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R9 390 vs GTX 970 - Fight!

TheRealDeal said:
As an Amd user i can say most of this is tosh. There was a gap at the start of the year but that's the largest gap for years. It's usually one a month or more which it is now. Nvidia drivers have not been great this year either you only have to look in the driver thread to see this. As far as single cards go Amd are every bit as good as Nv atm. I will say that the software suite on the Nvidia side is superior but that's not drivers that's features that not everybody will use.

I am not going into Sli and Crossfire as that seems to switch around all the time as to who has it running better.
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I for one have had zero trouble for the entire duration I have had my 970 (and my 670 before that).

The issue people are having in the Nvidia driver thread, is most likely because they are running their cards beyond spec. If you over clock your gpu, then you cant expect Nvidia to account and program for ever single possible permutation out there.

Which is why I said on that thread, before posting regrading issues, revert everything back to stock and then we will offer you help. Instability due to OC's can not be blamed on drivers!

It's not just me that says that Nvidia have better drivers here if you read the $300 to $400 paragraphe they say "But the GTX 970 overclocks like a champ and uses nearly half as much power as the energy-gobbling AMD card. You’d be happy with either card, to be frank, but you’ll have to decide which trade-off works better for you: The GTX 970’s efficiency and Nvidia’s superior drivers/software, or the Radeon’s slightly better performance and vastly more memory, which comes with vastly higher power consumption. "
 
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In fairness, the OP title is a bit baiting, so I will do what others have done and step out. I like to help people but not helping baiting.
 
It's a no brainer, 390 is the better choice here. Only reason to go for a 970 is if you benefited from the small power saving you would get.

Really don't understand why one would go for 970 otherwise, unless of course you like your card to be nvidia instead of amd, then of course by all means get 970 as it will make you more happy.
 
One thing to keep in mind as well is at 1080p amd's cpu driver overhead is holding the 390 back more than it is the gtx970. Under dx12 i expect the 390 to pull a lead due to things being more equal again in this department.
 
TheRealDeal said:
A 3 week old review is pretty current if you ask me.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/sapphire-nitro-r9-390-8g-d5,review-33320.html

Same 390 used in Gregs review.
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The OP should look at the 1440P results for a reflection of what the cards will perform like on 2x1080P monitors. The 390 is around 10-20% faster overall at that resolution and the 8GB will ensure you don't run into problems. In the latest game benchmarks such as Battlefront, Ashes of the Singularity the 390 is matching the 980 let alone the 970.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_page...ta_vga_graphics_performance_benchmarks,6.html
 
Nvidia 970,
Pro's
Hdmi2/ dsr greater support.
4k h.264 video decode support, 390 only 1080p h.264 support.
Clocked to 1550/1600 will be a few frames ahead of a clocked 390.
Nvidia absolutely beats up the 390 when looking at video playback power consumption.
Itx format for smaller cases.
Low power consumption, heat and thermals, low noise.

R9 390
Pro's
8gb memory pointless for single card but perfect for cf + greater throughput at higher resolutions than 970.
Recent respin from aibs have improved the coolers and p-states of the gpu cores.
So faster clocks with a little headroom for overclocking.

R9 290 aib not reference, 2nd hand cheap, used with recent drivers and clocked will gain parity with 390/x.
 
I would just buy which ever one you could get cheaper, unless your likely to go sli/crossfire when it runs out of steam then take the extra v ram.
 
I have owned both a 290 and the GTX 970.

At 1080P they are very similar in performance, at 1440P the 290 is a good chunk faster.

A couple of things Brand fans like to say.

"Nvidia Driver are better"
This is false the drivers are as good as each-other.

"Nvidia DSR is better than VSR"
Again false, they are the same.

"The GTX 970 overclocks more so its faster when both are over clocked"
It is true the GTX 970 has more head room BUT it actually needs that extra overclocking to keep up at 1080P, at 1440P the 970 is still slower no matter how far it overclocks.

"The 290/390 is hot and uses a lot of power" the GTX 970 is significantly more power efficient but the 290/390 is not by any measure too greedy and certainly not hot or loud, it has perfectly reasonable power efficiency and temperatures.

"The R9 390 is better because it has 8GB of VRam"
You don't need more than 4GB at 1440P and (on its own) it doesn't have the grunt to run any modern game at higher res, having said that if you have 2 in CF its enough performance to run 4K in which case 8GB would be very useful.
 
Neither is/will be able to max many games at 1440p so you can safely toss a coin or grab a cheap 290x to tide you over till new cards arrive.

All this claptrap aboug games easily reaching 4gb vram at 1080p when I'm at 1440p and can't find a single title that would make my 970 run out of vram before it runs out of grunt.

Also, arguing about which one's faster is completely pointless. "OMG!! TEH 390/970 IZ TWO FPS FASTURR!" when both produce framerates well under 60fps at 1440p if you play maxed:rolleyes:. The 970 IS faster in some titles, much to the horror of some fanboys in this thread who would like people to believe the 390 is miles better, whereas the 390 bests it in others. But it's mostly 3-4fps, a negligible difference.

The 390 only makes sense at 1440p if you're not bothered about maxing stuff or want to crossfire but you can get a 980Ti for similar money so...
 
BluD said:
I would just buy which ever one you could get cheaper, unless your likely to go sli/crossfire when it runs out of steam then take the extra v ram.
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I'm unlikely to go crossfire or sli, the difference of £15 isn't enough for me to pick the cheaper card. I'm unlikely to overclock I value stability over speed at the moment. I have actually turned off the overclock on my PC at the moment as I was getting a BSOD on occasion and it's solved that problem.

I might stream and am interested in support for that. I very rarely use both monitors and run a game across both.

Most importantly I wasn't baiting out fan boys with the title you guys and girls are reading too much into it.
 
Had a 970 was an amazing card. Both cards have the own advantages weigh them up and decide which is more important to you and go with that.
 
for me personally in that price bracket and below I would be going AMD every time as they seem to offer better performance/£ even more so with DX12 getting closer.
 
TheRealDeal said:
Yea most people that had a gtx970 and that now have a gtx980 swapped due to the concerns over the memory config which is one of the reasons i would pick the 390.
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Tbh, Nvidia put a leash on usage and tend to keep it below ~3.7Gb, come to think of it, 970 could pretty much be ****** when F4 texture mods land.:eek:
 
TheRealDeal said:
Ignore this the results are all over the place and not a true reflection of performance. Every other site out there has the performance a lot closer. In this the gtx970 is just faster which is not the case end of story.

This reflects the real performance of the two cards.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyte/GTX_950_Xtreme_Gaming/30.html
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+1, the 390 is far superior compared to the 970. Over double the VRAM, when you consider the 970 is a crippled 3.5/0.5GB part.
 
tommybhoy said:
Tbh, Nvidia put a leash on usage and tend to keep it below ~3.7Gb, come to think of it, 970 could pretty much be ****** when F4 texture mods land.:eek:
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Yea i would agree at the minute Nvidia have it under control. Dx12 is a bit of a dark horse though as memory management may be more in the dev's hands due to them having more control. Maybe Nvidia will still be able to handle things through drivers. Just a worry i have for the gtx970 which may be fine as i am no expert but if buying this would be in my mind.
 
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