[Crossfire vs SLI] 780Ti/780/290X/290 x Dual/Triple/Quad

[thilanliyan]

I also wouldn't run 3 or 4 cards on air, but that's another topic.

You can if you have them sitting outside in a Canadian winter, where I don't have to hear them!

 

[3DVagabond]

You can if you have them sitting outside in a Canadian winter, where I don't have to hear them!

True, true.

I used to live in upstate NY, so I know what cold winters are like.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Sub zero air is the poor mans water cooling, believe me, I've done it and it works great even on reference cards!

 

[Jacky60]

Is it my imagination or IS AMD pretty much pissing all over Nvidia here now and today?

 

[Fastx]

Sub zero air is the poor mans water cooling, believe me, I've done it and it works great even on reference cards!

lol
That was funny/good!

 

[Jacky60]

Agreed! Even @ $500 ea. they aren't bad value, but I wouldn't buy them until supply increases and they come back down to reasonable prices. Especially if I was going to buy more than one (unless I was going to mine, of course.). I also wouldn't run 3 or 4 cards on air, but that's another topic.

In the UK Vanilla 780 is £395, 290 is £335. I know it depends on which game you play apart from it doesn't. The 290 craps all over the 780 in most games and is a lot cheaper. But I know 780 has Physx and those amazing drivers plus the promise of Gsync for only an extra £100/$150 spend on the monitor. (I've just realised this is buyers remorse kicking in, I should have gone green, silly me).

 

[3DVagabond]

Is it my imagination or IS AMD pretty much pissing all over Nvidia here now and today?

I'm pretty sure nVidia is doing fine. They have a good customer base and that doesn't change overnight. I am interested in seeing 4th quarter market share percentages though. It seems both companies weren't prepared for something like this. AMD by not having enough supply and nVidia by never seeing the need to improve their performance. Interesting to watch what happens in the future and if they incorporate mining into their future strategies.

 

[blackened23]

In the UK Vanilla 780 is £395, 290 is £335. I know it depends on which game you play apart from it doesn't. The 290 craps all over the 780 in most games and is a lot cheaper. But I know 780 has Physx and those amazing drivers plus the promise of Gsync for only an extra £100/$150 spend on the monitor.

Erm, the 290 is even with the 780 at stock. When you overclock the GTX 780 it is 6-10% faster than the 290X (reference 780) or with a custom card it is 20-25% faster than both the Titan and R9-290X. (Ask for proof and I can provide tons of it). Just pointing this out because you stated that the 290 "craps" all over the 780. I'd say that's not the case, especially when OC'ing. Otherwise, if you're talking stock settings, the 290 vanilla is on par with the 780. 290x on par with the vanilla Titan. Overclocking changes everything and the 780 leaves the 290x in the dust, basically. Also, you say the 290 is a lot cheaper. Not so in the states. There is basically no sane reason to get an AMD card over an nvidia solution due to mining inflation, although that may not have occured in the UK yet? Perhaps mining isn't a "thing" over there. I don't know. It does seem that overclockers UK hasn't altered pricing that much, I suppose mining hasn't hit over there? ::shrug::

That said, I do predict that prices will stabilize in the next month or so in the states. Simply because litecoin difficulty has basically skyrocketed recently, so a lot of the guys that thought they would "get rich quick" will probably drop out of the mining game - and then demand will stabilize so actual gamers can buy the cards. And the smart miners will still mine and wait for LTC prices to ever slowly rise, like they did with BTC.....

Hopefully prices will stabilize in time for the custom 290/X cards that are due next month. I am rather anxious to see how well they do, because the aftermarket cards will address all of my qualms with reference and will perhaps overclock way better. Should be interesting to get some max OC aftermarket 290X vs max OC 780 aftermarket reviews when those cards hit..

 

[Jacky60]

'Pissing' being a relative term meaning short term incremental price/performance advantage (regardless of user base or profitability) in the discrete GPU space. PS Mining is a thing here but greedy Yankee capitalists are staking bigger claims quicker. The 780 costs 20% more at stock than the 290, both my 290s happily do 1050 in xfire without any throttling gaming getting to about 80c. Is a Vanilla or even a super-clocked 780 capable of beating a 290 by 20% with the 290 at 1050. Show me all the graphs you haveThere's your answer.
From HardOCP review:
The R9 290 is simply a beast. If you look at it compared to the R9 290X it is right on the heels of the 290X, for $150 cheaper. It is possible the R9 290X might have got a bump from the Beta V8 driver as well, we have to re-test it with Beta V8 driver to find out, which we are going to do in an upcoming review this week.

The performance we experienced leads us to believe, with an educated guess, that at Eyefinity resolutions and 4K the R9 290 will be faster than the GTX 780. The R9 290 series seems to excel at higher resolutions above the competition thanks to its architecture and memory subsystem. We see the R9 290 being a popular card for affordable Eyefinity gaming. If you want to get into Eyefinity gaming, and money is an issue, this is the perfect video card to start with.

We will be looking at the R9 290 in much more depth when retail custom cards hit. We feel this is the sweet-spot card for gamers, providing top-tier performance at an affordable price. The R9 290 is the new go-to card for gaming this year.

The bolded bits are the ones you should grudgingly try and digest Blackened.

 

[Fastx]

Edit

 

[blackened23]

TPU does not test the same scenes in their BF3 benchmark so you can't compare 1 benchmark run to another. You can only look at the percentages and extrapolate from that, as far as I can tell both the DC II and lightning are ~18-20% faster than Titan in all of the above charts.

Meanwhile, the 290X is 9% faster than Titan in the best overclock scenario (2nd chart) - so the DC II and lightning are faster at maximum overclocks when doing a comparison here. That said, it isn't a fair comparison since the 290 cards are reference while the NV cards are not. So, it's plausible that the aftermarket 290X cards will do better, we'll see next month.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

780 clocks aren't big, and 1300 on a R290(x) on water is a blessing so I think 1150/1200 on non reference, unless the PCB of the 290(x) is holding ti back is realistic.

Looking at the bios mods for the 780 they might play a factor here as well since 1250+ or 1300+ on quality no reference is possible there.

Face2Face got Elfs 780 Lightning which did 1350 or something on air, but with the low quality vram basically no headroom left there for the chip. Point here is Elf got a 290 or 290x on water and it's coming in slightly below 1300, hopefully he'll have comparative benchmarks for us soon.

 

[blackened23]

Yeah, those GTX 780 overclocks by TPU are pretty weak to be honest.

Anyway, are you putting your classified TI under water? I bet that will put everything on all of the above charts to shame, including the GTX 690.

 

[Fastx]

I am just looking at FPS vs Titan and clocks, yes using the 290/290x reference coolers vs. 780 on after market coolers. But just a rough ideal so will be interesting to see the AIB 290/290x performance. Also on the BF scenes got it but just throwing these charts up as a rough look at some oc vs oc near same clocks and was looking at the FPS vs Titan.

 

[l2ez4m]

... overclocking changes everything and the 780 leaves the 290x in the dust, basically.

You see, Basically if you repeat that mantra enough times - let's give it 100 times more, maybe one day it's even gonna become some plausible semi/quasi truth of yours.
But for now - here is 9 modern games on stock vs OC from proper OC oriented and reputable source - overclockers.ru. I'd say they are on par with HFR and ComputerBase (RS won't let me lie on this), even better in some aspects (indepth Oc analysis), just less known to US audience.

Clocks:

... and average results through all 9 games:

Basically - the numbers are echoing hte ones on more reliable mainstream sources.

 

[Fastx]

So I am thinking both F2F and BTF both saying maybe 1150-1200, well BF4/Mantle is the last straw/chance then for me and I am thinking now I should have acted one of those good deals I posted in the other thread.

 

[Silverforce11]

To be fair, R290X even on uber mode throttles in some games at stock, thats why it OC poorly unless you ramp up the fan cap. User results with higher fan speed (jet mode!) show it scales excellently with OCs.

 

[Fastx]

I decided to delete my post with the charts do to 290/290x reference coolers being used and SF talking about throttling on stock coolers, I think now its to misleading.

 

[SolMiester]

Isnt the 290 supposed to run at 1ghz if not throttling?, if so then the gigabyte 780 which is same clock, is the better performer. Though, I dont know what the price difference is in the UK.

 

[Gloomy]

Isnt the 290 supposed to run at 1ghz if not throttling?, if so then the gigabyte 780 which is same clock, is the better performer. Though, I dont know what the price difference is in the UK.

947Mhz

 

[SolMiester]

947Mhz

Oh, shame, thought that would be good clock for clock comparison!

 

[RaulF]

290x is 1k clock.

 

[Hdgamer]

Well this is good proof right here that these games aren't hitting any vram wall at ultra hd resolution with AA turned up!!! Great job for doing this!!!

 

[Silverforce11]

Well this is good proof right here that these games aren't hitting any vram wall at ultra hd resolution with AA turned up!!! Great job for doing this!!!

Depends on the game, a lot of the ones on that list are already dated.

 

[Kosmic1]

That's a really comprehensive review. Thanks for posting it.