Nvidia is doing some pretty interesting stuff with their drivers and they're being very proactive about addressing CPU bottlenecks. Then there's also CUDA, Shadowplay, Adaptive V-Sync and streaming to Tegra-powered devices using Geforce Grid. If you want to do any game recording or streaming, Nvidia is by far the better choice.
Just beware though that should you ever consider a 120-144Hz monitor, AMD's GPUs don't break the Lightboost hacks with their driver releases, whereas Nvidia's drivers frequently do. And take note that not all Physx-enabled games actually run Physx optimally, some like Hawken and Borderlands 2 can bring your framerate down significantly.
I'd go with the R9 290X, especially if the cooler in use is an aftermarket one. You'll be all set for the 4K era and using the GPU for OpenCL and GPGPU calculations in games that use it to speed up the rendering process. There's also the XDMA engine, which will do some pretty interesting tricks with your system memory once AMD uses it for something other than Crossfire over PCI-E.
Plus, the Lightning edition has some serious engineering that's been done under the hood and you're getting the benefits of TrueAudio, which will become more as the software matures. Many, many dev studios are going to be using it, so being prepared for it can't hurt.
Also, before the comments start up, drivers for AMD and Nvidia are both fairly problem-free. I wouldn't use their past history with bad drivers to make decisions on which card to go for.
Some time in 2015 with game support lagging as per usual.
AFAIK, the 2015 date is actually split up into the preview launch for devs, where DX12 will be shown off properly to devs at /Build/ and games will be launched in Holiday 2015 with DX12 capability. It ties up nicely with the promise made earlier this year that /Build/ 2015 will also showcase a preview of Windows 9 with a launch possibly later that year. By that time Windows 8 will be almost three years old, which fits into the timeline between Windows 7 and 8 (2009 and 2012 launches respectively).
Sign up with Google