GTX 780 or R9 290 non-ref

[Andrew181]

Normally, in my country the price of a GTX 780 is about 100$ more than the price of a R9 290, so I thought I should wait for a non-ref R9 290 a get that because it's less expensive and supports Mantle. However, my local shop has introduced a promotion that bring the 780 to the price of a reference R9 290, but only lasts till December 19th. The reason why I haven't already bought a 780 is AMD Mantle. What do you think, is Mantle worth waiting for until early January, or should I get a 780 now?

TL;DR: GTX 780 now or R9 290 early January, for the same price, considering Mantle.

 

[St0rm_KILL3r]

Even the ref r9 290 is better than gtx 780. So you can expect non-ref r9 290s to be even better. Experts doubt that we might have to wait for only few weeks for non-ref r9 290s. And on games which amd mantle is supported, amd will have an edge. So, my answer is Yes, It's really worth the wait for r9 290 to come out with aftermarket coolers

 

[redeemer]

Well since its January then go for the 290 since aftermarket should be out by then. I absolutely think Mantle is worth it just look at all the dev support AMD has gained for their new API. Overall Hawaii is faster clock for clock over kepler, but right now the 290 is held back by its poor reference cooler.

http://products.ncix.com/detail/msi-radeon-r9-290x-gaming-twin-frozr-iv1040mhz-4gb-5ghz-gddr5-hdmi-dp-2xdvi-pci-e-video-card-9c-92892.htm

 

[Francisco Costa]

Normally, in my country the price of a GTX 780 is about 100$ more than the price of a R9 290, so I thought I should wait for a non-ref R9 290 a get that because it's less expensive and supports Mantle. However, my local shop has introduced a promotion that bring the 780 to the price of a reference R9 290, but only lasts till December 19th. The reason why I haven't already bought a 780 is AMD Mantle. What do you think, is Mantle worth waiting for until early January, or should I get a 780 now?

TL;DR: GTX 780 now or R9 290 early January, for the same price, considering Mantle.

I think you should get the 780. In terms of performance, it trades blows with the R9 290, but the 780 runs much cooler, quieter, consumes less energy and Nvidia drivers are much better than AMD ones. If you can get them for the same price, go for the 780

 

[corvetteguy1994]

Even the ref r9 290 is better than gtx 780. So you can expect non-ref r9 290s to be even better. Experts doubt that we might have to wait for only few weeks for non-ref r9 290s. And on games which amd mantle is supported, amd will have an edge. So, my answer is Yes, It's really worth the wait for r9 290 to come out with aftermarket coolers

+1 /\

 

[Andrew181]

Thanks guys, I guess I'll go for the non-ref R9 290 just because of Mantle, I also get 4gb VRAM with 512-bit bus width, should be enough in case I get a bigger monitor in the future. Hopefully, by the time they release non-ref R9, Battlefield 4 will already have his Mantle patch, so I can see how this new API performs. I'm not going to play any games this Christmas holdiday, but whatever.