My friend wants to sell me his Titan...

I need advice, because I've been an AMD user since 1999 (Quake 3 Arena), and my friend wants to sell [gift me?] his Titan for $520... I know that's a great price, and I even said to him "Bro, you know that's way under-priced right?" ...He didn't care, because he said he wants to upgrade to a crossfire 290X setup which will be water cooled.

...So my problem is basically this: I had planed to upgrade from my 2x5870's to 2x290 when custom coolers were released (non X-version). ...But I don't know what I should do now, please help me Gurus :wanker:

EDIT:
UPDATE (updated): so I decided not to get my friends Titan...

I walked into some random "mom & pop" electronics store (never been there before), and saw they had a 290 for sale @ $299! So I [on a whim] bought it!

I just got done playing some BF4, and I really can't understand why people complain about the noise the card makes. ...I cannot hear it above the big fans that are already installed in my case, and they aren't loud IMO.

However, the card does eject some warm air, and when I touched the metal on the rear of the card (where the exhaust comes from), I pulled my finger off of it real fast... Because it was warm, but once I was expecting the heat, I was able to endure it a bit longer.

At 1080p this card is a waste of money IMO, because the low resolution is starting to show its true colors. Even with 4XMSAA there's a lot of BS on the screen.

When I tried 200% resolution (upres in BF4's slider menu) the game looked awful: I think BF4 does a terrible job of upres-ing the screen's image, because I could see "pixels-garbage" that wasn't there before! So BEWARE all you upres-guys, it really isn't a good idea IMO (and I've got a 50" Pioneer 500M reference monitor)!!!

Anyway, I feel bad getting rid of my 2x5870's, since this card seems dumb at 1080p, but whatever... I'd have to admit that PC gaming is a bit of a disappointment, it's filled with "OH LOOK AT THAT NEW HARDWARE," when in reality it doesn't matter if you're already getting 60FPS.

 

get it if theres no issue with the titan. honestly 290x is such a pain in the ass it has problems. I know some dont but most do. plus what resolution do you play on? you only need to worry about crossfire really unless you plan to do three monitor/4k gaming.

i think 290's as well have the blackscreen issue i believe

 

If hes going to sell you a TITAN for 520 bucks, that is more than worth it. Once you OC that thing, it'll be more than enough.

In this situation, being an all-time AMD/ATI user shouldn't be an issue. That's one heck of a value if the card is in tip-top shape.

I rotate camps almost every generation. It's easier for me to say this than for you I'm sure, but take my word for it, I don't think you'll find a TITAN for 520 bucks very often from anywhere/anyone. That is a very generous friend you have there.

 

I think its high time to move on from AMD 5870.

I admit they are great cards, but Titan for $520 is something really worth considering.
It will consume less power and provide more performance.

If you can sell your current 5870s cards to help Titan costs, go for it!

 

Yeah I would say go for it, if you can offset the price with your 5870s. Quite a good deal.

 

This.

 

Go for it.

 

Yeah, do it, great deal

 

One R9 290 is close to Titan, and equal or better overclocked

Read Guru3D's latest review of the R9 290X, on the last page they recommend the R9 290 because it is close in performance. My R9 290 overclocks easily and performance is beyond Titan in 3DMark [2013] Fire Strike. With just a 17% GPU and memory overclock [the GPU can overclock much higher] and my Intel i5 3570K CPU at 4.6GHz [on air] my Fire Strike score was 9616.

Guru3D benchmarked the Titan at 9390. And they were using a six core Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition Sandy Bridge-E at 4.6GHz to benchmark with.

In the above mentioned review Guru3D said this, "Fire Strike is the new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is FutureMark's most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today."

Review link:
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/his_radeon_r9_290x_review,1.html

If you have an 850 watt, 80 Plus Certified Gold or higher, you should have no problem running two R9 290s. Note, I place high value in a good power supply.

With two R9 290s you should not have to overclock the video cards. I would suggest leaving a gap between the cards in order to allow both cards to breath [get enough air].

And, I paid $400 for my Sapphire R9 290 at Newegg.com - and it's a new card, not used.

Edit:

I forgot to mention my power supply, a Corsair TX650M. With an overclocked CPU and video card, my computer [all of it] spiked at a maximum of 450 watts during demanding benchmarks.
.

 

If you are playing games, definetly go for it.
The Titan is a nice card with a ****load of Ram on it
I propably would go for a 690 If i had the money and had to choose at full price, but at $520 it's a no brainer

Honestly, with all the problems AMD is having with (all their new cards and microstuttering) + the 290 issues, I would only use AMD in a 3D Workstation or if I got it for free. No way I would choose a new AMD card atm for gaming untill they get their driver issues fixed.

 

I do not have any problem with my R9 290 using the latest Beta9.2 driver. With the earlier Beta8.0 driver I did have a couple of games that had a few small black areas on the screen until the screen was redrawn. No problem now.

 

OC'ed Titan is a monster of a card, even against a single 290x OC'ed! You'll be hard to find that kind of bang for the buck. I would totally get the Titan over CFX if you are still at 1920x1080. More than enough power and no multi-gpu profile issues.

If you are pushing beyond 2560x1440 resolution, then you need to think about it as adding a second Titan will really put you in the hole.

 

I'd go with the R9 290 instead. Performs pretty much on par with a GTX Titan and it'll cost you less, plus it'll be brand new.

Later on you'll have the chance to grab a 2nd one, unlike the Titan, don't think you'll see Titan prices drop much (If any) in the next months.

 

I can tell from your post that you DO NOT have a computer with two R9 290 series cards in it. Please do not spread rumors about the R9 290 series until you know all of the facts.

And, you did not read Guru3D's own review published on Nov 5, 2013. They said, "over time things like micro-stuttering is slowly becoming a thing of the past. On that note the latest frame-pacing drivers definitely seem to work nicely. And if you get a 290/290X then the new XDMA Crossfire interface eliminates this in Ultra HD as well. That's a win-win."

And, that was BEFORE the Beta 9.2 driver, which is much better than the Beta 8.0 driver they were using; the latest driver was not released until about November 7, two days after the review.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/radeon_r9_290_crossfire_review_benchmarks,23.html

 

Go for it.

 

Microstutter? Never heard of that. What is microstutter?

Guys, 290 overclocks, and so does Titan. And Titan overclocks really well. And it comes with more VRAM. And runs cooler. In this case $520 for Titan is good.

 

Get the Titan at that price, its cooler, quieter, 2gb more Vram.

The 290s are plagued by a black screen crash problem.

 

OP here, and wow am I upset right now... Guru3D's website just "timed-out" after I wrote a long ass post, erasing everything in the process! No wonder we had The Revolutionary War! Your severs suck :bang:

...Anyway, long post short: since I'm gaming at 1920*1080, I'll go grab my friend's Titan, because I think getting two 290's might be overkill for my gaming needs, plus when I called him ~30mins ago, he said he only wanted $480 for the card!?.

I'm starting to wonder if his Titan is still functional at this point (lol), I even said to him: "Wow thanks, but Christmas isn't until December!" -> Implying I was suspect of the price :3eyes:

I already feel dirty with the thought of leaving AMD's Catalyst Control Center, because I have no idea what Nvida's control center looks like.

 

UPDATE (updated): so I decided not to get my friends Titan...

I walked into some random "mom & pop" electronics store (never been there before), and saw they had a 290 for sale @ $299! So I [on a whim] bought it!

I just got done playing some BF4, and I really can't understand why people complain about the noise the card makes. ...I cannot hear it above the big fans that are already installed in my case, and they aren't loud IMO.

However, the card does eject some warm air, and when I touched the metal on the rear of the card (where the exhaust comes from), I pulled my finger off of it real fast... Because it was warm, but once I was expecting the heat, I was able to endure it a bit longer.

At 1080p this card is a waste of money IMO, because the low resolution is starting to show its true colors. Even with 4XMSAA there's a lot of BS on the screen.

When I tried 200% resolution (upres in BF4's slider menu) the game looked awful: I think BF4 does a terrible job of upres-ing the screen's image, because I could see "pixels-garbage" that wasn't there before! So BEWARE all you upres-guys, it really isn't a good idea IMO (and I've got a 50" Pioneer 500M reference monitor)!!!

Anyway, I feel bad getting rid of my 2x5870's, since this card seems dumb at 1080p, but whatever... I'd have to admit that PC gaming is a bit of a disappointment, it's filled with "OH LOOK AT THAT NEW HARDWARE," when in reality it doesn't matter if you're already getting 60FPS.

 

It matters when you have 120/144hz monitors.

I have a 1080p 144hz monitor and my 780 SLI is really needed to keep up in BF4 @ Ultra 4xMSAA and 125% supersample. I could probably go higher than 125%, but I didn't notice a difference above that.

Of course it's helping in other games as well.

Also I still would have gotten the TITAN at 520 USD. The price was insanely good. Nothing against the R290x, just looking at bang for buck.