290x or gtx 780 to replace cf7970

D

Deceit

Member
I am looking to replace my 7970's with either a 290x (£450.99) or a gtx 780(£405.89). One of the below:
290x https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-223-MS
gtx 780 https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-182-GW
I want it to last about a year then upgrade to crossfire / sli as i'm using eyefinity and will need it eventually.
I want rid of the 7970's as its annoying the issues with crossfire/eyefinity and I can see the two cards above don't have these issues.
I will be watercooling so coolers noise/temps have no impact on my decision.
Without the cooler is the 290x worth the £45?
 
ShaunB-91 said:
I'd say 780 even under water.
Click to expand...
I'm thinking this myself also with the big difference in price. Only reason i'm contemplating amd again is mantle with bf4 (bf3 & bf4 and witcher series are games that are most on my pc) but this could be a gimmick though.
 
I'd personally go for the best card in terms of price/performance and taking into account it's temps. Seeing as your watercooling if you know how to overclock you could push the 780 better than the 290x.

I can't really comment on mantle as I'm not following the whole thing much, but from seeing around these forums, I'd say a few people believe it will just be a DICE feature and will probably just fade out over time. Like when Nvidia got PhysX all those years ago...that's just dissapeared.

I'd just go for raw performance and not any gimmicks.
 
ShaunB-91 said:
Seeing as your watercooling if you know how to overclock you could push the 780 better than the 290x.
Click to expand...
I taught the 780 only overclocks better because of the better coolers? Does it clock better on water too?
The only worry I'd have about the 780 is loosing performance at 5760*1200 as I noticed 290x is doing well on 4k panels and a 4k panel would be only a bit more than my 3 panels in terms of pixels.
If mantle did take off and then with the already better performance at high resolutions. I would be kicking myself.
A benefit of the 780 is i could pick up a shield at the same time too though which would be interesting. (I could always use this with my 670 but I would pay 100 more for it then).
 
With watercooling the 290x would be the better choice considering reviews of these cards with reference coolers proving to be the limiting factor for the 290x rather than the chip all the while matching or comfortably beating the 780 at high resolutions.

As for overclocking, hasn't the GTX 780 got an artificial limit to how high you can clock them? If i can find the video ttl is talking about it I'll edit it in.

Gaming resolutions are only ever going to go up, and the 290x gets better as you do so I'd say yes its worth the extra £45 over the nVidia GTX 780. Should the 780ti be overpriced nVidia egotrip nonsense I'll be going straight for the 290x myself with a waterblock to boot should that mean anything.
 
Yea i know they would be going by what its showing on fraps but I've no idea how long its going to be until they fix the eyefinity/crossfire driver and its horrible playing games when fps goes below 60fps, its then like going below 30fps
(I read about an issue that every second frame is dropping so would explain this)
 
Jeff_s510 said:
^^^^^^^^^^this i believe tom is right here. 2 7970's will beat out a single 290X or a 780
Click to expand...
This is what I said to Toms reply
"Yea i know they would be going by what its showing on fraps but I've no idea how long its going to be until they fix the eyefinity/crossfire driver and its horrible playing games when fps goes below 60fps, its then like going below 30fps
(I read about an issue that every second frame is dropping so would explain this)"
If I had a date of when it was going to be fixed I would hold onto them but Ive no idea when/if its going to be fixed.
 
Guys. I had 2x XFX 7970 for exactly 3 days before I pulled them out and sold them. I had one in for a month or so before and thought I'd add one a friend gave me for cheap for doing him a favour and I'd have a brilliant graphics setup. Wrong! :(

The benchmarks showed good FPS, especially Metro2033. But actually playing on them was a different story. Hot, juddery, frequent glitches and crashes etc. Doesn't matter which of the many drivers they put out to try and sort it. I preferred playing on one card.

When one card was in on its own it was OKAY but really nothing special, even when overclocked.

I've replaced them with 1x 780ti which is slower on paper but in real life is sooooo much better.
 
Last edited:
stampedeadam said:
Guys. I had 2x XFX 7970 for exactly 3 days before I pulled them out and sold them. I had one in for a month or so before and thought I'd add one a friend gave me for cheap for doing him a favour and I'd have a brilliant graphics setup. Wrong! :(

The benchmarks showed good FPS, especially Metro2033. But actually playing on them was a different story. Hot, juddery, frequent glitches and crashes etc. Doesn't matter which of the many drivers they put out to try and sort it. I preferred playing on one card.

When one card was in on its own it was OKAY but really nothing special, even when overclocked.

I've replaced them with 1x 780ti which is slower on paper but in real life is sooooo much better.
Click to expand...
I have this problem with eyefinity with crossfire, get great fps but the game doesnt play like as if it would have that fps.
I checked it and its fixed for single screens but i'm not sure if they can fix it properly for eyefinity because of the limitation of the crossfire cable :(
 
Didn't fix it enough for one screen for me. Not nearly enough. I only play at 1080p but I like to turn everything up, inc all the extra bits in the control panels for the graphics card.

In Far Cry 3, the cut scenes were painful to watch, and it was generally very hard to play, I got like a million FPS or something for a second, then it hangs for like 1/4 of a second, then back to a million FPS, then the screen tears even though v-sync is on. Eventually the whole lot crashes and windows log thingy says it's the display driver!! :(

I am sure if you ask them there will be a new driver out in a month or so, beta version 103, that will sort all this out by turning the fan speed up or something (!) but really, I wasn't happy at all with it and it was better just playing on one card with maybe a couple of quality settings brought down a bit. But I think that 7970's are overrated full stop, they are supposed to max things out at 1080p but that is not my experience. So the other one is on ebay now.

I really hate turning into a fanboy etc. and I know it would be really bad for the industry if AMD are not competitive cos Nvidia will take the p*** with prices etc. but I can only tell it as I see it. Before all this I had a 560ti for a long time I got as a present, and that thing was just an all round good card, ok it had its limits and isn't in the same class as the cards we are talking about, but I used it for ages and it never let me down. I bought the first 7970 because I was told it was the best for the money, and sure it was better than the 560ti and you would hope so too! But it's not as good as it was made out to be!

I was talking with the guy in the shop about the 290x and he said it was like a mini volcano. He tells people not to buy it which is crazy cos he sells them!
 
stampedeadam said:
Didn't fix it enough for one screen for me. Not nearly enough. I only play at 1080p but I like to turn everything up, inc all the extra bits in the control panels for the graphics card.

In Far Cry 3, the cut scenes were painful to watch, and it was generally very hard to play, I got like a million FPS or something for a second, then it hangs for like 1/4 of a second, then back to a million FPS, then the screen tears even though v-sync is on. Eventually the whole lot crashes and windows log thingy says it's the display driver!! :(

I am sure if you ask them there will be a new driver out in a month or so, beta version 103, that will sort all this out by turning the fan speed up or something (!) but really, I wasn't happy at all with it and it was better just playing on one card with maybe a couple of quality settings brought down a bit. But I think that 7970's are overrated full stop, they are supposed to max things out at 1080p but that is not my experience. So the other one is on ebay now.

I really hate turning into a fanboy etc. and I know it would be really bad for the industry if AMD are not competitive cos Nvidia will take the p*** with prices etc. but I can only tell it as I see it. Before all this I had a 560ti for a long time I got as a present, and that thing was just an all round good card, ok it had its limits and isn't in the same class as the cards we are talking about, but I used it for ages and it never let me down. I bought the first 7970 because I was told it was the best for the money, and sure it was better than the 560ti and you would hope so too! But it's not as good as it was made out to be!

I was talking with the guy in the shop about the 290x and he said it was like a mini volcano. He tells people not to buy it which is crazy cos he sells them!
Click to expand...
It seems really silly to compare the 560ti to the 7970 in crossfire because if you ran just one 7970 it would be flawless and would never cause issues.
That really is just an Nvidia fanboy rant in my honest opinion and of no use here.
 
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