I'm looking for the best AMD cards available because I know my gpu's the bottleneck and the HDD so I was wondering what you were thinking. I'd like to keep total upgrades under $1000. Thanks
Not to mention it should see the release of there new amdgpu drivers, which if you decide to give GNU/Linux a go at some point, you'll benefit greatly from these. (not the ops goals as far as I know, but you never know what the future holds)
If there is no major rush wait until they release there new GPU's; they should be out in the next few months. These GPU's have been said (by AMD) to be 20nm and should be a considerable upgrade of the current R series of GPU's. If you had to by one today I would STRONGLY argue you get an Nvidia card, they are just ahead at the moment in many ways. If neither of these are options for you then its the R9 290x if you want the best single gpu AMD card on the market. This is an excellent GPU, it just runs hot and loud and sucks the power down big time.
Actually, the best single GPU for you is the...(suspense) r9 290x, DEPENDING on the model. The r9 295x2 is the best of dual GPU, even better than the TZ, for less than 1000 bucks. You should get the XFX core edition model: I have heardnit has the best price to performance ratio.
I'd argue the 290. It is a tiny bit slower than a 290X but can be just as fast or faster with an OC and can be had for much cheaper. So I'd call it the "best."