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NVidia
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GTX Titan
(Most Pricey Single GPU GTX)
The First GK 110 Card that was released on a desktop grade GPU. Its origins lie from the Tesla K20 SuperComputing unit. It had the most memory of all current nVidia Cards. Now this card still remains expensive and hard to find because it's more for double precision CUDA Work. This card was still nonetheless very suitable for gaming and the 6GB Frame buffer running on a 384 bit bus could allow pushing of higher resolutions. Now since the GTX 680, the reference coolers has been given a boost and has proven effective for the cooling needs which is why many users can live by the reference cooling for the current generation of GTX 700 series cards. Needless to say, there has been no non-reference versions of this card however and as it still stands, it still costs more than double of the GTX 780. That cost is enough to buy 2 GTX 780s in SLI so Don't buy it. Anyways, rumors of a Black Titan just surfaced for the past couple weeks so we'll wait and see how this hilarity ensue.
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***GTX 780
(Titan's Tiny but Mighty Baby Brother)
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| My very own ZOTAC GTX 780 AMP! GPU Currently Overclocked, and can easily boost 1.2 GHz. At that time before the 780 Ti, this was easily the fastest 780s you can get. |
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| Example of a Reference GTX 780; The OEM reference coolers on the GTX 700 series are no slouch, adequate and silent enough. Readily supports G-Sync despite it being released way before the Technology was even announced. |
It was priced fairly high initially but the release of the GTX 780 Ti and the R9 290 and 290X lowered that to really appealing levels in November which was the time I bought my Zotac Card. Limited stocks of the R9 290/290X caused their own prices being jacked up on Newegg because of Bitcoin Mining. Finding a Non-reference GTX 780 you can find it easily. But yet the Reference card with the reference cooler is also a good pick for it still overclocks well enough to achieve that performance level. Although overthrown by the newer flagship 780 Ti, a good overclock can fix that, a reason that it's pointless to spend for the 780 Ti or even more for the ridiculous Titan. The AMD's counterparts are the direct opposite which I'm covering later. For that point, it has my nod of approval as one of my 5 since I use one. G-Sync is natively supported on all GK-110s even though this tech is announced way after the 780's release. It has support for Gamestreaming on an nVidia Shield so it's something to think about.
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***GTX 770
(Souped up GTX 680)
Essentially a heavily overclocked and rebadged GTX 680 that is released if people can't afford a GTX 780. The GTX 770 was priced initially at 399 USD but also received a price cuts alongside the GTX 780 to 329. A Non Reference Card although costing a bit more would still trump the R9 280X cards whose prices seem to bump up because of a shortage in supply. Despite being outperformed by the GTX 780 and the R9 290, The card's good value for money still stands because you still have game bundles being sold with it.
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***GTX 780 Ti
(Kepler Fully Unleashed)
The mother load of all Kepler based GPUs and the Titan's and the 780's big brother. With full 2880 CUDA cores and SMX Blocks unlocked, The GTX 780 Ti fully unlocked the true performance of the GK 110 Core. The 780 Ti was released shortly as a response to the R9 290X's release. And with the current coolers still more than enough to handle the heat, it's a lot more efficient in performance and power usage than the R9 290X. It's still priced high, but nowhere as high as the ridiculous Titans. Now the GTX 780 Ti only has 3GB of memory but 6GB versions of the card are currently in consideration to fully render the Titans essentially redundant. Like the GTX 780, the reference GTX 780 Ti overclocks like a dream, and able to inch very close to the Dual GPU 690s. It's pretty much meant for the drooling PC enthusiasts. Raw performance alone earns a place in my Top 5. There are other cards in the making right now, in particular the EVGA's Classified K|NGP|N's (Kingpin) incarnation of the GTX 780 Ti.
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GTX 760
(Mainstream Crowd Pleaser)
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| An MSI Twin Frozr GTX 760 Gaming Edition GPU owned by a choir friend, Leon. Still a good mainstream card for the budget. |
A more than capable card for the affordable gamer. The GTX 760 performs around the Radeon 7950 levels for around the price of the less powerful R9 270X. It's based off a GK 104 chip used in the GTX 680, 670 and 660 Ti. As the currently the most entry level of the GTX 700 series, it still sports a good 1152 Cuda Cores and a considerable amount of memory buffer, allowing the GTX 760 to perform in league with the GTX 670.
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GTX 650 Ti Boost
(Last Generation's Budget GTX)
I understand it's considered as last gen card but the GTX 650 Ti boost was still a decent performer that holds its ground to the R9 270 and the Radeon 7850. It was a huge step up from the first GTX 650 Ti because of the whopping addition of memory bandwidth. And judging on performance numbers and rumours, I can somehow estimate that it'll perform closer if not better than the upcoming Maxwell based GTX 750 Ti, which is weird. In terms of pricing, you can still readily find 650 Ti Boosts on the cheap. And this card will perform slightly better than the old GTX 580. This will be good on a real tight budget build or a secondary build.
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Advanced Micro Devices
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Radeon 7990
(Dual GPU Beast)
Developed in response to the GTX 690 and has seen a HEAVY price cuts all over the place. But stocks seem to be scarce nowadays because of the more performance per GPU. And Dual GPU cards seem to face a problem with frame pacing. Despite this, this card remains good for a smaller enclosure in a mini ITX system so you can possibly have the maximum performance available. If you looking for a card in a mini ITX build, this could probably be it. So far there has only been one aftermarket one, the Power Color Devil 13.
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***R9 290X
(Aloha, Hot Hawaii!)
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| A reference R9 290X owned by another choir buddy who DIYs his own rigs. Darryl stated as long as you have a good case and ventilation, noise and to some extent throttling shouldn't be too much of your worries. |
However the reference GPU did have a few flaws. The base clock was stated to go up to a certain core clock, so the core clocks could go anywhere up to that depending on the thermals in the card. Now retail cards keep hitting the thermal threshold at 95 Degrees all the time. As if the heat wasn't enough, The R9 290X's reference cooler was loud and noisy and relatively unable to take the thermal thresholds well, hardly allowing for any overclocking. Nevertheless, the R9 290X sort of took nVidia by surprise, because the initial value of this card was what that set this card apart. For one, it was significantly cheaper than the GTX 780 by the time of release which triggered the massive GeForce price cuts all over the place. Furthermore it was performing better in terms of FPS than the 780 and the Titan. Aftermarket cooling solutions later dramatically improved on how much cooler and more consistent the card performs, granting the 290X a vast amount of thermal space for overclocking. And because of that additional space, you can take it even further and has been demonstrated to be able to reach performance levels of 780 Tis for less cost and about the same way the GTX 780 does. You pay slightly more for the cooling, but it's well worth the investment. So yeah, one of my Top 5, but go for non-reference cards as my recommendation. Sapphire Toxic Version of the R9 290X is probably the best and coolest-running card there is.
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***R9 290
(Baby 290X, to the rescue!)
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| The venerable Sapphire Tri-X R9 290 OC heavily improves cooling and reduces noise, improving overall performance consistency whilst giving much more room to overclock. Design Scheme Looks very much Zotac-ish. |
The slightly cut down brother of the R9 290X. It doesn't really differ much except just a small cut of Stream Processors and a slightly reduced base max clocks and significantly lower price. Not stressing as much as the R9 290X does allow a bit more efficiency and more consistent max clocks. The R9 290's performance difference compared to the R9 290X is pretty damn small. Although still a hot running card unless you're using a non-reference GPU, it performs in League with the GTX 780 and the Titan while being initially cheaper than even the cut-priced GTX 780. Despite it being more expensive now due to limited stock and of course Bitcoin Mining, it still is a great choice for Value, and very viable and powerful in Crossfire. Despite still facing Frame Pacing inconsistencies in Crossfire, this has shown significant improvement with subsequent driver updates. It's still worth its value for it alongside the GTX 780 SLI are both cheaper than a single Titan especially with AMD Mantle. Another one of my Top 5 and Like the R9 290X, I would highly recommend a non-reference GPU.
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***R9 280X
(Tahiti XT Refreshed)
Essentially a rebadged Radeon 7970 GHz edition Card, with the additional tweaks like TruAudio and stuff that makes production in general cheaper. A Great fill in if you can't afford the already good value R9 290. Non-reference R9 280Xs are readily available and will still give great performance in 2560 X 1440. Good value medium-high performance card. And yes, being the same Tahiti Architecture as the Radeon 7970, it has been proven that you can Crossfire the R9 280X with that. A Great budget card if you want a decent price crossfire setups and you don't want to spend a bomb on a new card.
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