A typical agenda driven answer, you have dozens and if not more posts attacking a card (960) sorely on price.
Wrong. I have not recommended
2GB cards for at least 12 months now unless they are unusual circumstances (i.e., 750Ti for a user with a low PSU). If you have followed my posting history closely, which clear you have not, you would have seen I voiced concerns about 2GB of VRAM even when 770 2GB came out, well before we even knew what Maxwell was. Already back then I advised gamers to pick up HD7950 B 3GB over 760 2GB and 7970Ghz/280X over 770 2GB. But you do not see the 2GB VRAM issue because all you see in my posts are some "AMD agenda." Similarly unlike your buddies at ABT mis-predicted, I actually bashed the 285 for high price, low VRAM, and low price/performance. This of course makes common sense to people who follow my posts because I could care less about a crappy AMD product (or NV product) and I'll call it out. You've been hanging around ABT for far too long and those AMD-shill/marketing campaigns by that site's owner have gotten to your head.
Yet remained a blind eye when the r9 290x launched at over 550+ ,plus the mining tax. That cost was supposed to allow suckers who had 3 generation old card to upgrade indefinitely!
I will address the misinformation you made in steps:
1) 290X cost less than the $650 780 and 290X outperformed it, while having more VRAM to boot. GTX960 doesn't cost less than an R9 280X and has less VRAM. Therefore, the implied comparison in how it relates to this thread is already way off base. From a price/performance point of view R9 290/290X were better than 780 but GTX960 is worse in this metric than an R9 280X or R9 290.
This bring us to point #2:
2) I do not recall recommending 290X and I specifically made many references to how it's an overpriced and irrelevant product when R9 290 came out at $399. Again, you don't remember those comments for some reason.
3) I do not recall myself recommending R9 290/290X at mining inflated prices if those prices resulted in far worse price/performance compared to 780/780Ti. You literally just made that up. Not only that, I actually recommmended that people NOT buy a reference R9 290/290X and that they should wait 1-2 months for after-market cards to come out, unless they were willing to get an after-market cooler/AIO CLC installed. By late spring/early summer of 2014 when after-market R9 290 cards fell to $350-375, of course I started recommending them over $400-450 780 3GB, $550 780 6GB and $650-700 780Ti (when looking at dual after-market 290s). All of this is just consistent with me recommending price/performance. Price/performance isn't a biased metric as you tried to paint it in your response by attacking my recommendations as "agenda."
I don't need to step away from my computer at all to recognize, blind deceptive facts.
Blind facts?
I provided a review that clearly shows that a $190-200 R9 280X that was linked in this thread is faster than a GTX960. There are also already games that I wrote about which run worse with 2GB of VRAM. It is also a fact that an after-market R9 290 is on average approximately 45-50% faster than a GTX960. So far it is you who has just called out my points as lies but provided no legitimate rebuttal against my points. Instead you chose to attack me.
One has to wonder why you don't ever follow your own advice. 1 Help AMD to increase market share...
Yet another clueless comment. In a thread where a poster created a poll asking what card we would buy assuming "all things were equal" between AMD and NV, only then I said that since I want more competition, I would choose AMD to get market share to 50/50, after which point I would flip a coin. If you don't agree that having 50/50% market share in the GPU industry is healthy, that's fine but don't call me biased for wanting that. Since not all things are equal (perf/watt, perf/mm2, compute performance, VRAM, price/performance, absolute performance, features), I do not only buy AMD cards as you seem to insinuate -- and that is because I am not blindly biased. Ever since you've joined the forums I have seen you purchase a total of 0 ATi/AMD cards. I have purchased and recommended a lot of NV cards over the years.
2 to upgrade to current generations to mine coins and upgrade for generations to come forever....FOR FREE!.
Mining has not been profitable for a long time now. While it is absolutely true that I could upgrade to new GPUs for my lifetime for free with the money I made from mining, what is also true is that I instead converted my coins to USD and transferred to my bank account to spend on things that matter A LOT more to me than videocards, such as sports, travel, higher education, etc. So really you made a point about nothing there.
Because you can't, a strawman argument. Because that was all emotion driven BS.
You missed 4-5 years of mining, not me. We have plenty of examples of people getting 2nd and now 3rd generations of videocards for free from mining funds. I don't need to prove anything to you. I know each of my 7970s made me 4 figures in profits after all electricity expenses. Also, there are plenty of legitimate reasons why I am still on my 7970s such as having a large backlog of games that 7970s are good enough for, playing at 1080p, and not seeing anything that met my criteria for 75%+ faster performance increase on a per card basis. Of course since you only selectively read my posts, you would have missed all those points that I've made over the years.
Report the post. And then explain why AMD has to drop prices launched over 2 years ago to compete with current tech/features.
Wow, it's like you just built your 1st PC. Both AMD and NV drop prices all the time depending on competition. That's how the GPU industry works. I guess you completely forgot $650 -> $499 GTX280 or $650 --> $499 GTX780?
AMD owners validated their own purchases will dismiss these key features to feel better about themselves, except for the ones that payed 500+ for them used or new and then needed water blocks, cooling system to do what Maxwell does stock.
Huh? A lot of people on this forum who paid $500-550 for 7970s or R9 290 cards did so knowing those were not great price/performance deals but because of mining it didn't matter. Others waited until prices dropped. There was a clear distinction on this forum when it came time to recommend a card for gaming vs. mining in terms of price/performance. Secondly, considering 7970Ghz smokes a 680 today in almost every modern title, in hindsight even at $500 it was a better product without mining. In today's recent titles an after-market R9 290 also smokes a 780, 7970Ghz approaches a 780 and 290X is tied to a 780Ti. Of course if one waited 6 months and got an after-market R9 290 for $350, it was a better deal than buying a new R9 290X for $550. Who is arguing that R9 290X at $550 was a great deal at launch? :hmm:
Technically you could run an R9 290, but they are mostly 280-300ish.
If the budget is strict <= $200 the option is basically an R9 280.
1. You can find an XFX R9 290 for
$255 at NCIXUS.com. That's up to 45-50% more performance than a $200 GTX960, double the VRAM, and lifetime warranty, all for $55 more.
2. A Sapphire R9 280X was already linked that is $190 + $4 shipping after $10 off coupon that ends by the end of the month.
It's interesting how you state that GTX960 is quiet but other cards are loud, instead of 960 is very quiet while other cards are louder, they are still quiet - which is actually the real truth about after-market R9 280X/290 cards.
280 is superior overall I think, the extra vram is nice but the 960 will be a better match for the i3, for the power efficiency and better CPU usage
You linked R9 285 which is slower than an R9 280X and way slower than an R9 290. Also, saying extra VRAM is nice is completely different from saying that 2GB of VRAM is insufficient for modern games if you want good performance. It's not "nice" as in it's a check-mark, but it actually matters.
Yes, it is true that i3 will bottleneck AMD cards in some games but once 2GB of VRAM is exceeded, you will have to drop settings in every modern game that relies on higher resolution textures. Since R9 280X and R9 290 are faster than a GTX960, the difference in FPS in those cases where the i3 bottlenecks will be less than what you showed.
Future games will become even more pixel, shader, texture, memory bandwidth and VRAM demanding. R9 280X and R9 290 will pull away from the GTX960 even more.
OP, if your friend hasn't purchased that i3 yet, tell him to spend a bit more and get an i5, even if it means going with an R9 280X over the R9 290.
If you don't mind looking in the used card market and can't quite stretch it to the R9 290, HD7970/7970Ghz cards often go for $120-140.
An i3 with the 280?, waste of time, get the NV with lower directx overheads!
Right, way to ignore that R9 280X is also within budget, as well as R9 290 is $50-55 away for a
massive jump in performance and 4GB of VRAM that will give him a safe peace of mind for 2 years. Do you honestly think 2GB of VRAM is going to cut it when we already have 2014 games that show it's no longer enough? That's why GTX670/680/760/770/285/960 2GB are dangerous buys today for 1080P gaming for anyone intending to keep his/her card for 2 years.
You need to stop with the excessive arguing and YOU WILL NOT be using the word shill here anymore either.
-Rvenger