This week I am going to be upgrading my EVGA GTX 660Ti 3GB SC card along with the rest of my system. I am truly stuck on which card to get so I am hoping some people might be able to give me some unbiased advice please. For the last millennium I have been on team green firmly ( 8600GT, 8800GTX Ultra, 9600GT, 285GTX, 560Ti, 660Ti ) but I am getting drawn to the red side....which is freaky as i naturally hate red IRL. I am going to be getting either the Asus Z97-A or Asus Maximus VII Ranger board then popping an i5-4690K into it with 8gb Kingston hyper X 2400MHz ram. For the GPU I have a budget of £230 for the new card and I have been looking at the Asus R9 290 DirectCU II 4GB card is it a good card or would i be be better off going for a 280 and the money I would save putting towards my CPU and getting the i7-4790K? I am primarily a gamer( BF4 and Elite D ) however I do like to do a fair bit of Photoshop as well. I play at a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and use two monitors ( at the moment 1 for gaming and one for ts etc ) I will be overclocking and the card will be under water as well if that helps. If people could help me on this one please as it is driving me nuts trying to decide which way to go.
An i7 isn't going to give you decent benefit in games, stick with the i5. Personally I'd buy a GTX 970, but that's another £30 over your budget. For the money, get the 290.
I would say the i5 and 290 would be a great choice. I flit between red and green but the 290 has been a excellent choice for me so far.
yeah - you are better off saving on the CPU and investing the extra in the GPU than the other way around. You'll get a much more noticeable performance boost in games that way. If you are dead-set in going with the red team, a 290 seems the best choice. I'd suggest looking at the 970 as an alternative, as you'll get slightly better performance in games with less power draw and noise.
I liked the 970 so much for how good it is plus the price that I got two. As well as considering get a third as Sli it runs smooth with the current drivers I have on
There is no way I could afford two, as it would mean 2 x waterblocks as well. ( I have checked on the EKWB site and I can reuse my current WB on a 970 which does save cash in the long run ) This throws a spanner in the works as getting a 970 does work out cheaper in the long run
ALso another kicker with the 970 is it only has one DVI connector and my monitors are 1x DVi + 1 x VGA
That's because nobody uses VGA any more. Seriously, why? http://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-DisplayPort-Video-Adapter-Converter/dp/B001RPCZL4 It does have DisplayPort though. Lovely, lovely DisplayPort. Also, what block are you using exactly?
I am using my old FC670GTX CSQ My second monitor is pretty old now, I will hopefully get a new one for my birthday at the end of may ( hint hint in case the wife reads this lol )
I had a similar dilemma recently. I bought the Asus 290 and it arrives tomorrow! I have also owned an MSI 970 recently and for 1080p was excellent. I am expecting similar results from the 290 at this res although it saved me a bit over the 970 as £251 was the cheapest new 970 I could find last week and this 290 was £229 and comes with that lovely Asus Direct CU fan/heatsink setup which I really like.
I like my evga gtx970 ssc acx2+ card. I'm personally glad I ditched all the watercooling on this build. It's actually quieter on air than my old build was on water. All my stuff runs passive until it hits certain temps, and only then do any fans spin up. It's quite nice that way and saved me a lot of money on blocks and such. It's also a good performer and I don't regret picking it. Also, depending on if enough games you play use physx you could keep your 660ti in to use for that. Or, if you happen to do anything that can make use of cuda it would be even more relevant to keep it. Plus you can keep it to use for the second display too since that seems to currently be a concern with the newer 970 revisions having a single DVI connection.
I have the sapphire 290 (Tri X) and can recommend wholeheartedly. Great card. Not too noisy and should give solid performance for your resolutions
Be careful if you go for a 280X, a LOT of reported faults with them not being stable at stock speeds. IIRC they are a rebranded 7970GHZ edition, OK if you down clock them to stock 7970 speeds but that's pointless.
Just a heads up you can get a 780ti with titan cooler for £250 on ocuk pre order which is faster than all cards mentioned so far. Near 980 performance for a good chunk of cash less.
