Now one of the main reasons I'm upgrading from my Msi 7950 Boost OC is because of noise... So my original plan was to get an r9 290 but recently I have discovered that none of the triple fan coolers can fit in my shitty zalman z11 plus. It seems like the only choise left is the msi r9 290 because asus one is terrible and runs up to reference temps. Now I am re-considering which card to buy. I mean for about £50 I can get a 780 which tbh after looking at benchmarks seems to have worse performance. Also I have a 550w power suppply which leaves no room for things like OC if I get the r9 290 because the 780 only has a 250tdp. Tbh I'm not sure I hate my current sound levels of my gpu and according to gpu boss in this link my 7950 boost is actually quieter under loud than the msi r9 290 in it's OC mode I think
Quieter load noise level 55.6 dB vs 57.2 dB Around 5% quieter load noise level
.... what. Here is a video of how loud my gpu is if the msi one is anywhere near that hell no I will get the 780 (Video during heaven 4.0 staring at an intense scene)
Tbh it doesn't seem that the 780 is much worse there almost the same. Do you think the extra £47 is worth it for the better power cumsumtion for my 550w psu and the quieter noise levels
Here are my specs https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/Matthew12106/saved/4XFbt6
I would upgrade that PSU, it doesn't seem very safe to me to run that kind of GPU's of such a small PSU.
The 7950 is still a very potent card. If you're gaming in 1080p, even with multiple monitors, there is no need to upgrade at all in my opinion. The MSI cards are twin frozer versions I believe, so they shouldn't be so loud, and maybe it's a fan problem. You could just get a replacement cooling unit, those are not that expensive. The whole noise thing is not helped by the fact that your voltage regulators on the card are heavily solicited because your PSU is too small, and the fact that your PSU is probably loud also because it's completely bottomed out. My guess is changing the PSU to a decent wattage rated one would solve a lot of things.
Other than that, while someone might get a wrong impression of superiority of nVidia GPU's when watching YouTube videos (hey, that's how money works...), the market seems to have decided on which GPU's are worth buying most:
I have nothing to add to that when it comes to AMD v. nVidia. I threw out my dual nVidia 680's about a year ago because of lacking stable linux proprietary driver support, and I've been very happy with the OpenCL performance of my AMD cards since then, and any one of these AMD R9's runs CS:GO at 300+ fps just the same in 1080p, that is in a Windows kvm container in linux with VGA passthrough. And I don't even overclock my GPU's. The lowest fps dip I get in CS:GO is 127 fps on one of those crazy unoptimized community maps (I think it's Insertion), which is still more than the refresh rate of a 120 Hz monitor. A friend of mine uses a GTX780 in a bare metal Windows setup, and gets fps dips all the way down to 55 fps on very optimized maps like Dust2. Thing is that those dips always happen when you hear someone firing at you from behind and turn around quickly.
When PCPartPicker decides to work, I will be able to see your system spec. It's likely that the 550W will be fine for any given card.
Get whatever is cheapest. The 780 ad R9 290 are pretty much equal after overclocking (see Linus benchmarks on YouTube). The MSI twin Frozr cooler is exceptionally quiet and cool, as is the Sapphire tri-X. Both pretty affordable options, both should cost less than the 780.
Personally, I would ignore the power consumption and most other benchmarks. The difference in power consumption is not going to make much of a difference to the power bill.
The only thing that really sets these cards apart is the price. As I have said, the noise and thermal performance of the aforementioned models is equal to, if not better than most models of 780.