Best GPU for around £400?

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Dec 5, 2013
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I'm most of the way through finishing my new PC build and I've decided to run SLI instead of a single card (I can purchase one card then get another at some point instead of waiting longer and saving to get a better single card).

I want a GPU that I can SLI and will give me the most FPS when gaming and I've been looking at new and used cards for around £400, the GTX 690, 980 and GTX 780ti are three that I have seen which are possibilities, can anyone suggest what I should buy? (Will probably be doing 3D video editing as well at some point but not loads of it) Thanks in advance!
 
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anti-duck
Well the R9 390X is being designed to compete with the upcoming Nvidia flagship (980 ti/Titan 2) and it will blow the 290X away (and the 980 if the leaked benchmarks are true), with the R9 380X competing with the GTX 980, though nothing has been leaked about that yet.

It's strange, I would expect an R9 290X to be ahead of both the 780 ti and the 980 at high resolutions because of the wider memory bus (especially the 980 with the 256-bit bus, but then it does have better memory compression), but according to this it's not -

http://www.eteknix.com/4k-gaming-showdown-amd-r9-290x-crossfire-vs-nvidia-gtx-780-ti-sli/
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The GTX 690 is a dual GPU video card so it is running SLI already, or there's also the ASUS Mars which is a dual GTX 760 video card, a dual GPU video card doesn't really appeal to me but it might to you depending on the prices and they are very powerful although a single GTX 980 beats them both. The cheapest 780 ti I could find over here was £299 compared to £399 for a 980, I honestly think I'd go with the 780 ti with that kind of saving but the 980 is the most powerful out of the lot.
 
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Ah i see, so I couldn't run 2X 690?

Would 2x 780ti be better than 2x 980 or the other way around? Thanks
 
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I would love a Titan but they are so expensive, I think the cheapest I've seen is about £650 used
 
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I think a 780Ti would be better for the 3D effects because it has almost the same specs as the Titans. I think the GTX 980 is more Gaming based, while the 780Ti more workstation/Gaming.
 
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Its a good option for high res:

MordorU_2560x1440_PER_0.png


http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1837126&page=3
 
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Yeah I agree, fair enough.

Would 2X 690 be any good?

I'm thinking 780Ti at the moment purely because it seems to be the best all round suited card.
 
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The maximum I would play in would be 1440p, but for the next year or so probably only 1080p. Hm
 
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Yeah sure, you'd essentially be running quad SLI with 2 690's or 2 ASUS Mars cards, I haven't seen the price of either of them in the UK though so I'm not sure if either would offer better value than a 780 ti, neither will match the performance and both only have 2GB effective memory. 2 980's are more powerful than 2 780 ti's, but not by a lot and as Mojo said, the 780 ti is better when it comes to applications that use Cuda processing.
 
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GTX970/GTX980 are the best choice for 1080p. R9 290x xfire is an excelent choice for 1440p/1600p.
 
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That's true, would you recommend I got for 690s? Or do you think they are too old?

I can't decide between the 980, 780ti, R9 290X or 690.
 
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Personally, I'd rule out a 690 right away unless you can get one for ~£150 and then it might be a good option, but remember that you're always going to have 2gb of effective VRAM even if you were using quad SLI with dual 690's for a total of 8gb of physical VRAM; you could maybe max out most games at 300+fps at 1080p with dual 690's, but performance will decrease significantly when you saturate that 2gb of effective memory with higher resolutions.

The new R9 300 series is just around the corner though if you can wait.
 
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Ah yes i was thinking about the VRAM issue as well. That's the 690 ruled out then.

What are the R9 300 series supposed to be like compared to the 290X?

Also would you suggest a 980 or an R9 290X 8GB like one of the others on this thread?
 
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Well the R9 390X is being designed to compete with the upcoming Nvidia flagship (980 ti/Titan 2) and it will blow the 290X away (and the 980 if the leaked benchmarks are true), with the R9 380X competing with the GTX 980, though nothing has been leaked about that yet.

It's strange, I would expect an R9 290X to be ahead of both the 780 ti and the 980 at high resolutions because of the wider memory bus (especially the 980 with the 256-bit bus, but then it does have better memory compression), but according to this it's not -

http://www.eteknix.com/4k-gaming-showdown-amd-r9-290x-crossfire-vs-nvidia-gtx-780-ti-sli/
 
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Ooooh okay I see, that makes sense. To be honest the 390X will probably be really expensive when it gets released (as all cards are) so I'm looking at the 290X or the 780ti for now.

What would you personally buy if given the opportunity - 980 or 780ti?
 
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I have a feeling that the 390X isn't going to be that expensive for some reason lol, every flagship single GPU video card that AMD have released has been ~£450 at launch, around the price of a big brand GTX 980. Personally, I'd go for a GTX 980, I probably am going to replace my 970 with one actually and add one of those lovely ColdZero backplates 😛
 
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