Asus Radeon R9-290X DirectCU II Detailed, Priced

[somebodyspecial]

Could the motherboard or Psu be feeding too much power to the card and essentially causing it to burn out? I once had an issue where my windows install would slowly degrade and I'd experience bsod's with increasing frequency. I finally bought new ram twice and the problem would go away for a bit, but would show up again. Turns out the motherboard was burning out the Ram sticks. Just a thought.

I don't know. But I doubt it. I have a pretty new Asus Maximus V Formula motherboard. The power supply, a Corsair AX 860, is even newer.

New doesn't mean NOT malfunctioning (or at least it may be not compatible). I had a pc business for 8yrs and happened upon a PSU (sparkle, came in enlight's etc at the time) that was blowing specific AMD boards (msi) because it was delivering improper voltages for that model. I blew 3 boards in 3 days...LOL. I went to Supercom (one of my vendors at the time, along with ASI etc) and found a 1/2 dozen people in line returning them After some troubleshooting with a PHD PCI and a multimeter we came to the PSU as the problem on the 3rd board, which worked fine with everything else, other boards etc as I had many builds in the wild with them. Supercom and Enlight got together and worked it out after that (don't sell a model X psu with Y board, until a new rev was released a month later). Also this didn't manifest itself until you turned it on-off a few times. I built them running from the first boot generally and really only shut down to box it up after a 3day burn-in (ghost the OS, then copy quake2 (no win install, just a folder I can delete at the time) and burn-in for 3 days, 2 days gaming 1 day prime95 etc). I literally had the first one die upon delivering the box to a customer. That kind of sucked I was there explaining "it worked just two hours ago, I swear"...ROFL. I was on the phone two hours before discussing software installs and finishing up a few things on the phone with them. So having it not boot upon delivery was a little embarrassing

It wasn't an MSI problem either (new model, but not their fault), but rather a PSU problem, which eventually ended at Sparkle's door. They blew well over 120 boards between all of us in a week at one location, never mind across the states. Most of the rest of the local competition had no real troubleshooters. They had $8/hr HS kids back then, whose idea of troubleshooting was replacing parts until it worked, with tons of RMA's weekly - not even a burn-in at most places, so they kept doing it the whole week with a few returning dozens as they were a lot bigger than I was. A stack of 40 dead boards on the counter at your vendor (of your same model#) should be a light bulb moment for anyone

So your parts might not be bad, but they can still be incompatible which can kill the parts. It was only the ON-OFF part that was killing it and pretty much in 3 boots (none of them made it to 4, one died at 2). Google the two model numbers and you might see others and comments about compatibility. I would check card/psu, card/mboard. Nothing else in there can really kill the card like this, at least that I have seen in practice and radeon 7970's don't die 3 in a row normally. Drives, memory, other cards generally don't cause this type of crap. You could have bad quality on a run of cards though. I used to buy Matrox G200 20 packs and got a pack with 4 bad ones that could not push 1600x1200 at 75hz on a 21in (my tester just for this reason, after discovering this - an accident as I was testing a batch of mitsubishi 21 91txm's for ProE stuff that day- AWESOME monitors back then - but could give you a hernia picking one up...LOL). The cards worked fine if you dropped it down (shoddy ramdac or something). Other than that they ran fine. I normally would get ONE or NONE with any issues in any 20pk (but these all had the same issue). Matrox sent me new ones direct (nice!) after some Lvl3 troubleshooting with a tech to prove I was correct. Whatever...LOL - I knew why they thought all people were ignorant; no surprise there based on what I saw happening in line weekly at my suppliers.

Just more data for you to ponder...But if they have an issue you'd think the tech would know this when you call them up. Then again their ignorance, even about their own products, wouldn't surprise me either My vendor rep called me for video card advice for others all the time (it got me good pricing even as a little guy, so no problem from me)...ROFL. But he did know I catered to gamers and high-end workstations running proe, solidworks, cad etc, which the 91txm monitors were for. So maybe it was wise on his part calling me back then. This is why I say google the models as google doesn't forget ever, and knows about every complaint made online I used to live on forums trying to figure out what NOT to sell next. Compatibility was a huge issue back then though. Good luck.

 

[alidan]

as to the nvidia vs amd part of this here is what im looking at

launch price
290 - 400$
290X - 550$

launch price
780 - 650$
780ti - 700$

now with amd places are gouging it right now so i cant tell you what the actual price is, but nvidia came down a bit in price to better compete.

780 - 500$
780ti - 680$ (reference) 700 (non reference)

now, lets do some rough math based on these prices (msrp for amd, current lowest for nvidia) on the top cards. the non reference amd refrence amd and overclocked nvidia and stock nvidia.

oc n = 486
stock n = 418
non ref amd = 413
ref amd = 385

those are the average fames across all the games, minus the dirt game that you dont like in there, so really, the advantage is all nvidia here. now, rough percentage diffrerence between 2 cards

oc n/non ref amd = 18%
oc n/ref amd = 26%
stock n/ non ref amd = 1%
stock n/ ref amd = 9%

now lets look at the price difference between amd and nvidia

amd msrp/cheapest nvidia = 24% difference

fun lets see if i cant find the price of the exact models.
after searching, i was only able to find the amd cards price in euro, so this is going to be a bit... high, but the cost difference should carry over to usd

asus = 817.33
gigabyte = 910.75

about a 10% difference in price there. now, i also want to point out that in looking for the price for the asus card i found guru3d's review of it, which put it far closer to nvidia cards than the hardwarecanucks did, even if they compared reference ti to asus, the numbers are far FAR closer, and the closer you get to 4k, the less difference there is, to the point hat the amd card is easily the better choice.

granted, i seriously doubt that a non reference cooler is going to cost a 300$ premium

 

[somebodyspecial]

as to the nvidia vs amd part of this here is what im looking at

launch price
290 - 400$
290X - 550$

launch price
780 - 650$
780ti - 700$

now with amd places are gouging it right now so i cant tell you what the actual price is, but nvidia came down a bit in price to better compete.

780 - 500$
780ti - 680$ (reference) 700 (non reference)

now, lets do some rough math based on these prices (msrp for amd, current lowest for nvidia) on the top cards. the non reference amd refrence amd and overclocked nvidia and stock nvidia.

oc n = 486
stock n = 418
non ref amd = 413
ref amd = 385

those are the average fames across all the games, minus the dirt game that you dont like in there, so really, the advantage is all nvidia here. now, rough percentage diffrerence between 2 cards

oc n/non ref amd = 18%
oc n/ref amd = 26%
stock n/ non ref amd = 1%
stock n/ ref amd = 9%

now lets look at the price difference between amd and nvidia

amd msrp/cheapest nvidia = 24% difference

fun lets see if i cant find the price of the exact models.
after searching, i was only able to find the amd cards price in euro, so this is going to be a bit... high, but the cost difference should carry over to usd

asus = 817.33
gigabyte = 910.75

about a 10% difference in price there. now, i also want to point out that in looking for the price for the asus card i found guru3d's review of it, which put it far closer to nvidia cards than the hardwarecanucks did, even if they compared reference ti to asus, the numbers are far FAR closer, and the closer you get to 4k, the less difference there is, to the point hat the amd card is easily the better choice.

granted, i seriously doubt that a non reference cooler is going to cost a 300$ premium

Uh...Who would buy ref...That's bunk so Guru3d is showing what you WON'T DO or BUY right? Your own research shows for $20 ($680 REF NV vs. $700 MSI OC NV 780ti) I can get another 14% over 290x NON ref which is currently $600, MSRP means nothing if you can't buy at that-reality is you can't buy a 290x for $550, nor 290 for 400(heck you really can't get either at all). Also you're taking MSRP for AMD. NOBODY is selling for MSRP so again flawed. IF you buy a card for AMD you are paying ABOVE MSRP. $50 above in the case of AMD 290x. The lowest price I see on google shopping is $570 for 290x and it isn't expected in stock until Jan1 (B&H) and this is REF 290x. So the $600 for NON REF is very real. Also the 290 REF cheapest is $413 and 320 on back order so a NON REF will be above $413. Since REF is basically unacceptable for anyone but water users who don't mind blowing a warranty 10 seconds after it enters the door, which leaves you will the REAL price being NON REF ($600/$450 it seems for 290x/290 non ref). You should be listing launch at $600/450 at the least and you may have problems even getting one for a while (due to bad yields + LTC fighting gamers for them).

You didn't mention Gsync or 3 AAA games either. Neither comes with AMD, just BF4 which currently is a VERY HATED game right? Lawsuits? MSRP shouldn't be used. You use what we pay. If product X isn't able to be had for MSRP ANYWHERE this is not reality. Reality is the lowest you can get for either side IN STOCK. Otherwise we might as well start comparing what we THINK perf will be one day after 12 driver revs (which is a magical estimate not REAL). I don't say, "but NV will be 25% faster in 12 months on 780ti maybe". That is NOT what I get today and may never happen. Quit comparing what MIGHT happen for AMD (msrp) vs what I can BUY right NOW for NV. Reviews said AMD was a great buy at the MSRP, but only if you like noise, heat, watts and 1 game, no gsync and CAN'T really buy it at all...LOL. What if by the time you can actually BUY 290x for $500 that actually runs at sold clock speeds (NON REF ONLY, ref runs clear down to 727 as toms shows), NV lowers the price or gives more games. Again this would change the story. But you wouldn't like it if I started using that magical price cut on you now when it can't be bought for that right? That isn't REAL yet so I shouldn't be using that crap (even if there is no doubt at some point they will lower pricing - on all cards...LOL)..

You can't say "well AMD will be great when the drivers are fixed". Reality is many are waiting on a fix for a BROKEN group of cards and until then your promises mean nothing to all of these people. There is no proof it will ever get fixed. When you buy a phone you PRAY they will give you the next android update, but don't know if they won't just move on like it appears AMD with winxp users still hung out to dry on 2yr old cards (you buy google devices to avoid this, much like you buy NV for good drivers right now). Phase 2 doesn't address them at all, and maybe not even fix eyefinity etc.

ROFL @ anyone claiming 4K crap when you hit under 30fps avg in most stuff maxed and don't even get me started on how slow this is at MINS. As toms said, a victory there is pretty much symbolic

I don't understand the $300 comment. You can't buy a 290/290x for $400 and nothing is in stock. Let me know when you can post a $400 receipt that isn't back ordered Until then your post has meaningless comparisons on that front. Currently you have to void your warranty to get a different cooler as no NON ref AMD's are in stock.

 

[alidan]

as to the nvidia vs amd part of this here is what im looking at

launch price
290 - 400$
290X - 550$

launch price
780 - 650$
780ti - 700$

now with amd places are gouging it right now so i cant tell you what the actual price is, but nvidia came down a bit in price to better compete.

780 - 500$
780ti - 680$ (reference) 700 (non reference)

now, lets do some rough math based on these prices (msrp for amd, current lowest for nvidia) on the top cards. the non reference amd refrence amd and overclocked nvidia and stock nvidia.

oc n = 486
stock n = 418
non ref amd = 413
ref amd = 385

those are the average fames across all the games, minus the dirt game that you dont like in there, so really, the advantage is all nvidia here. now, rough percentage diffrerence between 2 cards

oc n/non ref amd = 18%
oc n/ref amd = 26%
stock n/ non ref amd = 1%
stock n/ ref amd = 9%

now lets look at the price difference between amd and nvidia

amd msrp/cheapest nvidia = 24% difference

fun lets see if i cant find the price of the exact models.
after searching, i was only able to find the amd cards price in euro, so this is going to be a bit... high, but the cost difference should carry over to usd

asus = 817.33
gigabyte = 910.75

about a 10% difference in price there. now, i also want to point out that in looking for the price for the asus card i found guru3d's review of it, which put it far closer to nvidia cards than the hardwarecanucks did, even if they compared reference ti to asus, the numbers are far FAR closer, and the closer you get to 4k, the less difference there is, to the point hat the amd card is easily the better choice.

granted, i seriously doubt that a non reference cooler is going to cost a 300$ premium

Uh...Who would buy ref...That's bunk so Guru3d is showing what you WON'T DO or BUY right? Your own research shows for $20 ($680 REF NV vs. $700 MSI OC NV 780ti) I can get another 14% over 290x NON ref which is currently $600, MSRP means nothing if you can't buy at that-reality is you can't buy a 290x for $550, nor 290 for 400(heck you really can't get either at all). Also you're taking MSRP for AMD. NOBODY is selling for MSRP so again flawed. IF you buy a card for AMD you are paying ABOVE MSRP. $50 above in the case of AMD 290x. The lowest price I see on google shopping is $570 for 290x and it isn't expected in stock until Jan1 (B&H) and this is REF 290x. So the $600 for NON REF is very real. Also the 290 REF cheapest is $413 and 320 on back order so a NON REF will be above $413. Since REF is basically unacceptable for anyone but water users who don't mind blowing a warranty 10 seconds after it enters the door, which leaves you will the REAL price being NON REF ($600/$450 it seems for 290x/290 non ref). You should be listing launch at $600/450 at the least and you may have problems even getting one for a while (due to bad yields + LTC fighting gamers for them).

You didn't mention Gsync or 3 AAA games either. Neither comes with AMD, just BF4 which currently is a VERY HATED game right? Lawsuits? MSRP shouldn't be used. You use what we pay. If product X isn't able to be had for MSRP ANYWHERE this is not reality. Reality is the lowest you can get for either side IN STOCK. Otherwise we might as well start comparing what we THINK perf will be one day after 12 driver revs (which is a magical estimate not REAL). I don't say, "but NV will be 25% faster in 12 months on 780ti maybe". That is NOT what I get today and may never happen. Quit comparing what MIGHT happen for AMD (msrp) vs what I can BUY right NOW for NV. Reviews said AMD was a great buy at the MSRP, but only if you like noise, heat, watts and 1 game, no gsync and CAN'T really buy it at all...LOL. What if by the time you can actually BUY 290x for $500 that actually runs at sold clock speeds (NON REF ONLY, ref runs clear down to 727 as toms shows), NV lowers the price or gives more games. Again this would change the story. But you wouldn't like it if I started using that magical price cut on you now when it can't be bought for that right? That isn't REAL yet so I shouldn't be using that crap (even if there is no doubt at some point they will lower pricing - on all cards...LOL)..

You can't say "well AMD will be great when the drivers are fixed". Reality is many are waiting on a fix for a BROKEN group of cards and until then your promises mean nothing to all of these people. There is no proof it will ever get fixed. When you buy a phone you PRAY they will give you the next android update, but don't know if they won't just move on like it appears AMD with winxp users still hung out to dry on 2yr old cards (you buy google devices to avoid this, much like you buy NV for good drivers right now). Phase 2 doesn't address them at all, and maybe not even fix eyefinity etc.

ROFL @ anyone claiming 4K crap when you hit under 30fps avg in most stuff maxed and don't even get me started on how slow this is at MINS. As toms said, a victory there is pretty much symbolic

I don't understand the $300 comment. You can't buy a 290/290x for $400 and nothing is in stock. Let me know when you can post a $400 receipt that isn't back ordered Until then your post has meaningless comparisons on that front. Currently you have to void your warranty to get a different cooler as no NON ref AMD's are in stock.

first paragraph, bitcoin miners bought all the cards to the point they are sold out damn near everywhere and the only prices you can find them for are the inflated ones. which are already down 20$ keep in mind that they inflated that high after thanksgiving and less than a month later are already going down, this isn't the hard drive flood that forced hdd prices to skyrocket for what 1 year or was it 2 years. if i had pre bitcoin numbers i would have used them, because i do beleive a few of the cards offered a rebate that put it below msrp.

g sync as far as i can tell is vsync but nvidia does something to make it their own? i have never had a problem with screen tearing so for me its a non feature. 3 AAA games...
batman - haven't beaten the first 2 and would burn out before i got to 3
splintercell - dead series to me, the original trilogy was great, but the moment they made stealth an optional thing the game died.
black flag - an overly easy assassins creed game that even though introduces a new fun gameplay mechanic wont draw me back into it.
battlefield 4 is in a lawsuit because of what ea did, they launched the game bugged to meet a deadline which made stocks lose 29% of its value while people who knew about what would happen, just happened to sell some stock. hated is a strong word, realistically people are annoyed by it and those who had to be day 1 buyers got to be part of an extened pay for access beta test.
back on msrp. again, this isnt a permanent thing like with harddrives and is already going down.
than you go on to compare a situation that is already fixing itself to guessing what preformance will be after drivers improve.

probably should have read your whole post and not commenting on it piece by piece, as the majority of the second paragraph can be summed up as the first one and gsync.

third one is about drivers, i so hate being this person who says this but windows xp is 12 years old, and 3 oses have come out sense than. expecting them to maintain xp drivers on new cards, even cards made 2 years ago is ridiculous. now if you want to talk about drivers not being good, i can point to nvidia putting out 2 drives that killed cards, and (i cant remember how old, but this was in the prime of "ati has no driver" ) nvidia cards caused more crashes and blue screens than ati (now amd) did by a LARGE margin.

for the 4k, it was between 35-44 in most of the games, but by that logic than any card that can hit 60 frames is good enough, and at 4k the cheap monitors are limited to 30hrz so anything that goes over 30fps is again good enough. and if you want to go with a 60hrz 4k you are looking at the bare minimum of 4000$ and at that point, the performance differences for price is pointless because you have money to burn if you get those.

lets use a more exact number a 267.33 $ premium. i should have probably went 270$ but i got lazy and was done with math at that point.

 

[somebodyspecial]

as to the nvidia vs amd part of this here is what im looking at

launch price
290 - 400$
290X - 550$

launch price
780 - 650$
780ti - 700$

now with amd places are gouging it right now so i cant tell you what the actual price is, but nvidia came down a bit in price to better compete.

780 - 500$
780ti - 680$ (reference) 700 (non reference)

now, lets do some rough math based on these prices (msrp for amd, current lowest for nvidia) on the top cards. the non reference amd refrence amd and overclocked nvidia and stock nvidia.

oc n = 486
stock n = 418
non ref amd = 413
ref amd = 385

those are the average fames across all the games, minus the dirt game that you dont like in there, so really, the advantage is all nvidia here. now, rough percentage diffrerence between 2 cards

oc n/non ref amd = 18%
oc n/ref amd = 26%
stock n/ non ref amd = 1%
stock n/ ref amd = 9%

now lets look at the price difference between amd and nvidia

amd msrp/cheapest nvidia = 24% difference

fun lets see if i cant find the price of the exact models.
after searching, i was only able to find the amd cards price in euro, so this is going to be a bit... high, but the cost difference should carry over to usd

asus = 817.33
gigabyte = 910.75

about a 10% difference in price there. now, i also want to point out that in looking for the price for the asus card i found guru3d's review of it, which put it far closer to nvidia cards than the hardwarecanucks did, even if they compared reference ti to asus, the numbers are far FAR closer, and the closer you get to 4k, the less difference there is, to the point hat the amd card is easily the better choice.

granted, i seriously doubt that a non reference cooler is going to cost a 300$ premium

Uh...Who would buy ref...That's bunk so Guru3d is showing what you WON'T DO or BUY right? Your own research shows for $20 ($680 REF NV vs. $700 MSI OC NV 780ti) I can get another 14% over 290x NON ref which is currently $600, MSRP means nothing if you can't buy at that-reality is you can't buy a 290x for $550, nor 290 for 400(heck you really can't get either at all). Also you're taking MSRP for AMD. NOBODY is selling for MSRP so again flawed. IF you buy a card for AMD you are paying ABOVE MSRP. $50 above in the case of AMD 290x. The lowest price I see on google shopping is $570 for 290x and it isn't expected in stock until Jan1 (B&H) and this is REF 290x. So the $600 for NON REF is very real. Also the 290 REF cheapest is $413 and 320 on back order so a NON REF will be above $413. Since REF is basically unacceptable for anyone but water users who don't mind blowing a warranty 10 seconds after it enters the door, which leaves you will the REAL price being NON REF ($600/$450 it seems for 290x/290 non ref). You should be listing launch at $600/450 at the least and you may have problems even getting one for a while (due to bad yields + LTC fighting gamers for them).

You didn't mention Gsync or 3 AAA games either. Neither comes with AMD, just BF4 which currently is a VERY HATED game right? Lawsuits? MSRP shouldn't be used. You use what we pay. If product X isn't able to be had for MSRP ANYWHERE this is not reality. Reality is the lowest you can get for either side IN STOCK. Otherwise we might as well start comparing what we THINK perf will be one day after 12 driver revs (which is a magical estimate not REAL). I don't say, "but NV will be 25% faster in 12 months on 780ti maybe". That is NOT what I get today and may never happen. Quit comparing what MIGHT happen for AMD (msrp) vs what I can BUY right NOW for NV. Reviews said AMD was a great buy at the MSRP, but only if you like noise, heat, watts and 1 game, no gsync and CAN'T really buy it at all...LOL. What if by the time you can actually BUY 290x for $500 that actually runs at sold clock speeds (NON REF ONLY, ref runs clear down to 727 as toms shows), NV lowers the price or gives more games. Again this would change the story. But you wouldn't like it if I started using that magical price cut on you now when it can't be bought for that right? That isn't REAL yet so I shouldn't be using that crap (even if there is no doubt at some point they will lower pricing - on all cards...LOL)..

You can't say "well AMD will be great when the drivers are fixed". Reality is many are waiting on a fix for a BROKEN group of cards and until then your promises mean nothing to all of these people. There is no proof it will ever get fixed. When you buy a phone you PRAY they will give you the next android update, but don't know if they won't just move on like it appears AMD with winxp users still hung out to dry on 2yr old cards (you buy google devices to avoid this, much like you buy NV for good drivers right now). Phase 2 doesn't address them at all, and maybe not even fix eyefinity etc.

ROFL @ anyone claiming 4K crap when you hit under 30fps avg in most stuff maxed and don't even get me started on how slow this is at MINS. As toms said, a victory there is pretty much symbolic

I don't understand the $300 comment. You can't buy a 290/290x for $400 and nothing is in stock. Let me know when you can post a $400 receipt that isn't back ordered Until then your post has meaningless comparisons on that front. Currently you have to void your warranty to get a different cooler as no NON ref AMD's are in stock.

first paragraph, bitcoin miners bought all the cards to the point they are sold out damn near everywhere and the only prices you can find them for are the inflated ones. which are already down 20$ keep in mind that they inflated that high after thanksgiving and less than a month later are already going down, this isn't the hard drive flood that forced hdd prices to skyrocket for what 1 year or was it 2 years. if i had pre bitcoin numbers i would have used them, because i do beleive a few of the cards offered a rebate that put it below msrp.

So if bitcoin/ltc buyers are fighting Mantle/game buyers for the next 6 months how do you get Mantle off the ground when no gamers own them? Vid cards are outdated yearly right? Unlike hard drives you can't sell the same tech for years in GPUS. ASICs for LTC won't be out massively for 6 months so gamers will fight miners for AMD cards during that time. Don't care about PRE-bitcoin sales which went to backorders etc. If I can't buy it for X right now, then X is a wrong until I can. Hard drives weren't perm either, as prices have almost dropped to normal levels pre-flood. The flood might be a permanent event but the pricing it caused isn't. The problem for AMD is, the cards might be old by the time you're not fighting miners to get them. How many users will even see the BF4 Mantle patch in operation if no mantle cards are in GAMER's houses? LTC miners don't play games and neither do BTC miners, they run 24x7 mining until mining is pointless for their cards.

g sync as far as i can tell is vsync but nvidia does something to make it their own? i have never had a problem with screen tearing so for me its a non feature. 3 AAA games...
batman - haven't beaten the first 2 and would burn out before i got to 3
splintercell - dead series to me, the original trilogy was great, but the moment they made stealth an optional thing the game died.
black flag - an overly easy assassins creed game that even though introduces a new fun gameplay mechanic wont draw me back into it.
battlefield 4 is in a lawsuit because of what ea did, they launched the game bugged to meet a deadline which made stocks lose 29% of its value while people who knew about what would happen, just happened to sell some stock. hated is a strong word, realistically people are annoyed by it and those who had to be day 1 buyers got to be part of an extened pay for access beta test.
back on msrp. again, this isnt a permanent thing like with harddrives and is already going down.
than you go on to compare a situation that is already fixing itself to guessing what preformance will be after drivers improve.

Your opinion of the games or liking them doesn't matter (many do like them, IE AC4 has sold just about the same as BF4 but without all the flak) and neither does your opinion on tearing as many have experienced it. This isn't a "I don't see it so it doesn't exist" situation. Excuses for why REALITY exists don't change the fact that it is STILL REALITY. BF4 is a mess and AMD is tied to this for their cards right now. BF4 sales are off 70% from BF3. I don't even have to care why. That is bad right? Nothing is fixing itself, and even if it was IT ISN'T FIXED yet you seem to want to excuse it. I'm saying you can't base your reality on something that MIGHT happen with drivers or pricing. You keep trying to build an argument on a reality that doesn't exist (might one day, but NOT NOW). I'm not guessing what performance will be one day, I'm saying you can't base on argument on that crap. AMD's Mantle launch vehicle is the worst game in the series from the worst company in america voted for 2yrs straight. BAD. WHY doesn't change the fact that this is VERY bad. Gsync fixes Vsync issues. Nuff said I think. If Vsync was the solution Gsync wouldn't be here Gsync was partially created because Vsync SUCKS in many cases. Vsync doesn't address stutter, lag, jutter & tearing in one fell swoop. Gsync helps all these things. NO other tech on the planet right now matches what Gsync does. You can decide what is acceptable for yourself to get over this reality, but for me nothing else is acceptable. Gsync extends the life of your card also as the game Engines slow it down later with advances in graphics. Maybe AMD will have a Gsync type tech by the time I buy a maxwell, otherwise I'm going NV for my next GPU.

probably should have read your whole post and not commenting on it piece by piece, as the majority of the second paragraph can be summed up as the first one and gsync.

third one is about drivers, i so hate being this person who says this but windows xp is 12 years old, and 3 oses have come out sense than. expecting them to maintain xp drivers on new cards, even cards made 2 years ago is ridiculous. now if you want to talk about drivers not being good, i can point to nvidia putting out 2 drives that killed cards, and (i cant remember how old, but this was in the prime of "ati has no driver" ) nvidia cards caused more crashes and blue screens than ati (now amd) did by a LARGE margin.

Do you think the 34% of users using xp care what you think? Vista/Win8 are failures, so we are only talking win7/xp being the bulk of users here (~80%) no matter what you or I think. If you're running corp xp is still up to date.
http://www.zdnet.com/new-stats-show-windows-8-usage-up-sharply-as-xp-usage-plummets-7000020098/
You or I can want people to move off XP but that doesn't make them all malfunction today and require a new OS tomorrow I don't care if a dozen OS versions come out in the next 3 months, if everyone is still using XP it means nothing right?

for the 4k, it was between 35-44 in most of the games, but by that logic than any card that can hit 60 frames is good enough, and at 4k the cheap monitors are limited to 30hrz so anything that goes over 30fps is again good enough. and if you want to go with a 60hrz 4k you are looking at the bare minimum of 4000$ and at that point, the performance differences for price is pointless because you have money to burn if you get those.

lets use a more exact number a 267.33 $ premium. i should have probably went 270$ but i got lazy and was done with math at that point.

4K@30hz is a stutterfest for gaming waiting to happen and I don't want to play there without something like gsync (which makes 30-60 smoother). 34fps avg does not =30fps min...More like 20fps on a good day. Even your 44fps number will go below 30, which is why sites like guru3d say 60fps is optimal and that may not be enough in a multiplayer slugfest with crap flying in all directions from everyone.

Your price is meaningless. Link to in stock card of 290/290x for $423 please.

Your statement assumes 4K@60hz will be $4000 forever and we already have 8K coming (some 4K models are already down from 8000 to $4000 in just one year). Turning anything down is not an option for me and many others. I only enjoy a game as designed, not as I hack it up so it runs on crap hardware that can't cope. Also NONE of the games you're citing are MAXED OUT. Most on medium or low already. You're not getting it. That is ALREADY against my religion even as they benchmarked them TWO cards are required for 4K maxed and even then I'd say that's a lie until 20nm gpus hit (and might still be turning stuff off or down).

"If you turn down 42 details and make the game look like crap I can still run there so 4K is important on 290x vs. 780ti." If you think this, you don't understand gamers and why we buy a discrete card I guess. I buy a card to get out of turning ANY feature down or off. You remind me of people saying this integrated junk on apus will take out discrete cards. No they are citing 1366x768/720p running on medium or low and barely hitting 30-50fps avg. I don't call that gaming and neither do discrete buyers who routinely buy cards from $300-1000 just to game (which in a lot of cases is more than the whole junk apu laptop cost). That is called turning my game to crap so I can muster a playable experience on JUNK. In an age where 2560x1440 is about to become norm (and 4K/8K eventually), neither of those two crap laptop resolutions mean a thing to me. In 3yrs as 4K becomes norm the junk laptop mode will be 1680x1050 or 1080p on medium. I don't see an end to the goal posts moving for a while. Can you play on integrated crap better today? YES. Do I want to? NO. Can you play on crap detail mode to get your card to run at 4K? YES. Do I want to? NO. I'll buy a 2nd card for that. When will you be able to push 250w+ to an APU so it will perform like a 780ti? Not for a while and I already need TWO of them for 4K maxed which is 500w just for gpus and this doesn't even count engines improving (unreal 4 etc) that slow things down more over time. We buy cards to max things, not turn them down.

 

[alidan]

somebodyspecial

i explained why the games have no value to me, did you see me bring up battlefield 4 as a plus for amd? people who buy these high end gpus largely see the games as an extra bonus, largely ist nor a deal breaker if a gpu doesn't have games attached to it.

I also explained why an nvidia vsync isnt a sudden "oh god i must have it now"

sense you love numbers with video games, every game above sold FAR more on consoles with outdated hardware and poor graphic levels, and screen tearing is on them. if people really didn't want that, they would have flocked to nvidia for gsync, but they didnt.

you than have an estimate of 6 months on price drops for the cards, which is already dropping. there was a massive spike for black friday, thats it. before thanksgiving the 7970 cards were down to 300~ but after everything sold out.

why do i mention the 7970? because that is a gcn card and is basicly the R9 280X. if the coin miners were going to just buy cards 24/7 just because they can, than why was the 7970 in stock and at 300~$ before thanksgiving? like i said, that was a black friday spike that is already righting itself. and as for people fighting for it? there was a HUGE mass of people buying them, and they all sold out, right now on newegg, there are more cards in stock than out of stock for these two

you go on to mantle, well, you got me there. there are no gcn cards in the hands of gamers... wait... this is from wiki...

All models up to including HD 76xx based on VLIW5 ISA, HD 77xx-79xx are based on GCN (Graphics Core Next) architecture

now you said gsync so many times that i just had to look up what it was, and from my understanding its a chip inside a monitor... what i always wanted, a 1080p monitor that costs over 500$, the joy that would bring to my life is immeasurable and what a limited selection there is, if im correct right now there is only 1 monitor that supports it, and possibly some more from asus in the future.

If Vsync was the solution Gsync wouldn't be here

open source physics or at least a non card depending physics solution is the asnwer, but nvidia still has physx. not the exact same thing, but i beleive is tearing is such a major issue for you, there should be a non card dependant solution (which there probably will be)

Gsync extends the life of your card

no, no it doesnt. mantle may make cards last longer if only because it aims to get more performance out of the hardware you have, but just making the screen not tear does not extend cards use times.

i dont care what xp users think. personally i prefer xp, but moved away because of getting an ssd. at some point windows 7 will be out of date to and i dont expect companies to continue to support software that goes horribly out of date.

now a side note, windows 8 inst a failure. performance wise its better than 7, something that vista couldn't hold over xp for 2 service packs. and any games that don't work on 8, i again have shown i have no sympathy for early adopters.

it doesnt matter if 12 versions came out in 3 months, you are still talking about a 12 year old os that was built so long ago that it doesnt fully support the hardware of today and wasn't patched so it would. people being able to get by on xp are not the majority and hardware shouldn't revolve around them.

i have so far been responding as i read the comment because i dont want to read it twice, but its getting really tiresome so this is going to be the last time i respond to you.

on the 4k benchmarks, they got those numbers on ultra settings, with retarded things like using aa at those resolutions. you could probably trim a bit out before you really start effecting image quality.

and the whole last statement, i turn a lot of graphic options off. i turn aa off because it has a performance hit, and the ones that have low performance hits blur everything. depending on the game i turn ssao off because its abused (farcry 3) or causes a massive performance hit for something i only notice when i am looking for it (witcher 2). i turn things like motion blur off, lense flares, basicly anything that is eye candy but gets in the way of game play i disable.

the only things i keep maxed whenever possible are geometry detail, texture detail (a far bigger issue than anything else graphically, textures make or break a game while poly counts have been good enough for 5 years) and shadows to some extent (depending on implementation, some games can handle shadows just fine, some games crap themselves on shadows and i have turn them down)

i probably go off on a tangent at some point but oh well. like i said, im done responding.

 

[somebodyspecial]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7563/dell-24-uhd-up2414q-gets-a-price-28-uhd-4k-3840x2160-announced
I'd update my post, but easier to just put it where you'll see it Alidan. Already 4K 24in $1500 which is already less than half of your 4K $4000 comment right? Also the 28in is under a grand for 4K but NOT ultrasharp model. They are reviewing the 32in monitor shortly also NOT ultrasharp but probably not more than $2000 so again under your price by half most likely. Your price was far above reality even when you posted it, never mind next year All 3 are 60hz.

"and if you want to go with a 60hrz 4k you are looking at the bare minimum of 4000$ and at that point, the performance differences for price is pointless because you have money to burn if you get those. "

I guess at your price I can now buy 3x780ti's and a brand new 28in 4K 60hz monitor. Can't be more wrong than that right? Hey, I just got 3x780ti's free today...LOL. I jest, but you get the point.