Too-ing and Froo-ing

David Bisset · 16 Jul 2015 at 08:02

///Rage said:
Why does everyone keep recommending the 390x over the base 390? There almost £100 difference between them yet negligible difference in fps, maybe 5%.

The 390x is not in my opinion good value. The 390 however is fantastic value. I'd either go for that or a FuryX/980ti.

Yeah agreed, I'd not advise the 390X or the 980 as both are too big a price jump over their lower spec counterpart for the performance difference. The 390 & 970 are much better options, or if wanting more performance then go for it and get a Fury/980Ti

dharvey86 · 16 Jul 2015 at 08:33

would I see a notable improvement over my 7950 if I got a 970?

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 16 Jul 2015 at 08:37

I wouldn't be spending £400+ on overpriced 28nm GPUs at 1080p which both AMD and Nvidia are using to milk enthusiasts with - after all similar sized die GTX780 cards were selling for £350 quite profititably for Nvidia so the current GTX980TI and Fury/Fury X don't need to be £500 anyway.

28nm is getting onto 4 years old now but both AMD and Nvidia are increasing prices now and not the other way around. Yields on 28nm should be much better now and wafer costs should be much lower for what is an out of date process node.

Plus none are futureproof as we have another year or so until the 14nm or 16nm cards and the current ones will have a massive decline in value and be outdated.

So get an EOL R9 290 series card on offer or a R9 390 or GTX970 IMHO.

dharvey86 · 16 Jul 2015 at 08:52

Ok so, Im thinking about going to Nvidia.

Which 970 / 980 would yous suggest?

dharvey86 · 16 Jul 2015 at 10:53

Would this be a good buy?

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BG-006-GX

Putty · 16 Jul 2015 at 11:06

dharvey86 said:
would I see a notable improvement over my 7950 if I got a 970?

I certainly did and on pretty much the same system as you at the time!

David Bisset · 16 Jul 2015 at 11:13

dharvey86 said:
Would this be a good buy?

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BG-006-GX

looks good

I guess b-grade you never know what causes it to be there, but still...

dharvey86 · 16 Jul 2015 at 11:33

Putty said:
I certainly did and on pretty much the same system as you at the time!

Thats all I want really, I want to play games and say "thats why I spent all that money" it looks/plays better.

Ive seen a Gsync monitor 2nd hand elsewhere for a good price that I may buy with the saving on the graphics card.

dharvey86 · 16 Jul 2015 at 11:35

David Bisset said:
looks good I guess b-grade you never know what causes it to be there, but still...

Does the B Grade stuff just have the 90 days warranty or does it also have a card maker's warranty also?

mmj_uk · 16 Jul 2015 at 11:37

GTX970 or second hand 290X.

dharvey86 · 16 Jul 2015 at 11:41

mmj_uk said:
GTX970 or second hand 290X.

Thanks for your reply.

I read the 970s have issues with not being able to access the full VRAM

Gregster · 16 Jul 2015 at 11:45

dharvey86 said:
Thanks for your reply.

I read the 970s have issues with not being able to access the full VRAM

If you are staying 1080P, don't worry about it. I used a 970 on the most VRAM intensive games and it never struggled. Lots of people made a big deal out of nothing really and I have used a 290X/970/Fury X/Titan X and the gaming experience was the same on all of them for smoothness.

I would want a little more for higher resolutions mind but this is also questionable , as unless you are running every game with the highest possible settings, you would need at least 2 GPUs for over 1440P.

Steveocee · 16 Jul 2015 at 11:52

Get the best you can possibly afford.
a 980Ti would be a huge step up and if you are upgrading in the future then would be right up your street.

dharvey86 · 16 Jul 2015 at 12:30

Steveocee said:
Get the best you can possibly afford.
a 980Ti would be a huge step up and if you are upgrading in the future then would be right up your street.

I could afford a 980Ti but, at same time could get a card and monitor for the price of one card.

sieze2 · 16 Jul 2015 at 12:46

780ti's are only £190 second hand. I went from 7950 =>780=>780ti. The jump from 780 to ti is good but the jump from 7950 to 780ti is sheer awesomeness !

sieze2 · 16 Jul 2015 at 12:49

Looking here a 780ti is basically double the performance.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1033?vs=1072

Lokken86 · 16 Jul 2015 at 12:53

You can use 1440p with vsr on that monitor that's what I'm doing. 290x,390,390x,fury,970 or980 will all do fine just depends on what you want to spend. Id pick a 390 over the 290x just for the memory if it came down to those 2.

mmj_uk · 16 Jul 2015 at 13:06

dharvey86 said:
Thanks for your reply.

I read the 970s have issues with not being able to access the full VRAM

It's a non issue really and always has been, I doubt even the AMD users will argue against it now that they're recommending 4GB for 4K.

3.5GB is plenty enough for 1080P/1440P and the 0.5GB of 'slow' memory is still much faster than having to swap data between system memory.

dharvey86 · 16 Jul 2015 at 13:07

Lokken86 said:
You can use 1440p with vsr on that monitor that's what I'm doing. 290x,390,390x,fury,970 or980 will all do fine just depends on what you want to spend. Id pick a 390 over the 290x just for the memory if it came down to those 2.

What do you mean 1440p with VSR?

fs123 · 16 Jul 2015 at 13:30

mmj_uk said:
It's a non issue really and always has been, I doubt even the AMD users will argue against it now that they're recommending 4GB for 4K.

3.5GB is plenty enough for 1080P/1440P and the 0.5GB of 'slow' memory is still much faster than having to swap data between system memory.

I wouldn't recommend a 970 over a 290X/390 right now. The AMD drivers have improved a lot over the last year or so and the 290X is ahead of the 970 and closer to a 980 now.

Even my 7950 crossfire can beat a 970 and comes close to a 980 so that is also the cheapest upgrade option for the OP.