have any experience with 290s on a similar psu?



Finally noise is an issue for me, it seems the 290s are a bit noisier under load due to the extra wattage being dissipated, anyone have a 290 windforce? I want a near silent idle as my PC is on my desk that's why I chose the windforce. I had an evga 780 acx and the fan wouldn't go below 1300rpm and I returned it, it was quiet under load though, so I won't buy any classifieds etc...



I want these cards to last me a long time as other factors will be limiting my spend on computers in future, this will be my last big spend! Ps I may be a bit slow at posting as I am a bit busy at the moment!



Thanks,

Richard







Gigabyte windforce 290 crossfire @

£736



Gigabyte windforce 780 SLI @

£792



Gigabyte windforce 780Ti @

£528

Regarding the noise perspective:

I am so extremely sensitive to noise - especially at idle, that i unplug my gfx physically for months when i dont play. That also makes sure i dont waste to much time gaming.

My take in your problem is, you need water cooling. That way you can get a solution where you can really control the fans to a minimum when not gaming - eg. down to about 300 rpm. Under load you can really keep it low also.

I know its a mess to build, but blower style fans is to loud at idle especially 2 of them - no matter the quality - they need to keep a steady rpm. And the open style blowers is also noisy at idle because you have 2 or 3 fans going.

Noise reception is so personal and dependant on background noise. You need to find your acceptance level first. Get some reference points with eg old gear.

 

[Silverforce11]

There's a lot of questions in there..

1. You do NOT want two open fan cards of that caliber in your case, that is a lot of heat to deal with and the top card is going to suffocate. Its going to require a lot of positive & directed airflow in your case to keep them in check, so if you feel your case is up to it, go for it, otherwise its generally not a good idea.

2. Avoid Gigabyte R290, they have a poor heatpipe design with 2 pipes not making contact, so they had to add a shim for it. Its operating poorly so the fans have to get very noisy to keep it cool at stock, in single card configs. I hate to imagine how it is in dual cards.

3. That doesn't leave many options.. 55% fanspeed reference r290 isn't too bad for noise but they will run at 95C in CF at those fanspeeds, and that just suck due to extra power wasted on leakage at those temps. So i cannot recommend them either.

4. Reference 780 SLI is a better way to go if your case doesn't have good airflow. If it does, then consider a better aftermarket R290, like the Sapphire Tri-X, which basically doesn't GAF at all about the power hungry Hawaii and run so cool and quiet.

5. Re: Adaptive vsync, I really liked using it on my 670, its one of the best features NV have released. For AMD, if you want that, you have to use a 3rd party tweaker tool Radeon Pro (which has other nice functions besides dynamic vsync or frame time controls). Both work very nice.

 

[richiegore]

I have a hp blackbird which is pretty open and has a chamber directing a 120mm fan at the gpus. I think it should be ok. I'm not sure if the windforce is actually running badly due to the heat pipe issue, I think its just the extra wattage from the 290s... It seems to be on par with everything but the tri x which I won't buy due to the 2 year warranty...



I had a reference 7970 before the 780 ACX and found it fine noise wise at idle but too noisy during gaming. The ACX was the opposite! I can't fit a big enough radiator in the blackbird to cool two GPUs unfortunately... Only the CPU..

 

[richiegore]

Thanks for all the advice so far!

 

[Silverforce11]

It's the heatpipe issue, because its a 3 fan massive cooler setup that performs much worse than a two fan much smaller XFX DD cooler. 290s don't consume much more wattage at stock than 780ti, certainly not to cause such a difference for the WF.. if it was properly designed.

They sent out 30 WF R290/X with the raw heatpipes only, 2 had no contact, it performed horribly per Computerbase.de, throttling at stock and overheating. Their fix is to add a copper shim.. not optimal at all. I have lost all respect for Gigabyte due to this.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I would sell your 1440 screen and go 780/Ti + G-Sync, but that's just me. I don't think there is a need to dump all that heat and noise into my environment when single + G-Sync will give a better overall experience without the downsides of MGPU. After G-Sync that just seems so 'brute force' and stupid really, like sticking with an old processor and running it far too hard trying to get what a newer, less power hungry and noisy solution would offer. But again, that's just me. I'd go single 780 and bide my time for G-Sync, I say that because that is exactly what I'm doing :|

Yea, but in certain games like battlefield and bioshock infinite the Ti seems like a beast, especially with a bit of an oc... What is it about those games, the heavy use of shaders or what? Are they a sign of what's to come from a game design and performance point of view?

2880 Ti shaders vs 4608 780 SLI shaders, it's no contest especially since they have the same ROP and BUS configuration.

I just came off 470 SLI and then 7950 CF and I have no plans to go MGPU at this time. Outside of the obvious, heat and noise increase from running two cards, you often don't actually gain much in the way of settings. This is because of AFR, frame times, and min fps not being as effectively increased as avg.

You have an i5, which means you're probably only going to have a two slot spacing option, meaning aftermarket open air will not perform the best generally, and 780 Reference is far and away a much better option because the reference cooler on the 780 is far better than the reference cooler on the 290. I think there are too many cons though for either, with Nvidia scaling isn't quite as good as with AMD, with AMD you have too many quarks like having to disable ULPS.

If I had to pick one, and I personally wouldn't pick either I'd have to go with 780 SLI. The reference cooler is just too good to ignore for MGPU, and the extra cost of trying to get enough flow and quite at the same time for aftermarket solutions erases any savings you may have had going with 290 CF.

 

[richiegore]

780s seem great alright but I worry about the effect mantle will have over the next few years... If I go dual card I'll be keeping them for at least three years I think!

 

[BallaTheFeared]

No way should you ever invest in MGPU with the idea of sticking with them for several years. It would make a lot more sense to just go single and upgrade again on the new node, rather than try to hold on to old tech past it's prime.

 

[Silverforce11]

Why would you worry, its not as if Mantle would adversely effect NV cards, there is going to be a DX path in games for a long long time to come.

 

[richiegore]

Hmm... Will look into the windforce issue further, I am an engineer so will evaluate it properly....



Bella, I know exactly what your saying about gsync but I do alot of image work and can't see an IPS gsync monitor with 99% adobe rgb colour gamey for quite some time. Also its a new monitor on my desk which is hard to justify to the misses!

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Then keep it, buy a 780 and use the money you saved not getting the second to get a G-Sync panel, should work out to similar total cost.

It's not like you can't use both screens, one to game and one to work

Heck even I use two screens and I do no such thing as work!

 

[richiegore]

Also, I will have a space between the gpus, my motherboard it atx and set up like that. I think if you look into it my CPU is still very viable against a haswell at 4.1-4.2... Hyperthreading is not that effective in mode scenarios too..

 

[richiegore]

I don't have space on my desk for two screens, the Asus 1440p monitor looks nice but its TN :'(

 

[richiegore]

I know mantle won't eliminate dx but if it makes ports like deus ex human revolution run 20-40% better it'll be a big deal....

 

[richiegore]

I think I'll have to wait till mantle is out, its such a wild card at the moment...

 

[Majcric]

I personally wouldn't let mantle be a factor in this decision. If/when mantle does take off it will be limited to certain games and I feel it will also need some time to mature. Maybe by 20nm/16nm mantle would be something to think about.

And as for Dues ex I really can't imagine needing extra performance in that game. It can be ran maxed out quite easily with high fps

 

[aaksheytalwar]

I say go with a gtx 770 for $350 or 290 custom for $450 and upgrade after another 1.5 years. That would be best for you.

 

[richiegore]

I had a 7970 which I replaced with an EVGA 780 ACX, both are equal or faster than a 770... I returned the acx because it was too noisy at idle with a minimum fan rpm of 1300... The acx also seemed a bit laggy for me in bioshock infinite... Maybe it was because of vsync, I'm not sure...

 

[richiegore]

That's why I'm looking for more power with a dual card setup or the 780ti...