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can of worm's: 390 or 970?

EdwardTeach

EdwardTeach

EdwardTeach

Soldato
Joined
18 Mar 2010
Posts
4,174
I have a 2560x1440 monitor, but I probably do at least half my gaming with the PC connected to a 1080 TV so performance at both resolutions is relevant.

I am attracted by the fact that some of the 970 won't even activate their fans until the get past a heat threshold, conversely I am concerned about the hear/ noise of the 390.

I am thinking this may be a stop gap, as I may well sell and upgrade when the next generation nvidia cards are released. So if there is any difference in depreciation then that would be a factor as well.
 
What you should do is find a few live youtube reviews.. asking here will only bring mostly biased people into the thread on either side. If i had to pick i would go with the cheapest of the 2 as long as the cooler on it isnt entirely horrible.
 
I have a 390 from black Friday, fans on it don't kick in till I start gaming and on the desktop they don't spin up at all.

when the 970 was launched people always said the 970 was a 1080p card but can be used for higher ress as long as you didn't mind turning down the game settings.

my reason for the 390 was because of the 8gb of ram over 4GB on the 970 but then also because of the slower 500mb video ram at higher vram usage.

if you plan on upgrading once the new NVidia gpus comes out then save the money and wait.

I only upgraded as the gpu cost me £205.99 and I had a Radeon HD 5830 1GB lol

what gpu do you have atm?
 
R9 390 for me because more VRAM and more powerful being the same price as a GTX 970 although just be careful incase your PSU can't handle it.
 
390 if you have adequate airflow to support the higher temperatures it kicks out. Mine throttles at 94c because my airflow is crap, whereas in the same case my GTX970 never went above 75c.
 
The 390 gets my vote, especially with a 1440p monitor in play. Many models of also incorporate the "0dB" fad if that's your bag. Certainly MSI and PowerColor's do. Not sure about Sapphire's, though I know XFX's doesn't.

AiiR said:
390 if you have adequate airflow to support the higher temperatures it kicks out. Mine throttles at 94c because my airflow is crap, whereas in the same case my GTX970 never went above 75c.
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Do you have no case fans or something? My airflow is far from the best, given I have a Define R4 with all the vent covers on and only three case fans (two front intakes, one rear exhaust), all running unvolted at 5V. Still, when I had a 390 (and previously a 290 and 290X) in there I never saw temperatures above the mid-70s. Currently running a 780, which is a card with a similar TDP, and it rarely gets above the low 70s.
 
My 390 is extremely quiet and hasnt seen 75c yet in a tight case with rubbish airflow.

I havent oc'd it yet, though its sharing airspace with my i7 950 at 4ghz on an old cruddy air cooler.
 
Juggy1985 said:
My 390 is extremely quiet and hasnt seen 75c yet in a tight case with rubbish airflow.

I havent oc'd it yet, though its sharing airspace with my i7 950 at 4ghz on an old cruddy air cooler.
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sounds like the same setup as me!

I7 950 @ 4.2ghz on air, 390, 6GB of ram and a few SSDs lol.

cant remember what my temps where before I took it out
 
Phixsator said:
asking here will only bring mostly biased people into the thread on either side. If i had to pick i would go with the cheapest of the 2 as long as the cooler on it isnt entirely horrible.
Click to expand...

Or ask me :D

I have a 980 and the Mrs has a 390 and i used to have a 970.

Having now lived with the 390 for 6 weeks (fairly new machine) if i was back at day 1 i would go for a 970.

the 390 is silent watching films as ours (MSI) the fans turn off when its under 50c However the drivers have been a total pain in the ar5e. I cant run crimson drivers on GTA V without getting a black patchy screen having spoken to AMD direct they have told me to scrap the crimson drivers and go back to Catalyst and yes thats solved it but still... i have had lots of ** Don't attempt to bypass the swear filter, it's there for a reason **about with drivers.

But the 390 is more pokey than a 970 so i guess better value in that sense. its warmer but not "hot" it stands up quite well against my 980 setting for setting about 7-8fps behind my 980.

so having owned both cards and still owning the 390 (I returned my 970 under the whole memory saga for a 980) the 970 you will fit and forget, it will be cooler quieter and much much much nicer drivers.

the 390 will give you a bit more punch but in my experience drivers let it down. (im sure there will be plenty of fan boys poke their head up saying i have had no problems) i literally dont see how if thats the truth.

if your after the best performance get the 390 if your after the most reliable get the 970.

i would say there is less than 5% in it performance wise and having now owned the 390 i think if i was given the chance to swap it for a 970 i would. but saying that im impressed with the performance of the 390.

I also game at 1440p 144hz. the old catalyst drivers are much better than the crimson at the moment and AMD have directly admitted and agreed with me on email this is the case too. However in most games crimson is fine.

my 390 never goes over 75c tbh. but the volume of air it moves is quite high and there is no shadow of a doubt that the 390 warms our games room up more than my 980 and the 970 is even cooler.

Its so close to call but honestly the drivers alone have made me decide personally Nvidia win.

Im not a fan boy hence i bought a 390 6 weeks ago after owning a 970 and 980 this year. i seek best value for money simple as that.
 
Randall8686 said:
Or ask me :D

..............

i would say there is less than 5% in it performance wise and having now owned the 390 i think if i was given the chance to swap it for a 970 i would. but saying that im impressed with the performance of the 390.

I also game at 1440p 144hz. the old catalyst drivers are much better than the crimson at the moment and AMD have directly admitted and agreed with me on email this is the case too. However in most games crimson is fine.

my 390 never goes over 75c tbh. but the volume of air it moves is quite high and there is no shadow of a doubt that the 390 warms our games room up more than my 980 and the 970 is even cooler.

Its so close to call but honestly the drivers alone have made me decide personally Nvidia win.

Im not a fan boy hence i bought a 390 6 weeks ago after owning a 970 and 980 this year. i seek best value for money simple as that.
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If you have had no problems with the Catalyst drivers then it's a bit unfair to trash AMD drivers just because the Crimson launch didn't go smoothly. The majority of games ran better for me with only the Witcher 3 taking a performance hit in crossfire in Crimson 15.11. This was subsequently fixed in 15.11.1.

The 'new' Crimson drivers will be fixed as they mature so any initial teething problems should not really be a big factor in any purchasing decision.
 
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Aretak said:
Do you have no case fans or something? My airflow is far from the best, given I have a Define R4 with all the vent covers on and only three case fans (two front intakes, one rear exhaust), all running unvolted at 5V. Still, when I had a 390 (and previously a 290 and 290X) in there I never saw temperatures above the mid-70s. Currently running a 780, which is a card with a similar TDP, and it rarely gets above the low 70s.
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I have a Corsair Air 240 with the intakes attached to a 240mm rad and 1 exhaust fan at the top. I really have no idea why the temps are so high, but it definitely throttles when playing Crysis or Battlefront. :(
 
AiiR said:
I have a Corsair Air 240 with the intakes attached to a 240mm rad and 1 exhaust fan at the top. I really have no idea why the temps are so high, but it definitely throttles when playing Crysis or Battlefront. :(
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I've got the same case. I read a review with proper testing done that showed that the dust protection blocks out a huge amount of air pulled in to the case and pushed out. All the dust kit is held in with just a few screws, I removed mine a while ago. With it sat on a desk that gets dusted daily I haven't had any dust issues inside the case. I also think it works best with the viewing window at the top and an ITX board. I've got 6x 120mm noise blocker XL1 fans and the Noctua cooler pushes air directly out of the back vent. I can even run all the case fans at 5v instead of 12v. Running at 12v seems to drop the temperature by 2C or so but I'm happy with the temps that I see on 5v. Out of interest I tried gaming with the window side off and that drops cpu and gfx a further 2c. Currently I've got it set up so that the front 2 fans are intakes as are the 2 fans next to the graphics card and then the opposite side which is currently your top are both venting. When I can be bothered I'm going to try changing the front to exhaust and the side that is venting to intake and change the Noctua fans around so they're sucking from the back. There's just a lot of screws to undo to try it.

Edit: Swapped the fans round after the above. 2 on the front are exhausting, 4 on sides are intake and swapped the Noctua fans around to suck air from the back. CPU dropped 4c during gaming and 970 dropped 2c. Idle temps remain the same. That's with fans running as 5v. I tried with 12v. Made no difference to gfx, CPU idled and gamed at 1c cooler than at 5v.

970 idle 31C, Gaming 78C
CPU idle 31C, Gaming 54C

Before I turned the fans around I was getting 80C on the 970 and 58C on the CPU.

Edit 2: Having had it running longer it's now idling: CPU 28/29C and GPU: 29C
 
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