[Hardwarecanucks] GTX 780 Ti vs R9 290X; The Rematch

[railven]

While I agree that it was never the real flagship maxwell (any enthusiast should know this based on the code name GM204) the launch price was actually $549. and nobody buying Titan X got screwed. they knew what they were paying for and that a similar performing cut down variant was around the corner.

You and facts are like oil and water.

"IT SOLD FOR OVER $650!!!!!"

I can see that becoming a "ITS OVER 9000!!!" meme around here. Haha.

 

[RussianSensation]

HWC always gets stuck with the slowest AMD hardware, for some reason. Bad luck, I guess.

I love how no one checked that the reviewer appears to have used a REFERENCE R9 290X, which essentially makes the entire review and therefore its conclusions misleading if not worthless.

A reference R9 290X runs at 839-869mhz as per ComputerBase. Even in Uber mode, it has been known to throttle its clocks as it still approaches 94-95C at times.

So what happens when an R9 290X is properly tested at full clocks and +20% power tune enabled + a good representation of games?

1080P
R9 290X = 109%
GTX780Ti = 100%

1440P
R9 290X = 111%
GTX780Ti = 100%

Even when taking TPU, which uses such biased games as Project CARS and includes the completely broken Wolfenstein NWO benchmarks the trends are evident still:

November 7, 2013

GTX780Ti beats R9 290X by 7.5% at 1440P

August 25, 2015

GTX780Ti is losing by 1%. And that's with Project CARS (game made specifically for NV with 0 optimizations for AMD, the Wolfenstein bench that doesn't match any other site benchmark on the internet for this game, and WOW bench that is heavily favouring NV cards).

Nice attempt to try to re-write history though OP by using a review from a site that not only historically has favoured NV cards as far back as I can remember but also used a reference R9 290X in its review.

I already knew those claims were b.s. long ago and made a long post here with review graphs + links disproving the "kepler is neglected" claim. It's just certain parties have an agenda to spread misinformation.

Sure, sure. Like GTX960 beating GTX770 in many modern games.

780Ti getting clobbered in TW3 by GTX970/R9 290/290X

780Ti barely beating GTX960 in Project NVidia.

http://www.computerbase.de/2015-05/project-cars-guide-grafikkarte-prozessor-vergleich/2/

Both the 970 and 290X beat 780Ti in Project CARS at launch.

780Ti getting beaten by R9 290/290X/GTX970 in GTA V:

 

[AtenRa]

2. Kepler performance hasn't dropped, at all. GCN has gotten better since launch, like ALL cards should...

So the GCN R9 290X got better over time but the Kepler GTX-780Ti didnt ??? If that is what you are saying then that is exactly what we are talking about

 

[Makaveli]

8800 Ultra maybe?

Still a better value its launch price was $830+

Source

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2222

And it stayed in the top position much longer if my memory serves me correctly.

The OG titan would have retained its value if you actually bought it for professional work but didn't want to touch the Quadro cards, so if it was actually helping you to generate revenue still a win.

As a gaming card it was always a stupid buy!

 

[badb0y]

I already knew those claims were b.s. long ago and made a long post here with review graphs + links disproving the "kepler is neglected" claim. It's just certain parties have an agenda to spread misinformation.

Um, No. As someone who owned GTX 780 in SLI, I can confirm that new titles were performing like crap on my setup. In fact, upgrading to my GTX 980 Ti allowed me to raise settings to max and still had better FPS than my SLI setup. It was mostly newer games coming out that I felt my setup was performing subpar, if nVidia were to retroactively neuter performance on old games they would get eviscerated by the community.

 

[poofyhairguy]

"IT SOLD FOR OVER $650!!!!!"

I can see that becoming a "ITS OVER 9000!!!" meme around here. Haha.

 

[SPBHM]

839-869mhz[/URL] as per ComputerBase. Even in Uber mode, it has been known to throttle its clocks as it still approaches 94-95C at times.

the link you posted shows that Uber runs at 1000MHz
so if HWC uses a reference 290X on uber mode it should perform as well as a custom 290X with reference clocks.

so why are you mentioning the silent mode clocks? is HWC testing it on silent mode?

also why would they use a custom OC 290X vs reference 780 ti!?

 

[Gikaseixas]

So the GCN R9 290X got better over time but the Kepler GTX-780Ti didnt ??? If that is what you are saying then that is exactly what we are talking about

Exactly this. AMD's GCN keeps getting better, Nvidia's Kepler going the other way. How's that acceptable or ok?

 

[RussianSensation]

I already knew those claims were b.s. long ago and made a long post here with review graphs + links disproving the "kepler is neglected" claim. It's just certain parties have an agenda to spread misinformation.

Continued just for you since you keep denying reality of what happened to Kepler:

GTX780Ti getting destroyed in Far Cry 4 by R9 290/290X/970 and $300 280X/HD7970Ghz closing on a $500+ 780. Go Premiums!

Assassin's Creed Unity retested as of May 2015 where 780Ti < 290/290X/970 and 780 is worse than a 280X. Go Kepler Premiums!

Must be nice living in this alternative reality where 780 didn't cost $650 vs. $300-350 HD7970Ghz/1Ghz 7970/R9 280X, where 780Ti didn't cost $700 when R9 290 was $400 and R9 290X was $550. Must be nice living in denial that 780 is barely faster than an R9 280X today, how the GTX780TI's performance advantage vs. 290X has completely disappeared.

It's also interesting how nearly every other review online disagrees with HardwareCanucks, especially almost all of the European sites (aka the ones who don't get invited to corporate events with drinks and outdoors games by NVidia - aka TechReport, PCPerspective, HardwareCanucks all attended -- I believe someone had a video on YouTube of that!).

Exactly this. AMD's GCN keeps getting better, Nvidia's Kepler going the other way. How's that acceptable or ok?

What makes it worse looking back are pricing context:

$650 GTX780, $380 GTX770 2GB, $450 GTX770 4GB. Even after NV dropped the price of GTX780 by $100 to $500, AMD had R9 290 for $400, R9 280X 3GB for $300 and R9 290X for $550 vs. $650 780Ti.

The $80-150 premiums paid for GTX770/780/780Ti over cards like R9 280X/290/290X was just money flushed into the toilet as far as gaming performance is concerned. Look at GTX770/780 today -- they hardly have anything to show for their premiums against R9 280X/290. The Titan was literally taking $1000 and flushing it into the toilet as far as gaming performance went. Still remember the mounting defense for that turd of a card. To this day NV loyalists will not admit they got ripped off by the Original Titan.

Even in brand agnostic games where Kepler's performance hasn't been destroyed by GameWorks features, the fact that 770/780/780Ti all had massive price premiums over their AMD competition is already enough to prove that those cards were a rip-off.

It's incredible how people actually bought $380 770 2GB, $450 770 4GB and $500-650 GTX780 cards. NV marketing FTW!

Should we even discuss GTX690/680 SLI 2GB vs. HD7970Ghz CF? It's better to hide those benchmarks away as far as possible or NV won't be able to save face.

GTX680/770 and GTX690 have been getting pummeled by HD7970Ghz CF (Ares II), HD7970Ghz/R9 280X for the last 15 months.

GTX690, 780 SLI GO PREMIUMS, GO!

Kepler's performance, especially in SLI has been so terrible for the last 12 months, it's amusing seeing certain people still living in denial late August 2015. Remember if you bought 780Ti SLI, you'd actually pay $300+ over R9 290X CF. If you bought GTX690/680 SLI vs. HD7970Ghz CF, have a Kleenex.

April 2015 Review

^ $800 R9 290 CF is trading blows with $1300 GTX780Ti SLI, nevermindGTX970 SLI/R9 290X CF/R9 295X2. If I bought 780Ti SLI or 780 SLI, I would be so pissed for getting ripped off like that.

And that's before we even get to bitcoin mining which meant someone who bought a GTX670/680/690/670 SLI/680 SLI/780, etc. actually paid $$$ for it while a tech savvy gamer who bought AMD paid $0 for his/her cards.

$1000 GTX680 SLI / 690 vs. $0 HD7970Ghz CF and the AMD setup is faster too. Go, go Kepler premiums!

 

[tential]

The point is rs that just because the 290x outperforms the 780 doesn't mean the 780 got slower. It just means the 290x/gcn got more and more driver improvements....

Yes the 780 performs worse relatively to a 290x now than before. But that doesn't mean 780 performance is going down, it just means 290x/gcn performance is improving, and had more potential at its launch than amd realized.

Which means if amd had provided the best possible drivers at the time (which is another problem nvidia seems to eke more performance out of their cards whole amd releases hardware and slowly gets more and more performance out of it) they'd have done for better at launch (combined with a real cooler).

Yes, the 780 is slower than the 290x in comparison to launch but people need to stop pretending it's because nvidia purposely gimped 780 performance.

 

[boozzer]

I prefer whatever is better and whatever company is better, more open, non cheating, non lying, non scamming and in the past 3-4 years AMD is the better company, while Nvidia have been caught stealing, cheating, defrauding, scamming and lying consumers. That is why they've had 3 big lawsuits in the past 4 years.

The most recent one over the fraud they committed with the GTX 970 "4"GB of memory, what a joke!

The new card from them with the $200 960 2bg turd and the last $160+ turd of the 950. What a joke! Overpriced turds for the low end.

Now if the GTX 960 was released at $150 and had a 4GB version at $170, I would have called it the best products in the past 3-4 years, certainly on the high as the GTX 460 was, that level of great! But no, the 950, 960 are overpriced low end turds, the GTX 970 is a scamming 3.5GB card and less bus and bandwidth, the GTX 980 was the FAKE "flagship" that sold for over $650 at start and then they released the real flagship the Titan X at a "measly" $1000. Yes, if you wanted 20% performance over the FAKE flagship you have to pay $1000, then they screwed those customers and released same performing 980ti for $650 the initial price of the FAKE flagship the 980 turd!

And the idiots all bought it loved it getting scammed to hell and back, loved it and ate it up as the next best thing since sliced bread!

never get angry, no matter how justified ^_^ edit your post before a mod do it for you.

you need to level up your internet skills.

@rail are you still salty over the lack of the port you want? hahahahaa

 

[boozzer]

Um, No. As someone who owned GTX 780 in SLI, I can confirm that new titles were performing like crap on my setup. In fact, upgrading to my GTX 980 Ti allowed me to raise settings to max and still had better FPS than my SLI setup. It was mostly newer games coming out that I felt my setup was performing subpar, if nVidia were to retroactively neuter performance on old games they would get eviscerated by the community.

I just can't believe that you still bought nv after the 780 ti sli :\ did you at least get some money back from reselling the 2 780 tis?

 

[n0x1ous]

I just can't believe that you still bought nv

Why not? he bought the fastest single gpu card (sans silly titan) available

 

[Gikaseixas]

The point is rs that just because the 290x outperforms the 780 doesn't mean the 780 got slower. It just means the 290x/gcn got more and more driver improvements....

Yes the 780 performs worse relatively to a 290x now than before. But that doesn't mean 780 performance is going down, it just means 290x/gcn performance is improving, and had more potential at its launch than amd realized.

Which means if amd had provided the best possible drivers at the time (which is another problem nvidia seems to eke more performance out of their cards whole amd releases hardware and slowly gets more and more performance out of it) they'd have done for better at launch (combined with a real cooler).

Yes, the 780 is slower than the 290x in comparison to launch but people need to stop pretending it's because nvidia purposely gimped 780 performance.

No, 780 performance is not going down, it's just not progressing as it should given that Nvidia's drivers are viewed as the best overall by many here. Nvidia is not gimping its own product, they're just neglecting it. Just look how AMD keeps on improving the 7970/280 series, no excuse just because it's not the last generation

 

[n0x1ous]

Just look how AMD keeps on improving the 7970/280 series,

Not really the same thing though. Maxwell and Kepler are very different whereas 7970 forward is all GCN. its probably more that 7970 benefits from continued tweaks that are meant for AMD's more current products because the base architecture is still the same GCN. A better comparison would be how did HD6000 VLIW-4 do after GCN became the focus? my guess is not too good.

 

[vissarix]

So the GCN R9 290X got better over time but the Kepler GTX-780Ti didnt ??? If that is what you are saying then that is exactly what we are talking about

Yeah thats right, the r9 290x got better over time but still its not enought to beat the gtx 780ti.

ofc kids over here got mad and do not accept it, they start crying screaming its unfair, its biased its bla bla bla...and they link a reliable review according to them...in which a 280x beats a gtx780ti :hmm:

i wont be surprised if one of these days they will find another not biased review in which an r7 360 beats a titan x...because you know gcn architecture matures better day by day...just like wine.

 

[RobertR1]

I think the conclusion needs to be, if you're looking for a card two iterations behind, get the 290x and not the 780ti. Does that make everyone happy?

"On the flip side of that equation AMD must[/] support their older architectures since most of their current lineup is based upon rebrands. The R9 200-series, HD 7000-series and even some of the HD 6000-series cores are still being utilized in some capacity. I can only imagine what kind of resource drain that causes in AMD&#8217;s driver development and quality assurance teams. Nonetheless, it gives users of their legacy products some peace of mind and that&#8217;s a pretty big selling point. "

This is also a very critical part. Infact, with AMD's R&D being cut back and other financial struggles, a positive byproduct is that you'll very likely see them squeeze everything they can out of their existing lineup to keep the sales moving as they might not be able to keep pace with nvidia in moving generations as fast. nvidia doesn't have the same incentive so they'll focus on extracting performance out of their latest cards.

 

[Ghost of Cyrix]

I love how no one checked that the reviewer appears to have used a REFERENCE R9 290X, which essentially makes the entire review and therefore its conclusions misleading if not worthless.

The irony:

One important note is that our R9 290X is custom cooled but stock clocked so it will have no problem avoiding the throttling that plagued reference designs. Drivers being used are NVIDA's 355.69 and AMD's 15.7.1.

 

[Gikaseixas]

Not really the same thing though. Maxwell and Kepler are very different whereas 7970 forward is all GCN. its probably more that 7970 benefits from continued tweaks that are meant for AMD's more current products because the base architecture is still the same GCN. A better comparison would be how did HD6000 VLIW-4 do after GCN became the focus? my guess is not too good.

I'll give you that but wasnt Kepler released in 2012? Around the same time as GCN 1.0 correct?
Given Nvidia's higher R&D they should be able to develop a longer lasting tech for us.

 

[n0x1ous]

I'll give you that but wasnt Kepler released in 2012? Around the same time as GCN 1.0 correct?
Given Nvidia's higher R&D they should be able to develop a longer lasting tech for us.

correct on the dates. Perhaps Kepler was designed before AMD locked up the consoles and that has impacted the type of architecture that excels in today's market

 

[boozzer]

Why not? he bought the fastest single gpu card (sans silly titan) available

yea, and he can buy it again 10 months later cause 980 ti support would become non existent. :thumbsdown:

 

[Azix]

just pointing out 780ti came after 290x. 780 and titan earlier same year

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

I don't understand why it's always the same two people posting the same old benchmarks from the same euro sites that they claim are infallible. They are infallible because we all know a 280x=780 riiiight...

Question can any of you guys linking to these euro sites actually read polish, swedish or russian?

Please don't quote Techspot anymore, I love their website (home page) but their hardware reviews aren't like they used to be quality wise (they never list minimums among other things).

 

[happy medium]

just a few months back.......
http://www.babeltechreviews.com/the-gtx-980-ti-arrives-as-nvidia-new-flagship/view-all/
The review was done by a long standing member here at anandtech.

 

[poofyhairguy]

No, 780 performance is not going down, it's just not progressing as it should given that Nvidia's drivers are viewed as the best overall by many here. Nvidia is not gimping its own product, they're just neglecting it.

Is that really fair? Couldn't it just be that Nvidia gets the most out of their cards they can get near launch and so there isn't much room left for improvement? Not every card has unlimited potential locked away by driver inefficiencies. I would bet when we get something like the Witcher driver it is less about squeezing more out of the hardware and more about squeezing down the image quality in some way we can't easily see to placate the mob.

I mean heck, look at the actual hardware!!! Nvidia competes with AMD with cards that have slower busses, or fewer shaders, or less raw compute power. GPU technology is not Apples to Apples, but when a GTX 960 with a pathetic 128 bit memory bus can compete with a Tonga with a bus twice as big it is pretty obvious that Nvidia is getting more efficiency out of their hardware. Good drivers obvious cost money, so then it becomes an issue of opportunity costs and company philosophies.

AMD very obviously puts as much hardware as it can on the market and then over time puts in the resources to improve the software (driver) component of that GPU over its life. It seems obvious to me that AMD sacrifices long term margins on the hardware (because each part costs them more than the equivalent Nvidia part does that has less raw power) to be able to spread the cost of the driver over time. That would explain why Hawaii got improved driver performance with the 390(x), having a new product line allowed AMD to earmark some more money for Hawaii driver improvements.

I don't think one way or the other is wrong necessarily. I mean from the consumer standpoint the AMD method might be better, as your purchase improves over its life. But many gamers who actually pay the big bucks and drive the market are Zero Day gamers, and so for them the most optimized solution the day the game is released is what they want. Plus AMD is obviously missing out on sales not having a fully optimized product day one- if the 7970 was at launch what it is today is the Titan as big of a deal? I think not.

We all get so worked up over 6% that way, 10% this way, when really it takes 20+% to go from one class of hardware to another when we are talking actual gaming capacity. Sure there are better and worse values in the deck, but is it not like a 290 improved 20+% over its life to jump into a new class of card (outside of that DX12 benchmark/game and reference cooler throttling). At the end of the day it is up to each consumer to buy what they value, and that isn't always the FPS of a game a year plus after release.

Really I don't get why this segment has so much venom and anger. Gaming is supposed to be fun...