I am also happy with my MSI R9 280X 3GB. I tried a XFX 280X first, but that didn't give me any picture, while the MSI worked straight out of the box (wihtout boot screen of course).

I like the performance of the AMDs in apps like FCPX and DaVinci Resolve (now that DaVinci is fully OpenCL as well as CUDA). I feel pretty safe knowing that AMD is what Apple uses and if there are any optimizations I think AMD cards are in a good spot. Nvidia's card are very popular on this forum. But don't quite see their populatiry reflected in real world performance (I don't do games). The new GTX 980 gets beaten by the alreay old R9 290X, BUT it is more enery efficient. If you do Octane rendering, well, then you need CUDA. But both Maxwell and Arnold are CPU based anyway.

Need Video Card Advice For Machines

I am also happy with my MSI R9 280X 3GB. I tried a XFX 280X first, but that didn't give me any picture, while the MSI worked straight out of the box (wihtout boot screen of course). I like the performance of the AMDs in apps like FCPX and DaVinci Resolve (now that DaVinci is fully OpenCL as well as CUDA). I feel pretty safe knowing that AMD is what Apple uses and if there are any optimizations I think AMD cards are in a good spot. Nvidia's card are very popular on this forum.

Need Video Card Advice For Machine

But don't quite see their populatiry reflected in real world performance (I don't do games). The new GTX 980 gets beaten by the alreay old R9 290X, BUT it is more enery efficient.

If you do Octane rendering, well, then you need CUDA. But both Maxwell and Arnold are CPU based anyway.