Which graphics card?

[JakkaWakka]

Hey there,
i'm going to be playing a lot of games such as Borderlands 2, planetside 2 and other games but i'm also going to be playing a lot of 'next gen games' like The witcher 3, Titanfall, Battlefield 4 etc. I know the Gtx 770 and r9 280x are about equal in terms of performance give or take a few fps depending on the game but there is a lot of things that make it hard to decide.

The gtx 770 apparently has more stable drivers and cool features like Physx which is meant to be really good but is not in many games (yet), and G-sync but that means buying a new monitor which isn't worth it. But it only has 2gb of vram which could be an issue in future games and that is one of the main concerns.

The r9 280x is £20 cheaper but does not come with 3 free games but im not really interested in, it has mantle which is supposed to increase fps and 3gb of vram which seems perfect for new games coming out.

I'll be playing at 1920x1080 and ill be using a i5 4670k.

 

[sosofm]

The cards are almost equals in performance. Buy 280x.

 

[Onus]

That is a tough call. While it's nice in games that have it, few titles use PhysX, so I'd rule that out as a deciding factor. The higher VRAM of the R9-280X is probably worth considering though.
Can you wait a month or so? Hopefully in that time the effects of Mantle will have been quantified, and AMD will have had the chance to polish their drivers a little more. Although both companies have driver issues from time to time, it seems lately that AMD is having the most difficulty.
If I were buying today, I'd get the GTX770 because of those driver issues. At 1920x1080, the 2GB of VRAM shouldn't be a big issue, at least not today, and some settings tweaks ought to adjust for it. Mantle may be a big deal, or it may not be. Bulldozer taught a valuable lesson on hype though; as far as AMD is concerned, I'll believe it when I see it. As the expression goes, "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Even if the 280X ultimately turns out to be better, obviously the 770 does not "suck," so getting it will hardly be a bad decision.
Hmmm, one other thing came to mind though... If you have any interest in cryptocurrency mining (e.g. Litecoin), then AMD is the only way to go, so get the 280X. If it's just for games though, I'd go with the 770.

 

[jay2577]

Mantle is supposed to take some of the workload off the CPU but you have a powerful CPU. It also can give extra visual effects but until Mantle is released we don't know how good it will be.
The Nvidia card has Physx which you might be interested in so you might want to consider that.

If you game at 1920x1080 having over 2gb of memory is pretty pointless. What difference it will make in the future i don't know.
This is a chart of Battlefield 4 graphics card memory usage

It's a difficult choice buying a graphics card but ultimately it is your decision
I bought 2 x AMD 270X's recently so i could try a crossfire configuration as i had only had single GPU set ups before and i don't regret it a bit😀

 

[HeyyScott]

770 is bit faster and like you said comes with nice deals and features. If you want to spend the extra few bills, I say go for it. Other than that, they're both pretty equal cards.

 

[geofelt]

From a performance point of view, you can't tell the difference.
Vram seems to not be a performance issue either:
http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Video-Card-Performance-2GB-vs-4GB-Memory-154/

Do not anguish much about it either.
If you are an amd fan, go R9, if you are a nvidia fan go GTX770.

I might go for a factory overclocked GTX770 that uses a cheaper reference titan blower cooler.

 

[Zoladex]

I recently built a rig with a 770.

imo just go with what appeals most to YOU. e.g, performance, game bundles and features (PhysX, Eyefinity, etc). Then research those things in more detail and see if u still like them.

For me it was features.
To start with i chose Nvidia for superior 3D, but research showed it had several flaws which ruled 3D out as a whole.
So i was left with the cheaper and more powerful Radeon with a game bundle. But after researching their features, i found that the company didn't really have anything i was interested in. But it was still cheaper .
So back to see Nvidias other bits. I found PhysX pretty interesting, watching the hawken FluidX trailer. They also had FXAA and other bits too.

Though not all things are for everyone, as my brother hates PhysX and always disables it lol.

The only chose then is how much to spend :s.


Edit: as for drivers, dont worry about it. Both companys release frequent patches that fix and break things all the time. Generally its only recently release games have driver issues, which are patched after a few weeks.

Also edit . As for Vram, again it depends on what you do. Skyrim loaded with mods, such as texture ones, might start to struggle with 2GB. If u just play games vanilla stlye 2GB is more than enough. especially at 1920x1080