Are you considering Powercolor? They have a 7990 for $600 after rebate http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814131483
Are you considering Powercolor? They have a 7990 for $600 after rebate http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814131483
Wasn't that reviewed to be a big piece of junk?
Well, as far as gaming goes they're both going to rock your resolution. It's the computer graphics stuff that can make a big difference.
1, If you are going to run the cards as they are out of box then the 780 should be better. I really doubt Radeon drivers are going to support crossfire on pro apps.
2, If it were me I'd check to see if the 7990 can be flashed with the S10000 bios. It has the dual bios switch. If it can you can use Firepro drivers which will give you massively better performance with your pro apps. You should be able to install both drivers and by switching the bios switch run on either the Radeon or the Firepro drivers simply by rebooting.
The second option would be worthwhile investigating further. If you aren't going to get that benefit though, the 780 would be the card I'd go with.
This is a tough case because COH2 will destroy every GPU out there on 2x 1200P monitors unless you have GTX780 Tri-SLI. For the other games, they are not very demanding at all. A single GTX670/760 overclocked should play them on 2x1200P monitors without issues.
It shouldn't be hard to hit 1250-1300Mhz on the HOF card since they are binned chips. If you wanted to go all out then I would recommend the Evga GTX 780 Classified, some people are hitting some insane overclocks on those cards. I think the highest I have seen is 1546Mhz on water and in the 1400Mhz+ range on air - Yikes..
the sad fact is now is a bad time to buy a GPU. You say its a long term purchase and needs to last. And you are not willing to wait till mid-oct. For something which you want to keep for a long time waiting 40 days is worth it.
Given the impending launch of Hawaii and competition at the high end bringing better prices you should rethink. oh btw if you buy now i vote HOF 780. good luck with your purchase. :thumbsup:
I think you'd be better off with the 7990 at the same price.Now that AMD has finally started getting their minds together and are fixing their frame pacing issues,it seems like you'll be okay.Plus,it's got what I think is the highest memory bandwidth of every card around.That 768bit bus should be enough to keep you from being memory-starved for quite a while.Plus,it's 6gb,on par with the Titan.Most of this stuff doesn't matter now,but will later,especially in a multi-monitor setup.Plus,I didn't see anyone mention what happens when a 7990 is overclocked :twisted: .If your case has adequate cooling to keep the card fed with cold air,and if your PSU can handle it,an overclocked 7990 should be crazy.
If you hadn't said that you weren't going to upgrade soon,I'd join those who suggest the 780 or SLI 760s or 770s,or even suggest a 7970 which would be enough,for now.It's the future-proofing part that is in the 7990's favor in my opinion.The choice is yours.
Are you considering Powercolor? They have a 7990 for $600 after rebate [URL]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814131483[/URL]
I'm not convinced! And here's why ...
First of all, I just don't seem to believe in waiting another 40 days for a piece of hardware. Because believe me, 40 days from now, when I'm ready to purchase, there will be something "better" on the Horizon another 40 days from that day. It's an endless cycle. In some decisions it does make sense - for example - I'm going with the E5-2600 V2 Ivy Bridge-EP Series Xeon's which are just starting to trickle in. My build was based on the timeframe of the V2 Series release. However, the CPU is far greater in importance to this build then the GPU, even if the GPU comes in a close 2nd.
But it doesn't make sense for me to hold off the entire build for the 99xx series because some points that I'm contemplating right now have a lot to do with nVidia vs AMD, rather then a Model vs. Model. I have no doubts that 99xx will hold more power then the current availability - but I'm not sure if even then it would suit my purposes better. We're already starting to hear about GTX 790 and how nVidia is planning to crash the Hawaiin Islands party! And Maxwell being on the horizon. I just don't think the wait is worth it.
Also remember, I do plan to put in a 2nd card at some point down the road. I think we can all agree 2 * GTX 780 SLI (Or even 2 * 7990 Crossfire) would outright destroy a 9970.
I could understand waiting 10 days - but not 40. It just doesn't make sense to me.
you have been advised. so don't regret later. Given the expected price of Hawaii at USD 600 you can expect price cuts on GTX 780 and Titan. As for Maxwell on 20nm it will happen in early Q3 2014. So think and decide.
I am wondering why you need such a fast card for the games you listed. Starcraft is NOT GPU hungry. You can max it out on a mid range card. SC2 is VERY CPU dependent. I do not see you listing your CPU anywhere.
Diablo 3 is the same. Its dual threaded only, so a CPU with very high single threaded performance is needed. But it is also not very GPU intensive. Its biggest FPS hit is shadows, and those are done on the CPU.
And really, same can be said for most all RTS games. Very CPU intensive, so so on the GPU side. The one exception being Total War games and Civilization. But even those are very CPU intensive.
So my question is. What CPU do you have? Because I am willing to bet its your bottleneck. NOT your video cards.
Very nice build. And for well threaded apps/games you will be set for sure.
I think you will be unhappy with SC2 performance with that CPU. It only uses two threads, and in large games, it really takes a 4GHz intel to let it run without drops. Especially if you watch replays and run through at 4-8x.
I think either GPU will handle your games without any issues. The issues will probably be more related to your pro apps. Which card has better support for those. Which you went through above.
If it was pure gaming, I would probably say go 780, because its a single card solution. But with pro-stuff, I am kind of at a wash.
You raise a valid point! Here's my insight ... I'm not going to be inclined to touch the BIOS so as far as I'm concerned, aside from OC'ing, it's going to be more of an out-of-box scenario. But let me elaborate on the FirePro point.
I did a considerable amount of research during build stage to determine whether I should go with Professional or Desktop Graphics. In certain scenarios, like end-production environments for CGI Development Only, Professional Card choice would be a no-brainer. A GPU based renderer (like Furryball), would also make the case for Professional Card. However, in my particular case, after speaking to a lot of professionals in the field, the common consensus was that Desktop card would be far better. Mine is an RTS Gaming + CGI Development build with Maxwell as the renderer. Maxwell is a 100% CPU only renderer; 0% GPU Usage. The only area where GPU will be used in the CGI Development aspect would be the Viewport Display. Handling large polygon & mesh counts during development phase; accurate polycounts, etc. From what I understood; any Desktop card that can max out most games will be able to handle the Viewport Display comfortably. A professional card would in fact hamper the RTS Gaming side. This was the reason I decided to go with Desktop over Quadro or FirePro.
I spoke to someone who actually switched from a Quadro to GTX 660 and to this day has not seen an ounce of difference in his CGI Development. A lot of pro's will actually attest to this.
It also appears that nVidia seems to favor CGI Development, especially Maya & ZBrush, for the most part. Although I must admit I know someone with a 7990 in his Maya Machine and he has absolutely no complaints. So it's not definitive.
Given the state of CrossfireX? 780 HOF, without blinking twice.
EDIT:
Guess I should clarify. At the moment, AMD's drivers for multi GPU setups leave a LOT to be desired. If your OK with potentially only getting the power of 1 GPU out of a dual GPU card (especially when new games launch), then go for it.
You'd have the same problem with Nvidia as well. Just look at the new Rome Total War benchmarks. Both multi-GPU solutions don't scale past a single card.
AMD has come a long way with their multi-GPU drivers. The few areas they're lagging behind Nvidia at the moment are DX9 games and multi-monitor setups. Hopefully those get fixed soon.
You'd have the same problem with Nvidia as well. Just look at the new Rome Total War benchmarks. Both multi-GPU solutions don't scale past a single card.
AMD has come a long way with their multi-GPU drivers. The few areas they're lagging behind Nvidia at the moment are DX9 games and multi-monitor setups. Hopefully those get fixed soon.
I believe he is referring to AMD's several times worse frametime performance
I believe he is referring to AMD's several times worse frametime performance
Agree with you 100%.
Unfortunately - CPU was one area where the CGI work had to take precedent. I needed the Cores & Threads for Rendering; Xeon's are born for rendering. Couldn't give SC2 the priority over that. But I'm willing to live with that handicap. From what I understand, the 2-thread limitation is supposed to be lifted from SC sequels. Civilization is on-board with that too - so future is brighter.
You're definitely knowledgeable on the subjects -- so I'm curious -- would you be recommending the 7900 for my setup over 780 HOF?
Honestly, I cannot answer. It really requires going through each pro-app you are going to be using, and see which cards they support, and which cards work better. A lot of pro-apps want a Quadro or a FirePro. The nVidia cannot be flashed over. But if the AMD can be, then you are in a better position with them for rendering and such. So I think its something you need to look into.
If you end up with any crashing or strange artifacts, remember this.
It's a moot point if you don't want to attempt flashing the bios anyway.
Cheers
But that only occurs now in multi-GPU configs in games that don't support the new driver. Which will be fixed in the future.
Tom's just had a blind test and it came out 47% vs 53% for AMD vs nVidia in games that supported the new driver. This was a test to see which one "looked" better.
I think you'd be better off with the 7990 at the same price.Now that AMD has finally started getting their minds together and are fixing their frame pacing issues,it seems like you'll be okay.Plus,it's got what I think is the highest memory bandwidth of every card around.That 768bit bus should be enough to keep you from being memory-starved for quite a while.Plus,it's 6gb,on par with the Titan.Most of this stuff doesn't matter now,but will later,especially in a multi-monitor setup.Plus,I didn't see anyone mention what happens when a 7990 is overclocked :twisted: .If your case has adequate cooling to keep the card fed with cold air,and if your PSU can handle it,an overclocked 7990 should be crazy.
If you hadn't said that you weren't going to upgrade soon,I'd join those who suggest the 780 or SLI 760s or 770s,or even suggest a 7970 which would be enough,for now.It's the future-proofing part that is in the 7990's favor in my opinion.The choice is yours.