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Do I Swap My R9 290X Reference for new MSI GTX 970?

roozor said:
I'm debating whether to ditch my sapphire 290 reference for a nice 970. My 290 only cost me 194 squids with warranty. Don't think i'd lose much on it?
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Look.
The Gelid Icy Vision goes cheap. Less than £30.
And the Icy Vision enhancement kit for another £10.

That is £40-£45 to change the cooler, lowering noise and heat while improving performance and overclocking headroom.

Alternative you sell a perfectly awesome card, for a GTX970 that is going to obsolete in 6 months time, since it will be replaced with the 20nm ones. (same applies for AMD R9 cards also).

If I was you, I would change the cooler and look for an upgrade next year if there are cards that deliver 50% more perf than the current one you have.
 
Rusty0611 said:
Which bench threads? Looked through 2 of them and you don't have an entry on either of them.
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Heaven, Firestrike, Valley

I'm faster then most in Firestrike as I'm pulling just under 13k GPU score and I'm equal too or a couple of frames faster in Heaven, about equal in Valley.

The only 970's that are faster then my 290 are running much more powerful CPU's or are clocked 1.5Ghz+

If AMD can release a better overclocking 290/290x with better power consumption the 970 and 980 will be in BIG trouble.
 
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almighty15 said:
Heaven, Firestrike, Valley

I'm faster then most in Firestrike as I'm pulling just under 13k GPU score and I'm equal too or a couple of frames faster in Heaven, about equal in Valley.

The only 970's that are faster then my 290 are running much more powerful CPU's or are clocked 1.5Ghz+

If AMD can release a better overclocking 290/290x with better power consumption the 970 and 980 will be in BIG trouble.
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Saw a 970 owner posting heaven result comparing his 780 at 1241MHz to his 970 at 1500MHz with the 780 slightly ahead as well.

The 970 is no doubt great bang for bucks, but can't help but feel like its performance which people keep mentioning got hyped half way to the moon. Too many people wetting themselves seeing the 970 hitting 1500MHz but didn't look at the reality of how it compares to the overclocked 290/780 in real-world performance.
 
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almighty15 said:
Heaven, Firestrike, Valley

I'm faster then most in Firestrike as I'm pulling just under 13k GPU score and I'm equal too or a couple of frames faster in Heaven, about equal in Valley.

The only 970's that are faster then my 290 are running much more powerful CPU's or are clocked 1.5Ghz+

If AMD can release a better overclocking 290/290x with better power consumption the 970 and 980 will be in BIG trouble.
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You aren't on the leaderboard for Heaven and Valley unless my control and F fails me :D. So I can't see the comparison. Didn't check FS.

Edit: there ain't a 970 faster than my 290 in Heaven 4.0 currently on the leaderboard which is surprising as this bench seems to favour nVidia slightly.
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
Saw an 970 owner posting heaven result comparing his 780 at 1241MHz to his 970 at 1500MHz with the 780 slightly ahead as well.
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The 970 isn't actually that fast, people are just blinded by the high clock speeds.

You also have to think about the shader performance, a 1.6Ghz GTX780 under LN2 runs into memory bandwidth limits so a clocked 970 is definitely going to run into problems.

The small bus is narrowing clock speed scaling with overclocking.
 
It just seems odd that you're posting results in the 970 / 980 thread and not the benchmark thread. What score did you get in Heaven 4.0 out of interest? See my edit above: as it stands the closest 970 (clocked at 1500/1850 ish) is still under my 290.

I'm so glad I got a good 290. I think both myself and my graphics card would combust if I had a bad one.
 
Was about to ask the same question, keep my watercooled 290 or sell it and upgrade to the 970. Seems like the majority advise not to.
 
Dempsey22 said:
Was about to ask the same question, keep my watercooled 290 or sell it and upgrade to the 970. Seems like the majority advise not to.
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I don't think it's worth it really in any way. If you're buying today, coming from an older card then I couldn't look further than the 970 but for people with the 290/780+ generation already I don't think it's worth it.

Games will swing one way or the other with the 970 being faster in some games and the 290 in others (assuming both have a reasonable overclock).
 
almighty15 said:
290x will still be faster
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Out of the box the reference 290X is slightly faster than the reference 970, custom 290X/970 cards all seem to be around the same ball park, but when over clocked the average GTX970 is slightly ahead of the average 290X according to the tests done by Guru3D so far. They were able to extract more performance from a Gigabyte 970 G1 than they could from any of the 290X they had previously tested included the Matrix, Lightning and the IceQ hybrid. In fact it beat most of the 780Ti's too.
 
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ubersonic said:
Out of the box the reference 290X is slightly faster than the reference 970, custom 290X/970 cards all seem to be around the same ball park, but when over clocked the average GTX970 is slightly ahead of the average 290X according to the tests done by Guru3D so far. They were able to extract more performance from a Gigabyte 970 G1 than they could from any of the 290X they had previously tested included the Matrix, Lightning and the IceQ hybrid. In fact it beat most of the 780Ti's too.
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So going by what you said, the reviewed 970 or may be the particular G1 model is faster than the 970 that end-users get? :p

I mean CPU can perform faster or slower depending on the motherboard it users, even if at the same clock speed...wonder if that's the case for graphic card as well...may be the ram it uses would make a difference as well?
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
So going by what you said, the reviewed 970 or may be the particular G1 model is faster than the 970 that end-users get? :p
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Well I was going more along the lines of Guru3D having used the same test set up for a long time, and that G1 (which didn't even clock as high as some others) was able to beat a number of 290X, 780 and 780Ti cards they also tested previously, it almost beat the Titan Black too.
 
ubersonic said:
Out of the box the reference 290X is slightly faster than the reference 970, custom 290X/970 cards all seem to be around the same ball park, but when over clocked the average GTX970 is slightly ahead of the average 290X according to the tests done by Guru3D so far. They were able to extract more performance from a Gigabyte 970 G1 than they could from any of the 290X they had previously tested included the Matrix, Lightning and the IceQ hybrid. In fact it beat most of the 780Ti's too.
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I prefer to go by real results by people on this forum instead of a review using test conditions.

Real world performance is what interested me, not a card under review condiotns.
 
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