rapidpuma59 - It’s way too early to call it. The 960 hasn't even hit the shelves yet, but I'm betting it'll definitely underperform compared to the R9 290. It might be a bit cheaper, though, and it'll certainly pull a lot less power... Nobody knows anything for sure yet.
By the way, have you guys actually seen what those cards look like? 😬
In my opinion, the price for the R9 285 hasn't quite hit its stride yet. It really ought to be priced lower than the 280X, which is currently the cheapest option sitting on the shelves at Best Buy $633. Sure, we're looking at a brand-new GPU and a fresh architecture, but honestly, the current tag is just too steep. It’s simply not worth that much right now...
rapidpuma59 said:If that actually happens, I could probably snag a pretty decent graphics card without breaking the bank, right?
At this point, it is a 100% certainty that a gtx 960 plus a power supply will fit inside those three slots. You won't even need anything high-end—something like a CX430 or an xfx 450 should do the trick.
There is also a good chance the R9 290 price will plummet because of this; I remember when the Gigabyte Windforce was sitting at $867, so logically, it should drop even lower if the GTX 970 ends up around $967. The only catch is that you'll definitely need a beefier power supply for that one.
It just doesn't make sense to sink massive amounts of money into a GPU like this—especially when you're paying for a cooler that costs as much as the card itself. Instead, take this and slap it onto a cheap, used passive heatsink if you can track one down—maybe something like an EVGA Precision X1 click or even this : In my opinion, that’s a much smarter play. It won't cost you much more than ordering that specific one from the link, and you might even score a better deal on the used market.
Either grab a monitor with at least 1080p resolution and a DVI port, or look into the used market—for example, those Samsung 16:10 models with 1680x1050 resolution might work for you.
Since MSI tends to be a bit pricier than the rest of the pack by unwritten rule, I’m really hoping we see some more aggressive price cuts from the other brands soon.
Update: We might see those Asusica cards hitting the shelves as early as Monday.
ASUS GeForce GTX 970 Strix 4 $966 ASUS GeForce GTX 980 4GB - $1562
If that actually happens, the price for the GTX 970 is going to be a massive pleasant surprise. We’ll likely see prices tank across the board while everyone waits for the next generation to hit the shelves. It could even mean picking up an R9 290 for next to nothing.
My buddy did a solid job pulling those numbers, though hitting over 70°C is definitely running hot. Take this specific review as an example:
Initially, our unit easily hit 4.5 GHz at 1.3V, which was right on target. It remained perfectly stable during extended OCCT stress tests, with total system power draw climbing to about 180W. Moving forward, we bumped the voltage to 1.35V and set the multiplier to 47. This pushed the clock speed up to 4.7GHz, where the processor stayed stable, even as temperatures climbed toward 88°C. During this, we maintained the VRIN voltage at 1.9V, the RING voltage at 1.175V, and kept the System Agent, I/O Analog, and I/O Digital voltages at +0.1V above nominal. The chip actually managed to wake up at 4.8 GHz, but while it passed all the benchmarks, it crashed during stability testing after just 25 minutes (OCCT). Consequently, the absolute stable OC clock is 4.7GHz, making it objectively worse than our old 4770K, which hit 4.9GHz.
It really just comes down to individual hardware variance and, obviously, the cooling setup used.
Look, hitting 4.7 - 4.8 GHz is a pretty massive overclock if you actually pull it off. Your temperatures are going to be absolutely brutal, so you definitely need to budget for either a liquid cooling setup or a high-end air cooler. Since this chip already clocks 500MHz higher than the i7-4770 at stock settings, I can see why you might feel like that isn't such a huge jump
If you're dead set on an ASUS board, there are plenty of more affordable options like the Z97-C or the Z97-A, or you could look at the ASRock Z97 EXTREME4 etc...
That SSD idea is solid; traditional hard drives are basically the bottleneck in every single PC anyway.
You're overspending—honestly, even a Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 3 is more than enough for your needs. Plus, if you aren't planning on overclocking, why bother with a high-end CPU, a premium motherboard, and liquid cooling? It just doesn't make sense. Even that power supply is complete overkill. Those newer Maxwell GPUs should only be pulling about 150W, so a solid 450W unit would get the job done easily, let alone a 750W one. You could also find cheaper RAM—plenty of components can be picked up for less—which would allow you to shift that budget toward storage. For instance, maybe grab a 2TB hard drive if you need the space, or a 250GB SSD...
rapidpuma59, if I recall correctly, you were looking at that CPU upgrade specifically to boost gaming performance. But look, if you stick with the GTX 650, your frame rates aren't going to budge—the GPU is still the primary bottleneck here. Honestly, skipping a better graphics card at this stage is like flying all the way to DC just to miss seeing the President.
Something’s fried, which is why it won't power up. Honestly, you just have to troubleshoot it by process of elimination... If you don't have any spare parts on hand to swap out and test, just take it to a repair shop.
Comparing architectures is pretty pointless when you aren't even looking at the same chip from the same manufacturer—it’s practically a generational gap. The Maxwell architecture is an incredibly efficient GPU that draws all its power directly from the PCIe slot. At the end of the day, you have to look at practical application: what is this actually going to be used for in real life? Gaming. These two are too close to call one a definitive winner. It really comes down to which specific games the user cares about. For me personally, if the warranties are equal, price would be the deciding factor. Or maybe specific features—each card brings something different to the table...
BTW, I'm not sure which links you were checking out, because it certainly isn't true in 99% of cases. 😬
In that first link, looking at the overall results table for the tested games, the GTX 750 is slightly stronger. However, in the second link, the overclocked 750 takes the lead in every single game tested. The only massive bottleneck is in coh2, where the ATI card performs significantly better.
http://youtu.be/nfIyvY0MEpo?t=1m26s http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages...review,10.html http://www.anandtech.com/show/7764/t...iew-maxvel/11 http://www.legitreviews.com/evga-gef...eview_137067/3 - though keep in mind this one has the 750 factory overclocked (it actually handles manual OC quite well)
Naturally, certain titles lean more toward AMD optimization (like coh2, bf4, or Hitman Absolution), while others favor NVIDIA (BioShock Infinite, for instance...). However, on average, they are neck and neck—really in the same league... By the way, if you go with MSI, ASUS, or Gigabyte, you get an extra year of warranty coverage.