Nvidia already moved further than just drivers while AMD pretty much just caught up on the driver stability part though, they have better 3D support(like, 3D glasses and stuff,) better multi-card profile support and customization, general profile setup that might fit your machine with the click of a button assuming the game is supported(or at least using it as a reference for tweaking settings,) Nvidia Shield streaming, PhysX, better support for their CUDA SDK compared to AMD's more open source approach(even though I like the open source practice more, the support is well....) I mean, my household runs more AMD GPUs than Nvidia and I can still see it clear as day just who has the superior software engineering. That's just how it is. Mantle is an interesting retro approach and any long time PC gamer would know what I mean by that, but there is a reason we moved away from shit like that in the first place so we'll see where it goes in the future.

I don't have loyalty to video cards, but I will say I prefer the AMD brand, due to the lack of hole in my computer. Meaning I don't like the fact that nvidia generally is hotter.

Have 7850 currently.

I actually prefer AMD's 3D support, granted nVidia's implemenation means it also has manufacturers that are siding with them.
But give it time, the nVidia-only panels will work with AMD's 3D eventually.

I do love the lightboost tech that nVidia introduced that some panels support, it's literally the closest thing we can get to CRT-like quality, when you use it without 3D.
It just sucks all those monitors are crappy 1080P, Twisted Nematic panels, otherwise I would be on it like flies to poop.

All I want at the moment is for frame latency to be fixed and AMD to start being more aggressive on Crossfire profile game support and I'm happy.
And... For the R9 290X to have been released last year. :P I'm tired of waiting.

As for Mantle, we might as well leave any reservations of history repeating itself at the door, Mantle is in a completely different situation than the API's of old like GLIDE, for starters the Xbox One and Playstation 4 are probably already using it and because it's going to be Open Source, nVidia can use it too, so it already has control/support of a large fraction of the gaming market, if nVidia supports it, then it can only mean good things for the PC gaming master race.

Radeon R9 280X Can Be Paired with Radeon HD 7970 Cards


There are some advantages to new hardware that very closely resembles older hardware.

AMD just announced its new R9 280X earlier this week, so it's unlikely you've gotten your hands on one of these cards just yet, but when you do, you might like to know that this card is compatible with AMD's Radeon HD 7900 series in CrossFire. As our own Chris Angelini reported in his review, the cards will work in tandem if choose to go that route:

To answer whether existing Radeon HD 7970 cards can be paired with the new R9 280X, yes, they work together," Chris writes. "A quick Fraps-based test showed one 280X hitting 52.9 FPS in Battlefield 3 at 2560x1440. Dropping a 7970 GHz Edition next to the newer board pushed frame rates to 102.3 FPS. When it wasn't in use, the 7970 properly spun down according to AMD's ZeroCore technology."

In case you missed it when these cards, launched, the R9 280X’s specs are very similar to the Radeon HD 7970 Ghz Edition. The Tahiti GPU in the R9 280X features the same 2048:128:32 configuration, and packs a 384-bit memory bus rocking 3 GB of GDDR5 (which AMD says should operate at 6 GT/s). The one notable difference is the "new" card's engine clock, which tops out at 1 GHz. Other than that, these cards are a great match.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/radeon-r9-280x-radeon-hd-7970-crossfire-compatible,24619.html

You would have hoped it worked in Crossfire considering it's the same chip just re-badged that has been on the market for the past 2 years.

Also no reference designs, going to be a pain getting a water block for 'em. :(

Got my 4x R9 290X's pre-ordered though (Funnily enough, all pre-orders are sold out now, here!), can't wait to get them in my hot sweaty hands and finally ditch the 7970's. :)

As long as they perform is all I care about. R9 280x will retail for $299 and that's cheaper then any 7970GHZ. Are there any benches out for these cards?

To play gam.. Minecraft silly! :P
And, Folding@Home and Bitcoin mining. :)

Also, The R9 280X is actually slightly more expensive than the 7970's here, but that's all supply/demand they should be much cheaper by the time it's supposed to be phased out.

We should also get a cut down version of the R9 290X eventually so that AMD can make some money on 290X chips that don't pass validation.

I started with an expensive ATI, but after they didn't fulfil their promise to make OpenGL Win9x drivers for Rage II chips, I switched to NVidia, my first GPU, a GeForce MX. Later, I forgave ATI as its drivers and prices got better, I bought a cheap, honest and power-frugal Radeon 9250, since then I stayed with ATI, even more happily since the takeover by AMD. I got no problems with drivers, and I approve that AMD releases more infos than NVidia to open source drivers developers, maybe sometimes NVidia makes better proprietary drivers, but on Linux giving more info to open source devs betters the support of old HW on new distros.
Obviously all this wouldn't be enough by itself, but AMD always has what I need, cheap and power-frugal chips with decent performances and decent drivers.

You mean benches for the R9 280X? Because it has already been reviewed by the usual sites (Anandtech, Tom's, etc.). It's a bit slower than the 7970 GHz edition because it has a slightly lower frequency.

As for the price, the cheapest 280X I've seen here is 270 € while the cheapest 7970 still retails for 320 €. That's a very good price for a card that can play almost if not all the current games at 2560x1440, and a lot less than Nvidia's GTX 770 (about 360-370 €, that's 100 € less!).

Off-topic: Do you get any money off of folding@home ? I don't think you meant bitcoin mining cause otherwise ASICs put every GPUs to shame there. ;) 

Did you mean litecoin ?