Hello guys, i am a budget gamer going to upgrade my current rig from the old AMD 5850 to a new card, From my research in my country, Malaysia, The Sapphire Toxic R9 280x is a good choice with a good price point for me, but probabbly with another USD 150 more i maybe can get the reference ( non-oc from cheapest brand ) R9 290 when it released. I am mainly playing BF4, so i need some of you guys opinion regarding this one, I know the 290x is a new design,with much more improved mantle support and possibly tiled resources. so between these two, which one should i get?
I think you should get 290x, because it is actually a new card and not a re branded version of the predecessor cards. It is the newest available and it probably gets more support later on and if you have the card keep it at least 1-3 years. You will see they will still support it.
290x mantle support won't be much improved over 280x. If you can get 290, go for it, but even a 280x will play bf4 just fine even before mantle comes out in December.
Since you mention "budget gamer" I'd say 280x. I can't remember 290 specs and price. Mind you if you see a good deal on a 7950 go for it imo... Tiled Resources will be for APU's with hUMA, not rigs with a PCI-e bus separating vram & main memory. That's the part they don't tell you.
It would be sad if your cpu holds that 290 back. Now the same could be said for the 280x, but somehow I wonder if the 290 will do much better on that cpu. Maybe best to wait for official reviews.
I am pretty sure that your CPU is bit weak for BF4 at this moment. Mantle may change this, so I would not despair till mantle shows what it can do. r9-290 should be around 25% faster than r9-280x, but 60% more expensive. r9-290x is around 35% faster than r9-280x but 100% more expensive. Since r9-280x is HD7970 which doesn't have problems to keep BF4 at 60fps+ in beta I believe it will be OK to get that. As CPU goes, mine i5 Sandy @4.5GHz got utilization around 85-95% which proves we need intel to build 6/8 core CPUs without HT which does not do much for games and biggest benefit is from additional cache. Or AMD have to skip one generation and move next generation APU cores into FX processor without GPU part. R9-280x is very good for that price.
I know I said get 280x already but it might pay to wait till 290 is released and see what pricing is like...then make up your mind. Other option is 7950/7970/280x CF which will outperform the 290x for a lot less money but not everyone wants Crossfire hassles. All food for thought.. Eclap just ordered a second 7950 so ask him in a few days....
Apparently there is news that a revised 280x will be released next month, on an updated chip (Tahiti XTL vs XT2). The current rumour suggests the only way to tell them apart is the bios version, which would be silly. The rumour could be wrong though, the current cards could well be Tahiti XTL chips and the update next month could merely be a bios upgrade. Anyways, something to think about.
Hello guys, i have decided to buy the Sapphire R9 280X Toxic, I think i do not need to cash out so much just to play one game. By the way, Do you think AMD FX 8350 vs 8320, does the FX 8320 will be a huge disadvantage compared to the 8350 which cost like 70 USD more here
Nope, the 8320 can be overclocked pretty well as far as I've seen here. Pill will chime in soon and give you more info, I guess.
280x toxic is a fantastic card, you'll love it. 8350 vs 8320, I'd go for the 8320, it's the same chip, only lower clocks and overclocking is a silicon lottery anyway. You'll have one solid rig there.
Yeah the 8320/8350 are identical except for the turbo core speeds. Grab an 8320 + aftermarket cooler and let the overclocking begin.
That's not true at all. There are many reasons why tiled resources benefit all GPU's. Also huma has nothing to do with it.
You're wrong, it doesn't benefit discrete GPU's and has everything to do with hUMA. Tiled Resources allows the GPU to directly access system memory on platforms with UNIFIED MEMORY ARCHITECTURE instead of the data having to be copied from system RAM to VRAM. For this very reason it is of little or no use to desktops using discrete graphics cards. TL;DR: Tiled Resources is designed for consoles.
I have 2 of both the 280x's I had for a while are very stable and smooth as. The 290x's are not. I think I'm going to go back to the 280x's. The 290x usage graphs in Afterburner are all over the place. The 280x's were consistent! Looks like I might go back to the 280x's. I was hopping I could play at higher ultra resolution with the 290x's (135% at 120fps). Sometimes the graphs are smooth but mostly they revert back to the same old. Switching between Mantle and DX11 seems to fix it for a little while but my experience has been worse with the 290x's, wasn't expecting that
Think about the monitor you are going to couple it with..... If that investment is really worth getting the "better" card...for 1920x1200 290x is an overkill
Afterburner does not read usage properly on the the 290s, Unwinder even said this himself. When beta19 releases it is suppose to have many fixes to work properly with the 290s.