R9 390 or EVGA GeForce GTX 970?

anderson2005 · 18 Feb 2016 at 23:44

So which of these should I get: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/evga...s-graphics-card-04g-p4-2974-kr-gx-263-ea.html

Or:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/msi-...ddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-289-ms.html

Price wise they're very similar. however, the ATI has double the memory...requires more power (which my PSU is capable of) and a slightly slower clockspeed... where as the GTX 970 requires less power, produces higher clockspeed BUT has 4GB of memory... I'm not sure exactly HOW these clockspeeds will impact my gaming performance... but I used to have an ATI Radeon 290x so how would the 290x compare with these cards? does it beat any of them? if not, which would you choose of the two?

thanks for all your suggestions and if anyone can explain this clockspeed stuff that'd be great!

syks · 18 Feb 2016 at 23:54

I would personally go with the gtx 970 but most on here would advise the 390 as it has 8gb vram compared with the 4gb vram of the 970,,,,i just think NVidia cards are made better than amd and I like the functions better,,,just my opinion though and there both great cards,,,i would think the 390 may be more future proof though due to the added ram.

I honestly would prob be happy with either

syks · 18 Feb 2016 at 23:59

heres some benchmarks of your old card vs the ones your considering,,take a look and decide

http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-R9-290X-vs-GeForce-GTX-970

http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-R9-390-vs-Radeon-R9-290X

eddyr · 19 Feb 2016 at 00:24

Ignore the clockspeed as you would rpm range of a car engine, its the performance metrics that really matter. The 970 and 390 are on par performance wise at 1080, but they also do not offer much above your 290X.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/R9_390_Nitro/23.html
http://pclab.pl/art60000-122.

Choice is as you say, less power consumption and less memory against more power consumption (maybe a little more fan noise) and more memory.

Personal choice would the 390, the 970 ram config just irks me little, even though I appreciate the engineering. I would also like to try adaptive-sync but do not want to spend more than I have to which rules out g-sync unless it gets cheaper, and I am curious as to amd performance in dx12 and Vulcan once the games land. Neither particularly helpful to your decision making!

Aretak · 19 Feb 2016 at 00:52

anderson2005 said:
but I used to have an ATI Radeon 290x so how would the 290x compare with these cards? does it beat any of them? if not, which would you choose of the two?

The 290X is actually more powerful than either of them. The 390 is essentially a rebranded 290 with an extra 4GB VRAM, but the same slightly cut down Hawaii chip from the full version used in the 290X/390X. The only thing it may lack in is out of the box clock speed, but a small overclock will see it match performance exactly with a 390X in scenarios where you're using 4GB VRAM or less.

Clock speed between two different cards from the same brand, let alone different ones, is completely irrelevant though. The only time you should look at clock speeds as a metric of anything is between two cards using the exact same GPU. At that point obviously the higher clocked card wins, but even that's largely irrelevant unless you're getting into pushing the limits of overclocking. Factory overclocks are pretty meaningless.

As for the 390 vs the 970, I'd pick the former every time. It's generally the faster card until you heavily overclock the 970, has more than double the VRAM and is more likely to retain its current performance level in the future.

tommybhoy · 19 Feb 2016 at 01:03

390>970 performance/longevity, but in the current game sponsor climate, Nvidia>AMD making the 970>390, which, imo is far more important than going with performance/longevity.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 19 Feb 2016 at 01:17

I would get the R9 390. If you intend to spend £250 on a card,then a two year lifespan is not taking the mickey and I expect the R9 390 to be a better choice. Longevity is more important IMHO.

Game sponsorship can flip flop between brands from the last 13 years of serious PC gaming I have done.

Heck,even an Nvidia sponsored game means eff all. I managed to a GTX960 for like £100 to replace my GTX660 and I was shocked when it ran ARK,a UE4 based game and sponsored by Nvidia,WORSE than an ancient and slower R9 280. I even got a mate with their GTX960 to confirm it on their rig and tried my card in another rig as I thought it was having some issue. Yeah,the R9 280 did noticeably better. At that point I told my mate to get an R9 390 and it runs well on it.

You only look at the R9 290X which was beaten by both the GTX780TI and GTX970 at launch even at 2560X1600:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_780_Ti/27.html
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_970_STRIX_OC/25.html

Look now:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_980_Ti_Matrix/23.html

Its actually a tad ahead of both at 2560X1600. This is also the stock R9 290X with the meh reference cooler too.

It just shows,people who stuck with the card have ended with the same performance as the GTX780TI and much later GTX970 anyway,and the R9 390 is generally slightly faster. Its a two year old card.

All my mates running R9 290 cards have struck with them and they have gotten two years of decent performance out of them.

Its like with my old GTX660 which I got - I wish I had bought an HD7870 now,as it went from trading blows to around 20% slower on average in modern titles.

IMHO,I also think the R9 390 will tend to perform better when DX12 games hit this year. IMHO,the only Nvidia cards which will keep their performance in DX12 games relative to the AMD cards are the GTX980TI and the Titan X and that's primarily since Fiji is somewhat lopsided in its allocation of resources,and cannot be overclocked much for custom cards.

IvanDobskey · 19 Feb 2016 at 08:16

I personally think nvidia is always a safer bet.

They always seem to be better built and more reliable to me.

Just my opinion though.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 19 Feb 2016 at 08:36

IvanDobskey said:
I personally think nvidia is always a safer bet.

They always seem to be better built and more reliable to me.

Just my opinion though.

The $200 million bumps issue says otherwise. I had to deal with nearly a dozen laptops affected by it.
In the last the last 13 years of me building PCs,I had two cards die on me - my 8800gts 512mb and my first GTX960 and another mates first GTX970 also had issues. In the same period, mates had an 8800GS and an HD7850 die. Another one borked his hd6870 by getting a magnetic ball bearing stuck in it.In the same period, mates had an 8800GS and an HD7850 die. Around 60 cards in total(maybe more) and only one DOA and the rest from two years onwards over 13 years. Another one borked his hd6870 by getting a magnetic ball bearing stuck in it.

Only one was a reference card and two were non-reference MSI ones. OEMs are more important than general statements about GPU companies.

IvanDobskey · 19 Feb 2016 at 09:03

I guess we can only go on personal experiences.

I have given ATI/AMD cards a go twice and been disappointed. One of them had shocking build quality and the flimsy fan failed.

My current EVGA 780 is superbly made.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 19 Feb 2016 at 09:53

IvanDobskey said:
I guess we can only go on personal experiences.

I have given ATI/AMD cards a go twice and been disappointed. One of them had shocking build quality and the flimsy fan failed.

My current EVGA 780 is superbly made.

Well that's nothing to with AMD but the OEMs and companies like Palit in the past have chesped out by not putty VRM heatsinks on cards whereas all the production ones had none.

If you even look at the reference GTX660TI and GTX670 they had tiny PCBs which were not as well built for overclocking as the reference HD7970 and HD7950 cards.

Even then I would be more concerned by how OEMs implement the designs.

MSI for example had a whole spate of fan issues affecting their whole range of cards a few years ago.

Davanius · 19 Feb 2016 at 09:54

I was in the same position last summer and went with the 390. I haven't regretted it.

I have a long history with nvidia cards but the 390 made more sense.

I would have sold it if it had given me trouble but it never did.

Now that I have a freesync monitor, I couldn't be happier.......except with a faster card of course.

Now that freesync monitors are coming out with low prices, I would get one as well.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/aoc-...descreen-led-monitor-black-red-mo-035-ao.html

Smffy · 19 Feb 2016 at 11:12

I'm an Nvidia person through and through, but get the 390. Not sure if you're aware but the 970 doesnt actually have 4GB usable VRAM, its 3.5... A number of modern games are using in excess of 4-5 so if its something for a few years use that would be my preference. Both of these cards will probably be similar in terms of performance so its a question of you checking how VRAM hungry your usual and future titles are going to be.

Option 2 is to wait the Pascal launch out and see what happens to the pricing of cards like the 980/980Ti.

Gregster · 19 Feb 2016 at 11:23

Smffy said:
I'm an Nvidia person through and through, but get the 390. Not sure if you're aware but the 970 doesnt actually have 4GB usable VRAM, its 3.5... A number of modern games are using in excess of 4-5 so if its something for a few years use that would be my preference. Both of these cards will probably be similar in terms of performance so its a question of you checking how VRAM hungry your usual and future titles are going to be.

Option 2 is to wait the Pascal launch out and see what happens to the pricing of cards like the 980/980Ti.

The 970 DOES have 4GB of usable VRAM.

To the OP, either a 970 or 390 will do you well and the 390 has more vram and the 970 has more graphical add ons ins some GameWorks titles.

David Bisset · 19 Feb 2016 at 11:36

I'd take the 390 over the 970 for sure (and as others have said, clockspeed on it's own should be ignored)

However, with a 290X already I'd not bother, it's a sidegrade really.

humbug · 19 Feb 2016 at 13:39

Either will do the job.

The 390 has 8GB Buffer which is neither here nor there but may come in handy for the future with game development going more for high res textures.
Its also a little faster than the 970, but again its not a huge difference, small is what i would call it.

By comparison the GTX 970 is more power efficient. It does have 4GB of buffer and will use it but depending on the game prolonged use at over 3.5GB does slow performance, dramatically, the chances are you will never run into the problem, at least not in the near future as for now few games require that much Buffer at a level the GPU has the power to drive.
I have run into it with Star Citizen, i cannot run (Very Hight) settings for more than 20 Minutes as the textures gradually pile up in the buffer and start to LOD in the slow part of the 970's buffer, when that happens performance is unplayable with the occasional hitching.

@ IvanDobskey, Reliability is a none starter, most of them are made in the same factory by the same people, they share the same components, i have had a lot of AMD cards over the years and not one of them has been anything less than perfect.

AiiR · 19 Feb 2016 at 14:14

Performance is much the same. Get a 390 for vram and freesync, or a 970 for lower noise/temps.

Ayahuasca · 19 Feb 2016 at 14:18

Shame you missed the Nano deal the other day, with the sale of the free games it ended up below £300.

Smffy · 19 Feb 2016 at 14:19

Gregster said:
The 970 DOES have 4GB of usable VRAM.

To the OP, either a 970 or 390 will do you well and the 390 has more vram and the 970 has more graphical add ons ins some GameWorks titles.

Poor wording on my part but its still worth knowing/considering:

"The GeForce GTX 970 is equipped with 4GB of dedicated graphics memory. However the 970 has a different configuration of SMs than the 980, and fewer crossbar resources to the memory system. To optimally manage memory traffic in this configuration, we segment graphics memory into a 3.5GB section and a 0.5GB section. The GPU has higher priority access to the 3.5GB section. When a game needs less than 3.5GB of video memory per draw command then it will only access the first partition, and 3rd party applications that measure memory usage will report 3.5GB of memory in use on GTX 970, but may report more for GTX 980 if there is more memory used by other commands. When a game requires more than 3.5GB of memory then we use both segments.

We understand there have been some questions about how the GTX 970 will perform when it accesses the 0.5GB memory segment. The best way to test that is to look at game performance. Compare a GTX 980 to a 970 on a game that uses less than 3.5GB. Then turn up the settings so the game needs more than 3.5GB and compare 980 and 970 performance again."

Dave2150 · 19 Feb 2016 at 14:55

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
I would get the R9 390. If you intend to spend £250 on a card,then a two year lifespan is not taking the mickey and I expect the R9 390 to be a better choice. Longevity is more important IMHO.

Game sponsorship can flip flop between brands from the last 13 years of serious PC gaming I have done.

Heck,even an Nvidia sponsored game means eff all. I managed to a GTX960 for like £100 to replace my GTX660 and I was shocked when it ran ARK,a UE4 based game and sponsored by Nvidia,WORSE than an ancient and slower R9 280. I even got a mate with their GTX960 to confirm it on their rig and tried my card in another rig as I thought it was having some issue. Yeah,the R9 280 did noticeably better. At that point I told my mate to get an R9 390 and it runs well on it.

You only look at the R9 290X which was beaten by both the GTX780TI and GTX970 at launch even at 2560X1600:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_780_Ti/27.html
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_970_STRIX_OC/25.html

Look now:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_980_Ti_Matrix/23.html

Its actually a tad ahead of both at 2560X1600. This is also the stock R9 290X with the meh reference cooler too.

It just shows,people who stuck with the card have ended with the same performance as the GTX780TI and much later GTX970 anyway,and the R9 390 is generally slightly faster. Its a two year old card.

All my mates running R9 290 cards have struck with them and they have gotten two years of decent performance out of them.

Its like with my old GTX660 which I got - I wish I had bought an HD7870 now,as it went from trading blows to around 20% slower on average in modern titles.

IMHO,I also think the R9 390 will tend to perform better when DX12 games hit this year. IMHO,the only Nvidia cards which will keep their performance in DX12 games relative to the AMD cards are the GTX980TI and the Titan X and that's primarily since Fiji is somewhat lopsided in its allocation of resources,and cannot be overclocked much for custom cards.

Agreed, 390 is the best option. Far superior to a 970.