Don't derail this thread by starting off with PhysX nonsense. Because the posts deserve a reply, that's the only reason I'll be replying.
The only reason for me going with the green team was PhysX, yes i know it's pretty useless when it comes to gaming but hey if i am spending around 20k for a graphic card, i'd like it to be able to run every setting properly [even though not maxed out]
The question comes to my mind is, if there is a faster card for the same price, would you like to run 99.99% games faster or want to run countable games with some special effects enabled?
Same case with when Mantle gains a little bit traction.
If a card "X" no matter what brand is giving you best performance at a given price point, get that. No matter what the brand. This should be the logic.
phyx is nothing bad, if it would have been constituted by Aegia till date or any other sub-vendor, then no one would complain, but just because nvidia has standardized it , its forcibly called useless.
There was a reason why it was called useless.
nVidia was claiming a massive increase in performance by doing certain calculations on the GPU vs CPU. Funny thing was, the performance increase gain was claimed by intentionally using single threaded X87 code on CPUs. X87 instructions are ancient. They were depreciated in favour of much faster SSE.
Read this and learn: PhysX87: Software Deficiency If possible, read the whole article.
Verdict: Useless.
(was)
Now it isn't as useless. It is multithreaded and uses SSE instructions on the CPU. But then this again beats the whole point why the whole "PHYSX IS FASTER ON GPU THAN CPU" marketing hyperbole was created in the first place.
I don't like Mantle either. Another attempt to cause fragmentation. We'll see how it goes.
95 deg is a thing to worry, water-blocking is an option , but its not that simple around everywhere neither waterblocks are free. but perf/dollar is best in R9-290 without any doubt. but AMD just punched themselves so damn hard in the "X" balls that they will get some heat of 290X buyers two weeks ago for this complete sudden rip-off. At this point the people who got most ripped off are those that paid $549 for a R9 290X two weeks ago. At least Titan and the 780 could sustain their exorbitant prices for months after their respective releases.
95 C a worry on the damned reference card. Even here in India the temperature won't go much higher than that. The reference card is designed to keep it that way. I don't see Hardocp complaining much about it. Same with Tomshardware. Non-reference cards will fix it, and you know it still you keep on repeating the same thing.
I find it quite amusing, Titan has been a
Ferrari and R9 290X @ $549 has been a ripoff. Funny. Plenty got the Titan, plenty will get the R9 290X despite R9 290 being @ $399.
When HD 4850 had 80-85% of the performance of HD 4870 @ 66% of the price, HD 4870 was never called a ripoff. Both launched around the same time iirc. oh yea, they also ran hot. 95 C and all that.
