290X vs 780Ti2016

[csbin]

Core i7 5960X (Haswell-E) @ 4.4 GHz on all eight cores

AMD Radeon Software Crimson Driver 16.5.2 / 16.5.2.1

NVIDIA GeForce Driver 368.13




Software benchmark suite

• (DX12) Hitman (2016)
• (DX12) Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016)
• (DX12) Ashes of Singularity
• (DX11) The Division
• (DX11) Far Cry Primal
• (DX11) Fallout 4
• (DX11) Anno 2205 (2016)
• (DX11) Battlefield Hardline
• (DX11) Grand Theft Auto V
• (DX11) The Witcher III
• (DX11) 3DMark 11
• (DX11) 3DMark 2013 FireStrike
• (DX11) Thief
• (DX11) Alien: Isolation
• (DX11) LOTR Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

 

[GIS]

I built my first PC in 2011, I was 19, and it sports i5-2500, Radeon HD 6950 (2GB). Up to this day, my rig still runs everything I wanted except I can't run Hard West without overheating my GPU.

With all these rumors about Nvidia dropping supports for older cards, I'm not sure if I really want to grab that GTX 1070. But then on the other hand, AMD seems to take forever to release their new Polaris cards, I just want to play some games and have fun..Maybe this is too much to ask for nowadays.

Well, this may be off-topic, but I was trying to wait after Computex to ask this question,

Will my i5 2500 might potentially bottle-necking the new GTX 1070 on the Nvidia side and the new R9 490 on the AMD side?

Games I'm looking forward to play are:
Hard West
XCOM 1 & 2
The Flame in the Flood
The Banner Saga 1 & 2

Also League of Legends, HAHA, I know this game won't be an issue to new GPUs.

All advice are welcome and appreciated!

 

[nurturedhate]

Really wish I could have found a 290x at MSRP when I bought my 780ti in Jan/Feb 2014. Most of the 290x were going for close to $700 while I paid around $570 for the 780ti then sold AC black flag.

Hawaii and fortunes would be completely different today if it wasn't for that terrible reference cooler.

 

[Stuka87]

Pretty much proves that nVidia does not build their cards for the future, and they do not optimize their drivers nearly as long as AMD does.

 

[nanaki333]

seems like such a modest GPU for a 5960x.

Pretty much proves that nVidia does not build their cards for the future, and they do not optimize their drivers nearly as long as AMD does.

i thought that too. like the dx12 benches for the gtx 900 series vs r9 200 series.... wow...

 

[piesquared]

Really wish I could have found a 290x at MSRP when I bought my 780ti in Jan/Feb 2014. Most of the 290x were going for close to $700 while I paid around $570 for the 780ti then sold AC black flag.

Hawaii and fortunes would be completely different today if it wasn't for that terrible reference cooler.

Sounds familiar. This is the exact quandary anyone interested in the 1080 must be having. Terrible reference cooler, way above MSRP, and except faced with NV's historical short term lifespan of their products.

 

[tviceman]

Pretty much proves that nVidia does not build their cards for the future, and they do not optimize their drivers nearly as long as AMD does.

All I think that it shows is that Kepler was short sited and short lived with optimizations. Fermi was more forward thinking than Evergreen was, but that was so long ago no one brings that up.

 

[RussianSensation]

Pretty much proves that nVidia does not build their cards for the future, and they do not optimize their drivers nearly as long as AMD does.

TPU's GTX1080 benchmarks had a dirty little secret.

1440P

280X = 780 :sneaky:
290 (throttling 290) > 780Ti
390 > 970
390X (non-throttling 290X) > 980
Fury X = 980Ti

4K

280X > 780
290 > 970, 780Ti
390X > 980
Fury X > 980Ti

Unfortunately for AMD, they will not be able to capitalize on this in the $380-$700 space since they do not have Vega 10/11 cards out in June. However, if Polaris 10/11 live up to reasonable expectations, it will be very hard to recommend a new NV GPU below $380 price level.

"R9 series graphics cards sees AMD claw back some market share from Nvidia.
AMD's just happily shared some good news for the once leading graphics card brand. According to research firm Mercury Research, AMD's share of the discrete graphics market increased by 3.2 per cent quarter on quarter. This takes AMD's total market share to 29.4 per cent."
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/419711,amd-enjoys-a-rare-market-share-increase.aspx#ixzz493pGEeP8

Sadly, most of these gains are coming in the APU space.

"Breaking it down further, this is made up of a 1.8 per cent increase in desktop graphics, to 22.7 per cent"

Remarkable that even with Fermi, Kepler and sub-980Ti cards falling apart in the last 6 months, NV continues to command almost an 80% market share on the desktop. :sneaky:

If AMD manages to provide 90% of 1070's performance for $299 and throws in a AAA game such as Total War Warhammer with Polaris 10, it would be easy to recommend for 1080p 60Hz gamers where spending extra is just $ wasted.

 

[SPBHM]

something else that is apparent checking recent reviews is that the 780 Ti doesn't look good from power usage perceptive, it's around there with the Hawaii cards but it's slower...

while the 970 looks great on this metric (using 100W less in many situations while performing similarly)...


what killed the 290X/290 was not its performance anyway, the high power characteristics combined with weak coolers at launch and even more availability/mining with the variability of pricing didn't help it so much to establish it as a competitor to the 780 and 970 later on...

 

[sirmo]

Pretty much proves that nVidia does not build their cards for the future, and they do not optimize their drivers nearly as long as AMD does.

You're right. They don't build them with future in mind, nor with consumers in mind.

Look at G-sync. It's a disaster. AMD and Intel are fine using FreeSync. But Nvidia has to be different and use a proprietary standard. Which adds premium to the monitors and serves for no good purpose other than to lock Nvidia users to their cards.

I know I am done buying Nvidia cards.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Pretty much proves that nVidia does not build their cards for the future, and they do not optimize their drivers nearly as long as AMD does.

Amd/ati was usually first to dump their old cards.

But now they're still selling gcn 1.0, so that's not happened yet.

 

[selni]

A 290X with a decent cooler was close to the 780 ti on release even wasn't it? Hawaii was always a very strong chip hampered by a bad rep from the reference cooler.

I wonder what the last few years would have looked like without the various small execution issues leading to misleading impressions of hawaii and fury etc.

 

[selni]

seems like such a modest GPU for a 5960x.




i thought that too. like the dx12 benches for the gtx 900 series vs r9 200 series.... wow...

Ashes is fair and is actually a working game, but TR DX12 is slower than 11 on most highend setups and hitman is just a buggy mess in general. Wouldn't get too worked up about those yet.

 

[showb1z]

Ashes is fair and is actually a working game, but TR DX12 is slower than 11 on most highend setups and hitman is just a buggy mess in general. Wouldn't get too worked up about those yet.

Hitman had a rocky start, but at least on my card DX12 has been working fine for a good while now. Over 50 hours played.

 

[RussianSensation]

Amd/ati was usually first to dump their old cards.

But now they're still selling gcn 1.0, so that's not happened yet.

Driver support, you are right, but ATI's/AMD's cards easily aged better.

9700/9800 series > GeForce 5
x800/850 series > GeForce 6
X1900/1950 series > GeForce 7

The price/performance of GTX200/400/500 was much worse than AMD's, which allowed a gamer to purchase a cheaper AMD card and save $$$ towards a future next gen card upgrade. The one major win for NV is GeForce 8 (8800GT/S/X cards). We will see how 980Ti does but 970/970 are already lagging vs. their clear dominance over Hawaii 1.5 years ago.

In April 2016's testing, a $299 unlocked 6950 is only 9% behind a $499 GTX580. That's pretty sad. Even if Fermi maintained longer driver support, who cares because the smarter AMD buyer of that era resold the HD6000 card and bought a much faster Kepler or GCN or Maxwell/R9 200 series, leaving flagship Fermi in the dust. GTX470/GTX560-570 series became VRAM crippled as most cards only had 1-1.28GB of VRAM vs. 6950's 2GB.

$299 280X is now nearly as good as a $500-650 780
$399 290 is now as good a $699 780Ti
$300-320 290X is now nearly as good as a $550 980
$650 R9 295X2 offers 85% of the performance of a 1080, and R9 295X2 cost $650 in the US for at least 5-6 months from the time 980 launched.

There are many other match ups that show that Kepler aged like cancer: $280 HD 7950 V2 OC vs. $450 680 2GB OC.

As more non-GWs/UE4 DX12 affiliated games show up, 970/980's lead over Hawaii should diminish, while cards like 780/780Ti will look even worse.

 

[guskline]

I agree with RS with this suggestion. Polaris should MATCH GTX 1070 and bark about Async Compute even if Polaris is only $20 less expensive.

Those of us who read and reread these forums, know that over time, the Radeon Group (new name??) cards catch up and usually surpass the equivalent Nvidia card but it takes too long for impetuous buyers.

Look at the title of this thread. How long ago was it when the GTX 780TI (I actually owned a 780 Classified) and the GTX 290X came out?

Something along the lines of Polaris matches GTX 1070 now AND has true Async Compute to pull ahead in the future."

I consider myself to be somewhat educated on PCs and I must admit the Nvidia Hype on GTX 1080 really gets you stirred up especially when you see the jump it had in fps on a bevy of games, even compared to my beloved GTX 980TI SC. I know I can OC my 980 TI some but so can the GTX 1080.

Polaris, in my opinion, WILL be the big battleground. I'm not even sure AMD needs a much lower price BUT they better match the GTX 1070 in fps. Telling a wild-eyed gamer with @$350-$400 in his pocket burning up that "well our card is 90% as fast today but in 1 -2 years it will beat the faster card fails most of the time.

P.S. I can afford to wait for Big Vega because my strategy is to get away from multi card setups with a big powerful single card, but seriously the GTX 1080 right now sure looks good to replace my 2 R9 290s in CF.

I'm counting on Vega. I hope AMD is up to the task but my purchase doesn't really affect them to any degree. Having a Polaris that matches a GTX 1070 in performance with Async Compute at or about the same price really will affect the bottom line.

 

[RussianSensation]

I think a lot more gamers have started listening to advice and paying attention to Kepler falling off a cliff and GCN performing well in many DX12 titles. AMD has to be careful by not pricing Polaris 10 too low, unless it's only as fast as a 390X. Their best course of action is to see where 1070 prices are June 10th-15th, then launch P10 June 19th according to market prices of 1070. If the cheapest 1070 is $420 in retail, then P10 at $350 with say a AAA game is very appealing. If 1070 is $380 and P10 is $350 with no AAA game, then 1070 will likely be the card to pick due to its overclocking headroom -- something I don't expect out of P10. It's also concerning that there are no leaks of P10 gaming scores even now. Sometimes that's not a good sign.

 

[guskline]

I think a lot more gamers have started listening to advice and paying attention to Kepler falling off a cliff and GCN performing well in many DX12 titles. AMD has to be careful by not pricing Polaris 10 too low, unless it's only as fast as a 390X. Their best course of action is to see where 1070 prices are June 10th-15th, then launch P10 June 19th according to market prices of 1070. If the cheapest 1070 is $420 in retail, then P10 at $350 with say a AAA game is very appealing. If 1070 is $380 and P10 is $350 with no AAA game, then 1070 will likely be the card to pick due to its overclocking headroom -- something I don't expect out of P10. It's also concerning that there are no leaks of P10 gaming scores even now. Sometimes that's not a good sign.

RussianSensation: Your economic advice is stellar and very sound. Moreover, I've bought Kepler cards AND AMD cards so I won't argue the sound economic advice. You sound like some of my Eco profs back in the old days of my undergraduate career at Lehigh University!

I guess my point is we have largely become an instantaneous society of the fastest at this moment.

Look at the GTX 970. Heck I thought the failure to mention the fact that the card did not have 4 Exact G of Vram was reprehensible and sent mine back to be replaced by a R9 290. However it took some reading and thought. On FPS at the time GTX 970 won.

But TONS did not send the card back and kept buying them in droves. WHY? because it scored better fps in the games out at the time vs AMD cards. BTW KUDOS to Nvidia Engineers in the memory compression area.

Take the top 10 most popular games out now including the big one to come out. Polaris needs to match GTX 1070.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Will polaris match a 1070 though? Wasn't it supposed to be aimed at a lower tier?

 

[Erithan13]

Will polaris match a 1070 though? Wasn't it supposed to be aimed at a lower tier?

I don't know about others, but for me the 1070 is looking considerably less impressive than it was even a week ago now we have solid benchmarks for the 1080 and we know how cut down the 1070 is. I'm still not optimistic enough about P10 to think it's going to match the 1070 although I think there's a good chance it's going to be close enough to cause a headache for NV if AMD can price it right and make sure it's available to buy. Basically 4870/50 vs GTX280/60 all over again, if P10 delivers and AMD plays their cards right they could really steal the thunder from the 1070 launch.

With the profitability of eth mining at the moment Polaris 10 could well be poised to be a runaway success if it's in any way competent at it (no reason I know of to assume it won't be aside from initial driver support).

 

[Leyawiin]

1440P
390X (non-throttling 290X) > 980

They're dead even (just like they were at TPU in March... and January... and November. All they do is trade that 1% "advantage" back and forth.

We will see how 980Ti does but 970/970 are already lagging vs. their clear dominance over Hawaii 1.5 years ago.

AMD vastly improved their drivers. Nvidia should have never had the performance advantage it did with Maxwell at the beginning. The fact they did is more on AMD than NV's supposed faltering driver support now.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

I don't know about others, but for me the 1070 is looking considerably less impressive than it was even a week ago now we have solid benchmarks for the 1080 and we know how cut down the 1070 is.

It's still 75% of a 1080, that puts it about par with a 980Ti.

Maybe the 256bit gddr5 will hold back the aftermarket versions a little, but it should still be pretty good for $400.

 

[tential]

They're dead even (just like they were at TPU in March... and January... and November. All they do is trade that 1% "advantage" back and forth.



AMD vastly improved their drivers. Nvidia should have never had the performance advantage it did with Maxwell at the beginning. The fact they did is more on AMD than NV's supposed faltering driver support now.

November 2015:

Looks like Fury X is gaining on the 980Ti now. That's a HUGE gain since release til now from Fury X.

Too bad TPU doesn't include Nano... That would destroy the high end cards in perf/$

Looking at current graphs, it's only a matter of time before Fury X > 980Ti, and Nano/Fury = 980Ti.

As always with AMD, too little too late.

 

[Mopetar]

Pretty much proves that nVidia does not build their cards for the future, and they do not optimize their drivers nearly as long as AMD does.

I think it has more to do with AMD not making the kinds of sweeping architectural changes that necessitate abandoning driver updates for older cards. The 390/X are also both still GCN 1.1 parts so the 290/X get the benefits of a long-lived architecture.

 

[sirmo]

AMD/ATI always had more forward looking chips. I mean they supported Tessellation since 2001, this is nothing new.