• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

G1 970 to 290X lightning :)

sprite1275

sprite1275

sprite1275

Associate
Joined
9 Jul 2013
Posts
2,188
Well ive had the 970 for a couple of months now and although i think there good cards ive been feeling a little underwhelmed by it. For a while ive been posting about low usage, slight micro stuttering, sometimes having to restart pc on the odd occasion as the fps is just half what it should have been.

There have been loads of people posting about the same issues on the geforce driver forum and this was way before the vram issue came out.

Anyway i managed to bag the 290X Lightning with Gold reward & sid myers for £259 before it went up. Ive had it sat here for a while in the box while contemplating whether to send the 970 back or not.

Tonight i thought stuff it and whacked it in. First of all what an awesome looking card. The one thing thats been playing on my mind about the 290x is the Power consumption, heat & noise.

After gaming a little tonight i find it no more nosier than the 970. I think if the fans go over 50% then it will start getting slightly audible but the fans have not got to 50% yet while keeping the temps the same as the 970 between 60/70c in gaming conditions.

The other thing i was concerned about was the power consumption. I have one of these ** No hotlinked images **
So i did a few reading with the 970 and the 290x. Heres what i got;

970 first column, 290x second column (Total System Power)

Idle (Desktop) 84w - 85w
Fire Strike Bench 295w - 330w
TR Bench 270w - 340w
Sniper E III Bench 290w - 350w
1 game of WoT 250w - 285w

Not sure if your suprised by them results but im quite shocked. i was expecting quite a bit more from what the general consensus is regarding the 290x being power hungary.

The main thing ive noticed though and the most important is the games seem to play a Lot smoother. I tried ARMA III which with the 970 i had to turn all AA off with settings set to high and even then it wasnt smooth. With the Lightning i can up the settings with it playing a lot smoother.

All in All im well pleased with this big chunk of quality metal in my case, 970 is packed and waiting to be shipped. Like i said there good cards but im not sure if maybe the power saving side of it effects performance, Im not sure as im no expert but there you go.

Hope this helps others thinking of the switch :)
 
Great stuff, could be useful for those wanting to change their 970 but not sure if the 980 is really worth the £100+ over the 290X.
 
Wow great right up and glad your enjoying the lightning :D Like you i am surprised about the power usage. Gutted i could not have caught the lightning at that price, the card and case look awesome :cool:

Now its time to see what that puppy over clocks to ;)
 
For a while ive been posting about low usage, slight micro stuttering, sometimes having to restart pc on the odd occasion as the fps is just half what it should have been.
Click to expand...

This I have seen on Single/SLI 970/980 cards.I have sold them off.
The Nvidia hype is strong in these parts.Can not wait to see the regular Nvidia fans flock here to tell you how wrong you were switching.
BTW I switch cards all the time between Nvidia/AMD and AMD is my card of choice.They just work
 
He won't do that,this is Lightning so he's going to rise voltage and OC hell out of it.
Could you add Sleeping Dogs benchmark on extreme,please?
Glad you happy with your new card.
 
nitram100 said:
Thanks for this! Was getting really annoyed with 970 fan boys claiming the 290x draws insane amounts of power.
Click to expand...

Well, 290x's are more than capable of drawing utterly bonkers amounts of power on air. Just look at AMDMatt's quadfire setup - 2200w at the wall. 2.2kw! Assume 200w of that is loss at the PSU (not 100% efficiant) which leaves us with 2000w. Assume 300w of that is the cpu/motherboard and other components (generous), leaving us with 1700w. That's 4x cards drawing 1700w = 425w EACH

absolutely monstrous!

But anyway, more difficult to get a true picture with one GPU when measuring full system load. That said, when pcper reviewed their 980sli it came in under a single 290x in power consumption. If you take those as base figures, then a 290x draws double that of a 980. In that one benchmark anyway (metro LL i think).

So, is a stock 290x an insain power guzzler? well, no, it's about the same as a titan give or take. But a 980/970 will draw half as much.


OP, how about some overclocked figures?
 
gerardfraser said:
This I have seen on Single/SLI 970/980 cards.I have sold them off.
The Nvidia hype is strong in these parts.Can not wait to see the regular Nvidia fans flock here to tell you how wrong you were switching.
BTW I switch cards all the time between Nvidia/AMD and AMD is my card of choice.They just work
Click to expand...

They may just work for you but AMD certainly didn't just work for me.

Mantle, the greatest thing since sliced bread refused to work for me and infact actually gave me lower fps than dx11.

Since switching to my 970 i've had no issues.

The 290 are still decent cards though but the whole "nvidia vs amd" is just swings and roundabouts.
 
james.miller said:
Well, 290x's are more than capable of drawing utterly bonkers amounts of power on air. Just look at AMDMatt's quadfire setup - 2200w at the wall. 2.2kw! Assume 200w of that is loss at the PSU (not 100% efficiant) which leaves us with 2000w. Assume 300w of that is the cpu/motherboard and other components (generous), leaving us with 1700w. That's 4x cards drawing 1700w = 425w EACH

absolutely monstrous!

But anyway, more difficult to get a true picture with one GPU when measuring full system load. That said, when pcper reviewed their 980sli it came in under a single 290x in power consumption. If you take those as base figures, then a 290x draws double that of a 980. In that one benchmark anyway (metro LL i think).

So, is a stock 290x an insain power guzzler? well, no, it's about the same as a titan give or take. But a 980/970 will draw half as much.


OP, how about some overclocked figures?
Click to expand...

I think he has already packed up the 970 to be shipped off....
 
snips86x said:
I think he has already packed up the 970 to be shipped off....
Click to expand...

That's alright, he's still got the 290x lol

Just wondered what clocks he was running as i get similar-ish numbers with my 970 but im running a stock i5-3470 and pulled 290w in TR vs his 270w, for example, and i doubt his 3570k is stock.
 
Last edited:
james.miller said:
That's alright, he's still got the 290x lol

Just wondered what clocks he was running as i get similar-ish numbers with my 970 but im running a stock i5-3470 and pulled 290w in TR vs his 270w, for example, and i doubt his 3570k is stock.
Click to expand...

Both cards were at stock. My i5 I have at 4.1 @ the moment. Which Meter do you have?
 
Last edited:
What I did though was take the average watts during the benching. So the TR bench at times could have hit 290 but mostly hovered around the 260/70/80
 
Last edited:
sprite1275 said:
That's how much they were about 2 weeks ago. They were £239 about a month ago, now that was an awesome price.

Mine will work out about £210/15 after I've sold all the games which is superb when you think what these lightnings used to be.
Click to expand...

Whaaaat, the lightning, at that time i didn't think the vram issue was that blown up for it to dictate the amd price cuts or was it just offers at the time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom