Gaming PC Build - £500

MANTLE > CUDA

CUDA isn't even worth the extra £££ vs its equiv AMD counterpart now because of MANTLE.

hands down, I used to be an NVIDIA fan boy, but AMD are back.

It's the truth, I tested it myself, and it has been tested by others, I have to tell you.

Nvidia do run at lower temps, but that isn't to say AMD don't run at safe temps.

Mantle was a failure

and would that be the 95c on stock idle settings on the R9 290 i think ?

the 280x is about 6-8 frame per second better than a gtx 680

wow, shocking

And is that with the "up to 45%" boost from Mantle, or both on DX11?

Mantle was a failure

and would that be the 95c on stock idle settings on the R9 290 i think ?

simply AMD favouritism

AMD processors and GPUs will keep you warm in winter though

on dx 11 .

mantle was a failure anyway

it never gave 45% increase as we hoped it would

if mantle was a success, Nvidia would already be dead

But then you have to ask, come DX12, will AMD lose that edge. And tell me, how many non-gaming applications are faster or in other ways better because of mantle?


I would rather not have that 50% extra heat being chucked out and extra load of power being used. Nvidia is still enough to warm a cold room in the winter.

Looking at figures for bf4, even with mantle, 280X is pulling about 50 fps on 1080p. I pull more than double that that on a 690, so a 680 would logically beat it given that SLI 680>690, and 2 way SLI fps<2x non-SLI fps.
Although, looking at old figures from launch it is true that 280x>770>680, although all those are fairly marginal.

It's logical to assume that MANTLE will be improved over time, just like directx would.

It's logical to assume that MANTLE will be improved over time, just like directx would.

Mantle has nothing to do with it

some games are optimised for AMD. Some for Nvidia and intel set ups


look at watch dogs, many amd users could not run it well at all


Is that a hurricane ? no that's your AMD card running on full load

Very very bold statement you made there... you just basically confirmed you're an idiot. Did you know that I can choose between DX11 and Mantle before I launch a game ? And did you know that I saw with my own eyes an increase of up to 15fps when choosing Mantle in some games like Thief and BF4 ?

So what ? I'm not gonna swap out my GPU for an amd card just for one game.

a game I don't even play

Get :

AMD fx-8350
Radeon 6870
Asus M5A97 motherboard
Corsair-CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9
CXM 600W power supply
120GB SSD
2TB hard drive (raid 0)

And if you really want to continue this Nvidia vs AMD, how long is it until FreeSync is going to hit the market? And development of Mantle may well stop if Intel don't offer their support for it, they may not do top end GPUs, but most GPUs are still intel.

This is not a bad build for a casual gamer. But not sure if the OP is casual or hardcore. This build wouldn't max games like bf4 and upcoming releases at 1080p

Dude, for your own good, don't ask people on tsr about computers ever again. 90% of people on this thread don't even know what they're saying and you will just end up disappointed. Reading some comments here just makes me laugh. I've built PC's all my life, I would highly reccommend you take my advice. the r9 280x is NOT an overkill card. It is the right card for the current generation of gaming at very high/max settings 1080p gaming. You will AVERAGE 60fps in high end games like Battlefield 4. You will get 100fps + in other games that aren't graphically intense, like say, mw3, league of legends, w.e.

If you want proper advice, go on tomshardware forum, or just take my advice.

Good luck.

With the new clock speeds of 280x. I manage 63fps average on bf4 with ultra and AA at 1080p, with MANTLE.

EDIT: That's 63 fps average in max players multiplayer on the most graphically intense maps. On less graphically intense maps I have 80fps + ...