GPU App Showdown: AMD vs NVIDIA

Test Systems and Procedures

Before we delve into any testing we would like to take this opportunity to review our test system and thank those sponsors who kindly provided us with test equipment to make our work possible. We offer our thanks to:

Intel for supplying us with a Core i7 4960X processor, which we reviewed here.

Kingston for supplying us with a Hyper X 3K 240GB solid state drive, which we reviewed here.

XFX for supplying us with an R9 290X Double Dissipation 4GB graphics card, which we reviewed here.

Nvidia for supplying us with a GTX 780 Ti 3GB graphics card, which we reviewed here.

Corsair for supplying us with a Hydro Series H100i liquid CPU cooler, which we reviewed here, and a Vengeance Pro 1866MHz 16GB memory kit, which we reviewed here.

Be Quiet for supplying us with a Straight Power E9 680W power supply unit, which we reviewed here.

ASUS for supplying us with a Rampage IV Extreme X79 motherboard, which we reviewed here.

Lian Li for supplying us with a PC-T60A test bench.

Noctua for supplying us with NT-H1 thermal compound.

Test System:

• Motherboard – Asus Rampage IV Extreme X79 LGA 2011 Motherboard
• Processor – Intel Core i7 4960X with Turbo disabled
• Graphics Card: XFX R9 290X Double Dissipation 4GB (with AMD Catalyst 14.6 RC drivers) and Nvidia GTX 780 Ti 3GB (with GeForce 340.43 beta drivers)
• RAM – 16GB (2 X 8GB) Corsair Vengeance Pro 9-10-9-27 1866MHz
• CPU Cooler – Corsair H100i with Quiet Fan Profile
• Power Supply – Be Quiet Straight Power E9 680W
• Main Storage Drive – Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD
• Chassis – Lian Li T60 Test Bench
• Displays – LG IPS234 23 inch 1080p display
• Operating System – Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit

Software Used

• AMD Gaming Evolved App (Powered by Raptr)
• Nvidia GeForce Experience App