So I joined the Red side!

So I made the switch from nvidia to amd. *inserts evil laugh*

Bought it off ebay, its a gamble, but for $250 it was hard to resist.

Can anyone recommend a cheap vga cooler replacement? I have my eyes on this gelid cooler, it isn't as hot as I'll imagine it to be, but it was climbing pretty quickly in temps during crysis 3 85c ish. Also a pict of this heat beast, the board is the same length as my 570, but the cooler extends 1/3 inch over.

Your loss. =]

lol there's a reason why its on ebay.....

ATI/AMD cards are like buses their big red and have bad drivers =P

Back to the subject , The Arctic Accelero Xtreme III is one the better coolers.

But there is an option In getting Kraken X40 and Kraken G10 and keep that gpu under 50C

My AMD has never given me issues. If it performs well and it's cheap, what is there to complain about besides the heat? Which, of course, is fixable.

I've had issues with their drivers in the past on specific games, where same game would work flawlessly on NVIDIA.

I also like PhysX, but only when it's implemented correctly.

NVIDIA also now have ShadowPlay and GeForce Experience, don't know if AMD have an equivalent.

How long ago was that you had an AMD card? I have only had this card for a little over a year, and I've heard that the AMD drivers have improved in the last few. I could be that mine is a mid-range card and so it doesn't require nearly as much power, nor does it put out as much, thus lessening the risk of it having issues.

Hahaha, I like that.

It was quite a few years ago, and yes the drivers have improved a lot, but I still see people having issues with them. Meanwhile my NVIDIA cards rarely cause any issues. The difference is money also isn't as much as it used to be.

That's true. Ever since the mining, AMD prices have skyrocketed. I have been looking at Nvidia for an upgrade soon because of that. We'll have to see if the money comes up. :) Still, in the meantime, my card is going strong!

There's a redside?

Cards are back to normal rates. While the used market is way below. 290x goes for $300 usd if you get lucky. I tried my luck with unlocking earlier, but the mem test says is unlock :( sad times, but I still came out nearly half of retail price.

I read that some people got uber lucky, sold their card to miners during the bubbled prices, and bought it recently with the crashed prices.

Edit:card actually runs pretty quiet on idle and gaming too. However the temps I'd imagine would make oc'ing hard without a custom cooler.

@Bikouchu35 said:

So I made the switch from nvidia to amd. *inserts evil laugh*

Bought it off ebay, its a gamble, but for $250 it was hard to resist.

Can anyone recommend a cheap vga cooler replacement? I have my eyes on this gelid cooler, it isn't as hot as I'll imagine it to be, but it was climbing pretty quickly in temps during crysis 3 85c ish. Also a pict of this heat beast, the board is the same length as my 570, but the cooler extends 1/3 inch over.

If you want it cooled just like Gigabytes' Windforce this is the solution: ARCTIC Accelero Xtreme IV High-End Graphics Card Cooler with Backside Cooler for Efficient RAM and VRM-Cooling

If you want it water cooled it's a bit more expensive but might actually cool it better if you OC it: ARCTIC Accelero Hybrid II-120 Water Cooler for Graphics Cards with Backside Cooler for Efficient RAM and VRM Cooling

Traitor!!

Nvidia or go home -.-

Yeah, just bought a brand new R9 290 for my backup build and it was only $250. I do love my Nvidia cards way more, they're much cooler with much better drivers and MUCH more expensive but it's worth it rather then crossfiring. That would be a nightmare.

I've had only 1 or 2 AMD (ATI) cards in any PC compared to at least 6 or 7 Nvidia-based among the different configurations I've owned over the last 13 years, though I have preferred AMD cpu's in all of them.

If not for physx and cuda (gpu video processing) I'd pay more attention to AMD's offerings. I also prefer the Nvidia control panel as opposed to AMD's 'control center' for making image quality adjustments.

lol. have my beans.

but yes, that's why i switched to camp green years ago. no more driver problems <3

Oh! I didn't realize they were back down. It's been about a month since I've checked. Hmmm...I'll have to do some comparing to see what I want to do.

Glad to hear that the card is working for you! Though you're right in saying you're going to need a custom cooler if you're going to overclock at all.

What are all these driver problems keep going on about?

The R9 series is the first AMD card series that I've owned that didn't have crappy driver issues. It's a good card series for damn sure. I've been running 280X's & 290's for months straight. They run night and day at 100% hitting about 80°-87° mining coins and these suckers are still kicking some ass.

One of the 280X doubles as my gaming card and it has done very well, great price and good performance.

Typically I'd always pick Nvidia, but in this case...I might just go AMD.

I have no idea. I've never had issues.

its more or less specific game issues , AMD drivers as they progress older games tend get the shaft from the fixes that was in place at one point but get left out as time goes on. Then with Crossfire major frame timing issues. While AMD has stepped up their game on the driver front they are not as polished as Nvidia's drivers. AMD went to a custom API"Mantle" to bypass direct x to lessen cpu overhead and increase performance , while Nvidia sticking with a "bloated" direct x provided same type of gains just with optimizing the existing code.

Mantle will fade away when direct x 12 comes out because it will provide same type of gains and developers wont have to code their games to make use of multiple API's but only one.

Good for you. Happy with the performance?

Michael Jordan is a racist. http://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/celebrity/michael-jordan-admits-racism-i-was-against-all-white-people-n98971

I've never had these problems with older games. Do you have any examples?

Nvidia's cpu optimisations were massively overrated, they are no way near Mantle in performance. For most single GPU users they provided very little benefit.

Agreed, but that has nothing to do with driver problems.

Ebay.

Yup, there's your problem. :P

Games like BFBC2, COD4, are a few examples as of mid 2013 drivers.

Nvidia never claimed major cpu optimizations, they are just making their drivers more efficient with DX11.While their claims say upto 64%, some games that have been tested see 10%-40% gains Not too shabby from a driver update.Their drivers have given good gains with DX11 games as in seeing in some cases 7-8 FPS gains and better minimums. Dont go by the journalist ranting found online. Plenty of people here have seen gains. AMD's Mantle claims are much more shady and see little to nothing on intel based systems and only see gains when your using their cpu's which cause cpu bottlenecks. And their upto 70% or even 45% claims were from their in house APU tests.

Thanks. Maxed out 4xAA hbao on bf4 sp hitting beyond 60 fps. Maxed out Crysis 3, but is not breaking 60fps. Will do some more stress test.