No Video Card Upgrade this round: No compelling reason
No Video Card Upgrade this round: No compelling reason
AMD recently came out with their reference design for the R9 series of video cards (Hawaii Chipset): R9 Video Cards Overview . I have read the reviews and the benchmarks, including comparisons to the 7990, GTX690 and Titan. I see no compelling reason to “upgrade” my GTX690. In fact, based on the benchmarks and reviews I have read GTX690 to R9 290X is more of a downgrade in power consumption, noise and mulit-monitor (2560 x 1600 X3) performance. Crossfire is out of the question, since it does not support individual monitor color calibration, and I don’t even want to think about the TDP of such a setup.
I have looked through many benchmarks which have the GTX690 and HD7990 in the top spot for most games at the resolution I mentioned above. The R9 290X is typically behind, with the Titan somewhere in between. With the GTX690, I get top tier game performance, easy color calibration and very quiet operation. As I stated in the title of the post, I don’t see any compelling reason to upgrade.
Shaun Merrigan
