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

[railven]

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.

I don't know if you mean reference as in stock clocks or reference as in reference design (blower), but...yeah:

For comparison purposes I’ve added a GTX 980 for good measure and our standard benchmark runs and test setup are being used. 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.

EDIT:

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

I should have just read further into your post, yeah your whole post is invalidated by your own lack of reading. Good job.

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

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.

You sir are a gentleman! This website looks great, a definite bookmark.

 

[railven]

<snip>

YES!!! This guy gets it! Kudos! :thumbsup:

 

[tential]

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...

I look at it the exact opposite way everyone in the thread is (similar to you).
Amd is missing out on sales like no other waiting that long to improve its card performance. If they launched with these driver improvements from the start, their launches would be vastly different. When fury x is fully optimized, if it beats the 980ti 2 years from now people will say "great!"
But the sales lost, the damage is done.

 

[railven]

I look at it the exact opposite way everyone in the thread is (similar to you).
Amd is missing out on sales like no other waiting that long to improve its card performance. If they launched with these driver improvements from the start, their launches would be vastly different. When fury x is fully optimized, if it beats the 980ti 2 years from now people will say "great!"
But the sales lost, the damage is done.

Bingo. It's seems weird to keep reading posts with people promoting AMD cards today for tomorrow's games. A ton of "when DX12 games come out, things will change."

When tomorrow comes, AMD already lost the sale and people then looking to buy see a whole different line up of cards (if history doesn't change it will be Pascal cards facing Fiji).

It took almost 1 year for the 290X to beat the 780 Ti. WOOF. People are really now gloating about that? "Guys, buy an AMD now, in 1-2 years, it will be faster, you'll see!"

Get out of here with that ideology. AMD is slowly dying and people are holding on to their GCN cards longer and this helps them HOW? The part that seriously blows my mind is some of the almost fanatical AMD fans STILL don't own a Fury or something newer than a 290. "Because it's fast enough." I get that, I seriously do. And AMD goes on to report more losses.

Got one poster calling people buying NV products "idiots" and then on the flip side, AMD users are still holding on to 1-2 year old cards while the company they prefer is reporting loss after loss.

 

[Azix]

When the 290x was released it wasn't a matter of driver improvements. It was arguably the fastest card (save titan I think). The 780ti came later and at $699. Way out of the 290x price bracket, also very much a larger chip.

Their main problem would have been image and the reference cooler.

The point of this assessment is to see with hindsight which options were the best.

Also those small percentages determine buying choices so they matter.

 

[railven]

When the 290x was released it wasn't a matter of driver improvements. It was arguably the fastest card (save titan I think). The 780ti came later and at $699. Way out of the 290x price bracket, also very much a larger chip.

Their main problem would have been image and the reference cooler.

The point of this assessment is to see with hindsight which options were the best.

Also those small percentages determine buying choices so they matter.

It's like people just forget what bitmining did to the R9 290X price. Trying to find an article that covers it is rather hard, but this is close to what I remember seeing, this article is from December 2013 just 2 months after 290X launched and one month after 780 ti launched:

http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-...-GPU-Shortages-and-Litecoin-Mining-Discussion

Check out these prices currently on Amazon!

Radeon R9 290X - $725+
Radeon R9 290 - $499+
Radeon R9 280X - $429+
GeForce GTX 770 - $409+
GeForce GTX 780 - $509+
GeForce GTX 780 Ti - $699+

The price of the GTX 770 is a bit higher than it should be while the GTX 780 and GTX 780 Ti are priced in the same range they have been for the last month or so. The same cannot be said for the AMD cards listed here - the R9 280X is selling for $130 more than its expected MSRP at a minimum but you'll see quite a few going for much higher on Amazon, Ebay (thanks TR) and others. The Radeon R9 290 has an MSRP of $399 from AMD but the lowest price we found on Amazon was $499 and anything on Newegg.com is showing at the same price, but sold out. The R9 290X is even more obnoxiously priced when you can find them

The 290X was at one point costing far more than a 780 Ti. Here is AT's article in February:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7758/radeon-r9-290x-retail-prices-hit-900

In a sign of the daffy times we live in, Radeon R9 290X prices have hit $900 this week at Newegg. Every card, from the reference models to the water block model, is now at $899, with Newegg apparently doing brisk enough business to be sold out of more than half of their different 290X SKUs. This of course is some $350 over the 290X&#8217;s original launch price of $550, a 64% price bump. Meanwhile the Radeon R9 290 has been similarly affected, with 290 cards starting at $600, $200 (50%) over MSRP.

Anyone buying during those time wouldn't even think of buying a 290X. I ended up with a GTX 780 Lightning because it was CHEAPER than a MSI 290X 4GB Gaming.

 

[Azix]

Anyone buying during those time wouldn't even think of buying a 290X. I ended up with a GTX 780 Lightning because it was CHEAPER than a MSI 290X 4GB Gaming.

that's for the miners then. It mattered to gamers before and after the miners killed supply.

Most results I see now put the 780ti around 290x levels with the 780 below with the titan. Strange results from HWC

 

[Elfear]

You sir are a gentleman! This website looks great, a definite bookmark.

Not the best site for objective reviews. Might want to look at some of the site owner's history before you bookmark it.

 

[happy medium]

[

snip,,

 

[selni]

<lots of stuff edited out, but I think this point is still in context>

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!

One factor is that this was all in the middle of that bitcoin mess. I remember replacing a GPU at the time and going with a 770 purely because AMD cards that should have been competitive/better simply weren't available for anything resembling RRP.

 

[Red Hawk]

LOL at ABT benchmarks getting passed around...

 

[happy medium]

LOL at ABT benchmarks getting passed around...

not ABT....

 

[tential]

Bingo. It's seems weird to keep reading posts with people promoting AMD cards today for tomorrow's games. A ton of "when DX12 games come out, things will change."

When tomorrow comes, AMD already lost the sale and people then looking to buy see a whole different line up of cards (if history doesn't change it will be Pascal cards facing Fiji).

It took almost 1 year for the 290X to beat the 780 Ti. WOOF. People are really now gloating about that? "Guys, buy an AMD now, in 1-2 years, it will be faster, you'll see!"

Get out of here with that ideology. AMD is slowly dying and people are holding on to their GCN cards longer and this helps them HOW? The part that seriously blows my mind is some of the almost fanatical AMD fans STILL don't own a Fury or something newer than a 290. "Because it's fast enough." I get that, I seriously do. And AMD goes on to report more losses.

Got one poster calling people buying NV products "idiots" and then on the flip side, AMD users are still holding on to 1-2 year old cards while the company they prefer is reporting loss after loss.

I'm seeing the people in the Skylake thread upgrading their whole systems. They're going from high end AMD cards, to high end GTX 980Ti cards because the GTX 980Ti is a great card, and AMD isn't offering them the price/performance they were getting before. So they are going green now since it's not like Nvidia is significantly higher at ANY pricepoint like it was before.

It was a pretty easy sell sometimes when you had NV products at a $200+ premium sometimes to get SOME people to go AMD. But AMD/NV priced at the same pricepoint give or take $20-50? Who cares? They'll just go Nvidia. Nvidia aggressively priced this lineup, and AMD tried to Nvidia their prices and it's going to end up a train wreck sales wise.

AMD only have 4GB VRAM bonus to save them, but that won't be enough to make up lost ground vs the 970/980. R9 Fury sits in a weird price point where yes, it's faster than a 980, yes it's more expensive because of it (lol....), but what game is playable on a Fury that isn't on a 980? The 980 is cheaper..... so Fury has a hard time. Fury X gets beaten by a 980Ti in all but fringe cases like CF and noise, but the number of people getting those rigs is very small, and at that point, it's also about getting your favorite brand's card too for a lot of people, so a lot of people will just go SLI anyway there as well.

Really, I don't see much hope for AMD this generation at all. They'll limp their way into Arctic Islands and at that point, I don't think performance will allow them to gain significant marketshare. In fact, a major problem is TIMING for AMD as well. And if Arctic Islands is 25% faster than Pascal, if Pascal has an earlier launch with great marketing behind it (Nvidia, you know that marketing is going to be tight), then Arctic Islands will have trouble selling again to people who already have brand new cards.

AMD is in a horrible position to take back marketshare/sell cards, and they're only making it harder for them with these drivers taking FOREVER to be polished enough to let their cards truly shine, and designing their cards for things that will never matter for that card.

 

[VR Enthusiast]

I used to read Hardware Canucks a lot (it was the only site I read for years) but I always felt like these "special" articles were heavily biased against AMD.

I remember one this guy Skymtl did about the 7950 Boost and another he did about the 290X launch clocks. He refused to benchmark Dirt Showdown but seems happy to bench Dying Light today.

I've never seen him do anything like that with Nvidia cards, not ever. Some of the press are clearly bought, why even give this guy publicity?

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

Not the best site for objective reviews. Might want to look at some of the site owner's history before you bookmark it.

Interesting find however, it appears to be the usual forum mud slinging and while that itself is annoying I don't see anything to suggest he is heavily biased (granted the link in that thread is 404 so yeah). On that website he seems to show equal interest to both AMD and nVIDIA cards and owns cards from both brands so I'm not so sure.

 

[happy medium]

Interesting find however, it appears to be the usual forum mud slinging and while that itself is annoying I don't see anything to suggest he is heavily biased (granted the link in that thread is 404 so yeah). On that website he seems to show equal interest to both AMD and nVIDIA cards and owns cards from both brands so I'm not so sure.

This is gonna sound funny ,but don't let a video mod derail the thread.
Appopin loves video hardware and owns both AMD and Nvidia cards . Why would AMD send him cards if he was biased? That was 8 years ago.

end of thread derailment.

 

[antihelten]

not ABT....

Still Apoppin...

 

[tential]

that's for the miners then. It mattered to gamers before and after the miners killed supply.

Most results I see now put the 780ti around 290x levels with the 780 below with the titan. Strange results from HWC

So during that time miners killed the supply, what do you think happened? Do you think NO ONE was buying cards? No, they saw skyhigh AMD prices, and bought Nvidia. You're threading hairs with which card was faster. The 290x wasn't AVAILABLE to purchased due to it's sky high miner prices, so you bought Nvidia.
That was right around holiday season as well. Why do you guys think that people just are buying GPUs at the same rate all year long? If you want to talk business, then TALK BUSINESS. Nvidia got the holiday season. AMD threw it to miners. Those miners are 1 time customers. The customers NV got, will become repeat buyers since most GPU purchasers don't look at reviews, don't look at graphs etc. In fact, posting graphs of performance does nothing to an average consumer they don't care. If a game runs on someone's youtube, it works and they're happy, and the NV cards obviously all work, since EVERYONE has them and thus it has far more presence on youtube/other user reviews.

There are just a million reasons why the 290x flopped, but people will continue to make excuses for it rather than actually look at what happened. Being faster at some point in time doesn't mean you'll have better sales, or that those sales will be sustained. You have to look at when products launch in the sales cycle, who purchases the product (long term continuous buyers, or one off buyers like miners), etc.

If AMD had sold the 290x with a REAL cooler, at $500 (or whatever price), and ensured it only got into gamers hands and that miners couldn't get the card for nongaming purposes, AMD would be doing far better as a brand.
The fact that people can't see that a miner and a gamer purchasing a GPU is NOT the same thing is vastly concerning because at that point, we should keep this a technical discussion as clearly a business just isn't a strong point.

 

[Silverforce11]

It's even worse if HWC thinks they run the test with a custom R290X at 1Ghz without throttling, because their original reference review was with a REAL reference, which throttled even on Uber. So they are basically saying, back then, the 780Ti was ahead by 7% vs a throttling reference, and now its 6% versus a NON throttling simulated R290X.

Which is even MORE BS because a real reference R290X is now as fast or faster than the 780Ti. Things like the Sapphire Tri-X, as shown by computerbase.de are about 10% above reference R290X numbers.

Again, I am not questioning whether NV neglect, or shift their focus, that isn't my agenda (surprising to some!). My only agenda here is correcting such a BS site spreading pure fud.

They manage to turn games where R290X normally leads the 780Ti by far, into results that have the 780Ti in front. Contrary to every other reputable site. That should say a lot about their ethics.

 

[happy medium]

a real reference R290X is now as fast or faster than the 780Ti.

was there a fake reference 290x? or is this a typo??

 

[Silverforce11]

was there a fake reference 290x? or is this a typo??

HWC simulated a reference by using a custom R290X at stock clocks, no throttling as they say.

Their original R290X review back at launch was a reference R290X, non-simulated.

 

[badb0y]

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

Hey man, I tried to give AMD the benefit of the doubt and waited but as soon as I realized that the Fury X was not going to be up to par I bought the GTX 980 Ti. I need gaming performance at my resolution (2560x1600) and my future monitor is going to be 3440x1440. I can't sit around waiting for AMD to get their crap together.

 

[Azix]

Hey man, I tried to give AMD the benefit of the doubt and waited but as soon as I realized that the Fury X was not going to be up to par I bought the GTX 980 Ti. I need gaming performance at my resolution (2560x1600) and my future monitor is going to be 3440x1440. I can't sit around waiting for AMD to get their crap together.

you would have been perfectly fine with a Fury and apparently better as resolution went up. But... yeah...

 

[tential]

Many users here are complaining about Nvidia support dropping. Yet MANY of you have used the used market to your success in buying and selling GPUs. Is it unfathomable that many people simply sold their old GPU, and bought a new GPU? It's not like NV gpus lose that much value.

I don't know, I'm just wondering, I'm a user who buys a GPU, holds on to it, it gets old, I put it on my desk, and buy a new GPU. I never even considered the used market til the last 3 months although now I'm on craigslist a LOT.

The used market is the only reason I'll get the poor value Fury later down the line. If I can pick one up for $450 used (I suspect a price drop come holiday season by $50 for Fury X, Fury, and Fury Nano), then ya definitely. Or even $500 new, I'll find a coupon, for that TriX OC model. Definitely. Freesync is 100% necessary for 4K for me.