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AMD Radeon R9 390 vs GeForce GTX 970

Well it has been suggested that the 970 and its 3.5gb of vram is pushing it at 1440p with memory intensive games and will most likely be worse with games coming later on. That should make the decision a little easier.
 
Have you looked at second hand m8? a 290x will be cheaper than both your options and about the same power.

If you would prefer new, then i would say just choose which ever one is on offer atm on the site, theres normally one with a big chunk off the price.
 
nwgilbert said:
What are peoples opinions when considering price and performance in 1440p 60Hz?
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For 1440p I'd say the 390. The 970 is a great value 1080p card and for 1080p I'd probably say go with the 970 because of all the gameworks titles favouring it, However for 1440p the 390 is (IMO) easily the better option.

Personally I wouldn't go secondhand as you simply do not know how abused a card.
 
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nwgilbert said:
When I do checkout on OCUK it says £8.00 shipping ex VAT.. but when I do paypal payment it says without any shipping charge.. Why is there no shipping charge when paying by paypal? I just want to confirm that it will not include shipping after making initial payment?
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if you link your forum account to your OCUK you'll get free shipping on everything......:)

its upper right hand corner; says Free Shipping for Loyal Forum Members; - click here :D

honestly 390 at 1440p is best card......now if 390X comes down a little in price then that's a solid card to look at; it trades blows with 980 - wins some and loses...specially at higher rez; and cheaper..

But your price range no brainer 390; might as well get new and not worry about any sort of warranty issues that could pop up or dead used card.
 
Amatsubu said:
Let's give your crossfiring argument a whirl maybe? A 980Ti, which performs around 2x390
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A stock 980Ti is 38% faster than a stock 390.

A reasonable OC for the 390 will get around 11% increase in performance
A reasonable OC for the 980ti will get around 29% increase in performance
So with BOTH OC the 980ti get an additional advantage over the 390.

A stock 980Ti is 38% faster than the 390, but with BOTH OC the 980Ti became 59% faster than the 390.

Also it is worth to note that a 980TI OC is 77% faster than a stock 390.
 
Jeez, just throw a coin;p Trust me, you won't even keep that card for a year. Don't kid yourself about "future-proofing" with a rebrand or the 970.

Apparently all the people here act like experts without having any first-hand experience with how the 970 behaves. And the truth is, it behaves like a normal 4gb card would, keeping system data in the slower portion of it's memory and the rest in the 3.5gb (because, just so you know, no card has full 4gb at its disposal:p). If you manage to replicate stuttering, there's a high chance you're already close to unplayable framerates. And guess what? The 390, being almost identical in performance, will perform similarly and no amount of vram will help.

People here make it seem like it's only vram requirements that will shoot up. GENERAL requirements will shoot up along with it.

If you don't get my point then fire up Witcher 3. Heck, you can even use 1080p, neither the 390 nor the 970 will be able to max the game even at that res anyways;p Turn everything up to the max (even without Hairwors) and check your framerates and memory usage. What?! It doesn't even breach 2gb but the card is sweating? How come?;p And it will only get worse in time.

You can do the same with GTA5. It'll use more ram but you still won't be able to max it. You will have to drop down settings to the point where both cards play the game quite comfortably.

That's a lot of unused vram, isn't it? And ask yourself a serious question: In a year's time, would you genuinely consider crossfiring cards based on a 3-year old architecture just to tap into a bit more vram?

TL;DR:p:

These are already quite weak cards. That's why I suggested buying a cheaper stopgap and not worrying about vram.

As things stand now:

1. Get a used 290x (cheapest and you won't have to listen to idiots shouting "you bought a 3.5gb card! blahblahblah")

2. Get a used 970.

3. If you absolutely have to buy new, then get a 390. Just don't expect it to max games or to get a lot of mileage out of it.
 
kylew_is_back said:
A stock 980Ti is 38% faster than a stock 390.

A reasonable OC for the 390 will get around 11% increase in performance
A reasonable OC for the 980ti will get around 29% increase in performance
So with BOTH OC the 980ti get an additional advantage over the 390.

A stock 980Ti is 38% faster than the 390, but with BOTH OC the 980Ti became 59% faster than the 390.

Also it is worth to note that a 980TI OC is 77% faster than a stock 390.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how those numbers consistently reflect only 1440p situations but if you take the price of the MSI gaming cards, which would give you the best chance to replicate those numbers, the 980ti is 59% faster for 110%-120% (this week only offer right now) the price?
In practice if the 390 is knocking out 80fps then paying so much more to get 130fps is hard to justify, assuming it's actual gaming and not just chasing benchmark numbers.
The 980ti excels in the realm of diminishing returns, more fps when the fps is already acceptable, ultra graphics when very high is not much different visually, etc.

In some situations a 980ti may be the only reasonable choice to get playable fps but generally 1440p is not it. It's still a very seductive GPU.
 
enough talk. time for some results. I do not have 970's any more but can share my firestrike scores for overclocked 970's. will be good if any 390 owners can share their results.


Single gtx 970:

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/4117467

SCORE
11486 with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970(1x) and Intel Core i7-4790K
Graphics Score 13394
Physics Score 13362
Combined Score 5040


2-Way Sli Gtx 970

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/5014740

SCORE
17927 with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970(2x) and Intel Core i7-4790K
Graphics Score 24330
Physics Score 13560
Combined Score 7198
 
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