Gtx 650 ti boost vs r9 270x

[vegas311]

Hi, okay I was able to RMA my gtx and theylle replace it after a week but they gave me an option for an additional 50$ I can get the r9 270x as a the replacement right on the spot and no need to wait for a week. Is it worth the extra cash? Benchmarks show a little difference but r9 270x is the stronger card.

 

[Gate9er]

Which 270X are they offering you?

 

[ingtar33]

the r9-270x is about 20% faster. get it and enjoy.

 

[vegas311]

I'm certain one is sapphire and am not sure bout the other one but I think it's MSI. They have the same size box sapphire am not sure which color is which but they came blue and the I the one is red

 

[Gate9er]

Get the 270X is definitely faster and the Sapphire is top choice.

 

[vegas311]

So you guys saying its worth the 50$? Coz I'm planning for a dual GPU soon. With either my current gtx or this r9 270 if I'll get it.

 

[ingtar33]

So you guys saying its worth the 50$? Coz I'm planning for a dual GPU soon. With either my current gtx or this r9 270 if I'll get it.

i'll answer this question with a question.

Does your 650ti BOOST have 1gb of vram or 2gb?

If it has 1gb, then you're better off going with the r9-270x. The boost in SLi will be ram bottlenecked with 1gb of vram. the r9-270x comes with 2gb of vram standard. Which would make it a much more atractive card in xfire/sli then the 1gb boost.

If your boost is a 2gb version, then you might as well save the 50 bucks and get a 2nd boost.

 

[vegas311]

Yea I have 2gb boost,. And it's 2 months old. And I've read a lot of bad reviews with xfire.

Set aside the money, if I'll get 2 r9 270x is it a better choice than 2 gtx 650 ti boost?

 

[ingtar33]

Yea I have 2gb boost,. And it's 2 months old. And I've read a lot of bad reviews with xfire.

Set aside the money, if I'll get 2 r9 270x is it a better choice than 2 gtx 650 ti boost?

ok. lets erase what you know about xfire for a moment. It will be much easier without preconceptions and prejudices, because as you know things change in the computer industry weekly.

1) both xfire and SLi are increadibly buggy and don't always work as they should. Often times games will crash or stop working right. So the general advice is "get a single gpu over a xfire/sli setup whenever possible"

2) xfire works as good as SLi with dx11/11.1/11.2 titles AND a single monitor

3) xfire does not work as good (or at all really) as SLi in dx9 or with multiple monitors (with one exception, xfire works fine with dx9 and multiple monitors if you're using an r9-290/r9-290x gpu)

4) because xfire does not work as good as SLi in dx9 or with multiple monitors that does not mean SLi is flawless in those situations. SLi remains buggy in it's own right, and has it's own struggles with both dx9 and multiple monitors.

5) AMD is fixing xfire currently. and the situation will likely change in the future. Currently xfire scales far better then SLi, and in the situations it works, it's indistinguishable and works as well as SLi. The r9-290/290x actually work better in xfire then any nvidia SLi configuration, proving AMD can get it right when they put their mind to it.

So... to answer your question, currently SLi'ed 650ti BOOSTs would be the better all round option. However, when AMD gets the kinks ironed out of xfire in dx9 titles and multiple monitor situations expect the r9-270x to be a significantly better performing combination for 2 reasons. 1) the gpus themselves are about 20% faster. 2) xfire scales significantly better then SLi further widening the difference in performance.

i speak about scaling a few times.... what i mean is two cards in xfire/sli aren't as strong as if you just added their performance together... there is performance loss so it's not as simple as adding 1+1 = 2. 2 cards in SLi typically give you around 150%-175% the performance of 1 card. 2 cards in xfire typically give you 185%-195% the performance of 1 card. So we say xfire (when it works properly) scales better then SLi.

Previously, because of the issues with xfire, the issues with SLi scaling weren't really a concern, because SLi gave the end user a better experience. Now that AMD is finally addressing the issues with xfire the focus shifts to the poor scaling in SLi nvidia gets (something which is really obvious when you look at how 2 r9-280x/7970s in xfire perform about as well as 2 780s in SLi).