SA’s most powerful and expensive graphics cards

Hardware

May 21, 2014

Here’s what you need to know: the following graphics cards are extremely powerful, very expensive, and look cooler than that Jamaican guy from the Tropika TV adverts.

Enjoy.

AMD Radeon R9 295X2 – R21,198

We first featured the AMD R9 295X2 at the beginning of April, when its makers touted the liquid and air-cooled device as the world’s fastest consumer graphics card. When (and if) the Nvidia Titan Z arrives on the market, the R9-295X2 will be dethroned, though.

There is not much we can say about this card that the price and picture don’t already: it is an epic piece of hardware. AnandTech and Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry both praised the R9-295X2 for its impressive performance.

Stream Processors – 2 x 2816
Memory Clock – 5GHz GDDR5
Memory Bus Width – 2 x 512 bit
VRAM – 2 x 4GB
Typical Board Power – 500w

AMD R9 295X2

Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan Black – R16,999

The GTX Titan Black is the slightly more powerful big brother of the GTX Titan. It may not have two GPUs like the R9 295X2, but it will handle all your games on full settings and have power to spare.

AnandTech loved the the Titan, and were confident that the upgraded version of the card would keep hardcore gamers happy.

Stream Processors – 2880
Memory Clock – 7GHz GDDR5
Memory Bus Width – 384 bit
VRAM – 6GB
Typical Board Power – 250W

Nvidia Geforce Titan Black

Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti – R10,246

Looking for a extremely powerful card at a bargain price? The GTX 780 Ti is the answer. Not really, but when compared to its competitors, 10 grand starts to sound reasonable.

Both AnandTech and Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry said this was the card gamers must buy if they wanted to be near the top of the performance pile.

Stream Processors – 2880
Memory Clock – 7GHz GDDR5
Memory Bus Width – 384 bit
VRAM – 3GB
Typical Board Power – 250w

Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti

Asus ROG Matrix R9290X – R10,791

The Republic of Gamers R9290X takes all the power of the AMD card and makes it that much more alluring by slapping on branding gamers know and love.

AnandTech and Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry said the R9290X was good value for money – R10,791, yeah right – and it should make Nvidia very worried about where gamers will be spending their hard-earned cash in the future.

Stream Processors – 2816
Memory Clock – 5GHz GDDR5
Memory Bus Width – 512 bit
VRAM – 4GB
Typical Board Power – 300w

Asus ROG Matrix R9290X

AMD Radeon HD 7990 – R13,661

This dual-core beast’s three fans aren’t for show – this card is hot. The HD 7990 was launched to glowing reviews back in April 2013, and although it was not lauded by Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry and AnandTech like the other cards we featured, it still passed all the tests that were thrown at it.