[Rant] GPU upgrade plans–2013/2014

I’ve had my current graphics card, the GTX 670 for about one and a half years. While it is not slow or outdated by any means, I would like to upgrade before the value of the graphics card drops too much.

Ever since the new graphics cards from AMD came out, I’ve been keeping my eyes on the prices of the GTX 780 and the R9 290 here in Japan. The R9 290 is priced $399 in USA but the cheapest card is priced JPY49,800 (Sapphire branded reference card) here. That’s basically $499. Sucks! It’s even worse for the GTX 780. After the recent price cuts, it is priced at $499 in USA, but the cheapest GTX 780 (Gainward Phantom) is priced JPY 61,480 (or $615).

Note: These prices are for 2013/11/17 only. When you read it, it would be higher or lower than that.

Since I have like $63 worth of points on Sofmap, which is the shop selling both cards, this make things even better.

Even though I am tempted to get a R9 290 now, I won’t. I will have to wait for the cards with 3rd party coolers because these cards get really hot and the fan is very noisy.

[Rant] AMD is great, but I still prefer nvidia unless…

Long story short.

GTX 780 was $649. AMD released R9 290X at $549 which was faster (at stock) than GTX780. NVidia dropped the price of the GTX780 to $499. AMD released R9 290 for $399 which also beat GTX780 at stock. NVidia released GTX780 Ti for $699 which beat them all. (GTX 780Ti is great, but that’s out of budget for most people so we’ll ignore that it ever exists.)

Looks like the R9 290 is the winner. You can get two of them in Crossfire for $100 more than the GTX 780 Ti and they will beat it by a long margin. R9 290X seems already irrelevant because the performance difference between it and R9 290 is very little, well, at least in Quiet Mode.

There is one issue though. This is the only deal breaker for most people. There are no custom designed card available yet.

Why do you need them? Because the cooler on the R9 290/290X is crap. It is basically the same cooler that was on the R9 280X but with higher fan speed. The R9 290/290X GPUs run so hot that even with the increased fan speed, the GPU runs at 95C!!!

• Increased fan speed means, it is very loud.
• Increased temps mean you have very limited overclocking headroom.

This makes one wonder, what would happen if you are running the card in a hot environment? The card would be throttled so much that they would perform very badly against the competition. NVidia cards throttle too, but only 13MHz per 10C. Not a big deal.

[Rant] Price wars reloaded: AMD R9 290 is only $399!!!!

Nobody expected AMD to price their flagship R9 290X card at $549. But they did. Then everybody thought this would be a replay of HD7900 series launch - HD7970 at $549 and HD7950 at $449. No, AMD had other plans. They released the R9 290 at just $399. That's insane. 

OK, $399 is still not cheap. Not many people is going to spend that much money on the graphics card. Heck, most people are trying to get away with $399 for the entire PC. 

But if you are into this sort of thing, you would know that this is crazy. For $399, you are not getting a 20% slower card than the flagship. You are getting a card that is only 5% or less slower than the flagship card that costs $150 more. Basically, AMD only cut down the Stream Processors from 2,816 to 2,560 and maximum clock speed from 1000MHz to 947MHz. (Note: the gap widens if you put the R9 290X to Uber mode though.)

Funny thing is though, AMD was not anticipating that NVidia would respond with such soon price cuts on the GTX770 and GTX780 when the R9 290X came out. AMD didn't seem to have had any other price point targetted, but they seem to have a different performance point targeted. AMD delayed the R9 290's launch by a week, because they thought they had to do counter the counter act from NVidia. Instead of dropping the prices, they increased the performance of the R9 290. But what's interesting is how they did it. They didn't release a BIOS update or change any chip specific. They simply raised the max fan speed of the card from the default 40% to 47%. You must be wondering how that could affect the performance. But that mere 7% increase in fan speed made the card throttle less due to high temperature and allowed the core clock to stay at the max clock speed more often than not. It's actually amazing how much the card throttled at 40% max fan speed. Look at the chart below.

 

That last minute tuning made the card beat the stock GTX 780 most of the times. Sometimes even beating the $1000 NVidia Titan. Insane, right?

But the problem that I had with the R9 290X still persists with this card as well. Heat ⇒ Temps ⇒ Noise. With the R9 290 running at 47% at stock, it is significantly louder than the rest of the pack. But the good news is that cards with custom designed coolers are coming out at the end of this month. People that don't want to use a custom water loop probably are better off waiting for these cards. But at $399, I think you can excuse the card being a bit too loud. Use some headphones when you are gaming, dammit!

You can read a comprehensive review about the new card @ anandtech.com

[Rant] The inevitable price cuts on NVidia GTX 770 and GTX 780 are finally happening!

Price wars are great for the consumer. That's exactly what's going on in the high-end graphics card market. 

A week (or two?) ago AMD released their flagship graphics card, the R9 290X. (Check out Anandtech review here) It was priced fairly cheaper than the competition yet delivering performance similar to a card that's almost two times more expensive. Of course it is not a perfect card. The reference cards (which are the only ones available) run louder, hotter and draw a lot of power. However, the price to performance ratio excelled past the competition. 

If you thought NVidia was going to do nothing about it, then you are a fool. You can give a million fancy features (example) but in the end of the day, gamers want more performance and less price. Even though NVidia GeForce cards probably have a slight edge on that (features) department, people are going to settle for the faster and cheaper AMD card.

Hence, we have good news. NVidia has come to their senses. They are dropping prices on the GTX770 and GTX780. In fact, they are dropping prices by record levels this time around. Here's what's proposed by NVidia to the card vendors. 

GTX 770: $399 → $329

GTX780: $649 → $499

And that's not all. There is the GTX780 Ti. It packs impressive specs and leaked results claim that it is about 5% faster than the Titan. That's sweet and that actually would take the performance crown back to the green side. But the price isn't going to interest many gamers out there. $699. Ouch! Well, it is still better than the Titan if you have a 1440p or smaller display. But I still believe the R9 290X is better priced. Sure sure, you always get diminishing returns when you go up in the spectrum. 

On the other hand, leaked results show that the R9 290 (the non-X model) still is slightly faster than the GTX780. And that's coming out at $449 price mark. Hopefully it will run cooler than the 290X. That's the only problem with the 290X. Fortunately, if you are thinking of buying a R9 290X, it seems that the non-reference design cards are coming out next month. Let's hope that Twin Frozr cooler, DCUII cooler or Winforce3 cooler will keep the card running  below 80C. 

Would you choose a R9 290X over a GTX780 Ti because it is cheaper and only performs slightly slower? Would you choose the R9 290 over the GTX780 if they perform similarly? Would you get a GTX770 over a R9 280X even though they have almost the same price to performance ratio? I guess with the current pricing, you would be fine with either team.