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Help me decide on one of these cards for approx £260

Caporegime
Joined
19 May 2004
Posts
34,092
Location
Nordfriesland, Germany
Last edited:
If you can afford the gigabyte one then get it. With three fans you can lower the fan speed further and still be cool, lower RPM fans = quieter.
 
Yeah, this would be my pick. The cooler is much better than the Asus one.

tempfzklz.png
 
With three fans you can lower the fan speed further and still be cool, lower RPM fans = quieter.

The Strix has larger fans though so although there's less of them they should compete. It also doesn't run the fans at all when at idle which sounds pretty appealing to me.
 
The Strix has larger fans though so although there's less of them they should compete. It also doesn't run the fans at all when at idle which sounds pretty appealing to me.

The chart above shows the Nitro is around 17C cooler than the Strix under load so I would say its far better than the Asus card.

I think even that Nitro stops the fans at idle. The Sapphire Tri-X and MSI twin frozer coolers are the best coolers for the Radeons.
 
Another vote for the R9 390 here - the Nitro is pretty decent. However,the Radeon R9 390 PCS+ can be had for under £250 and a mate got one for ARK,and its quiet and seems to have a good cooler. ARK is pretty much one of the most demanding games at 1080P and the R9 390 seemed to run it reasonably well.
 
My advice is if you are purchasing a Nvidia card grab a EVGA card they have UK RMA and don't charge you to get the card back from RMA as Gigabyte is doing. Also we have great EVGA rep's on the forum that are a fantastic help if a problem occurs.
 
My advice is if you are purchasing a Nvidia card grab a EVGA card they have UK RMA and don't charge you to get the card back from RMA as Gigabyte is doing. Also we have great EVGA rep's on the forum that are a fantastic help if a problem occurs.

Very true this and a very good point!
 
Ok 3.5GB fast ram + 0.5GB Slow RAM... Happy now :p

Oh and here's a link to back that statement up...

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphi...Full-Memory-Structure-and-Limitations-GTX-970

So it has 4GB then?

As for the rest, I am not getting into it again, as it has been done to death. For the record, I feel both the 390 and 970 are fantastic cards for 1080P and having run a 290X and a 970 at 1080P, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference except for being able to have better details in some of the GameWorks games that the AMD cards can't run.
 
So.... you'll be all glad to know after consideration I ignored everyone's advice :D

I think you're right that the Windforce OC is probably the better cooler and the 390 is probably a better out-and-out performance card than the 970. However, the 970 has a much lower wattage and near equal performance which swings me in Nvidia's direction. Moreover, the Strix is effectively £30 cheaper (with the £20 cashback), the performance difference is utterly marginal and it's genuinely 0db at idle due to the fan disable at low temperatures.

So I went for the Asus 970 Strix.

Regardless, I thank everyone for your feedback it was useful in helping me make up my mind even if I didn't go the way of the crowd :)
 
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