I'm building a new PC in a few weeks time and am trying to decide which graphics card to get. Initially I was going to get an R9 280X, but I've now realised that my budget can stretch to accommodate a 7990.
Obviously the 7990 is the most powerful card out there, and where I'm buying it, it's the same price as a 780 and cheaper than an R9 290X. I'm tempted to buy it but there are a few issues:
I've heard this card in particular has coil whine problems. Realistically is it likely that I will have very loud coil noise? And if I do, is it possible to RMA the card? I wear noise-cancelling headphones and my fans may well drown out a lot of the noise as well, so I don't know if this will be a huge problem anyway, but it would be nice to know.
Is microstutter still a problem? I do expect to play a few DX9 games (like, I haven't yet played The Witcher 2) so there will be times where the frame metering fix does not work. Is it actually noticeable when the card drops frames like that? I'm only running a 60Hz monitor so anything above 60 should be fine.
And there are several games which don't support Crossfire particularly well. I figure that the games that don't support Crossfire are probably not too demanding anyway and can probably be maxed with just one of the GPUs going - but I hear there are problems in some big games like World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2. I do play those games a fair bit so if they won't run properly then that is quite a consideration. Though some places say it's fine, some say not so much. I don't know.
But at the same time, the sheer power that it gives, allowing you to max games that almost no other GPU can, is very tempting. It's done very well with Battlefield 4, and I'm seriously excited for Dragon Age: Inquisition and the new Battlefront, which are also Frostbite, so I assume this will work fantastically with those too.
I play a lot of games, so ultimately this is quite a hard decision. Is it worth getting one of these things?
Obviously the 7990 is the most powerful card out there, and where I'm buying it, it's the same price as a 780 and cheaper than an R9 290X. I'm tempted to buy it but there are a few issues:
I've heard this card in particular has coil whine problems. Realistically is it likely that I will have very loud coil noise? And if I do, is it possible to RMA the card? I wear noise-cancelling headphones and my fans may well drown out a lot of the noise as well, so I don't know if this will be a huge problem anyway, but it would be nice to know.
Is microstutter still a problem? I do expect to play a few DX9 games (like, I haven't yet played The Witcher 2) so there will be times where the frame metering fix does not work. Is it actually noticeable when the card drops frames like that? I'm only running a 60Hz monitor so anything above 60 should be fine.
And there are several games which don't support Crossfire particularly well. I figure that the games that don't support Crossfire are probably not too demanding anyway and can probably be maxed with just one of the GPUs going - but I hear there are problems in some big games like World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2. I do play those games a fair bit so if they won't run properly then that is quite a consideration. Though some places say it's fine, some say not so much. I don't know.
But at the same time, the sheer power that it gives, allowing you to max games that almost no other GPU can, is very tempting. It's done very well with Battlefield 4, and I'm seriously excited for Dragon Age: Inquisition and the new Battlefront, which are also Frostbite, so I assume this will work fantastically with those too.
I play a lot of games, so ultimately this is quite a hard decision. Is it worth getting one of these things?
