Are the GTX 970's & 980's already the best GPU's ever made?

Uncle Petey · 15 Oct 2014 at 18:58

loleasyrider

easyrider · 15 Oct 2014 at 18:59

Ayahuasca said:
I'm pretty sure someone who mainly plays BF4 for example would buy a <£200 290 after the sale of the reward codes instead of a 970.

I really don't think many people would in the know...not when buying new...

290 just went for 155 in MM ...few more weeks and they will be 125 second hand...

290 is dead tech...hot gfx cards are so yesteryear

Uncle Petey · 15 Oct 2014 at 19:00

One card getting sold cheap does not = standard market value.

Ayahuasca · 15 Oct 2014 at 19:00

easyrider said:
290 just went for 155 in MM ...few more weeks and they will be 125 second hand...

You can get them for around that new if you get lucky and someone clicks buy it now on your £100 gold reward like I've seen people doing on ebay. The star citizen ship code alone goes for £55 or something sometimes I've heard.

Geeman1979 · 15 Oct 2014 at 19:01

290's have been as low as 135 quid on the MM, won't be long before they're around the 100 mark 2nd hand.

easyrider · 15 Oct 2014 at 19:01

Mal X said:
rubbish................the MSI Lightning is really cheap now and totally awesome

It's 318 quid...

Uncle Petey · 15 Oct 2014 at 19:02

And yet, the performance difference between a 290 and a 970 is marginal.

7970's are still going for around £100 ffs.. And that's here on the MM where buyers are cheap as ****.

Geeman1979 · 15 Oct 2014 at 19:03

Who cares!

easyrider · 15 Oct 2014 at 19:04

Geeman1979 said:
290's have been as low as 135 quid on the MM, won't be long before they're around the 100 mark 2nd hand.

It was a 290x

Uncle Petey · 15 Oct 2014 at 19:04

Geeman1979 said:
Who cares!

About what?

wazza300 · 15 Oct 2014 at 19:04

used 290 + accelero aftermarket cooler = £200 =

_Alatar_ · 15 Oct 2014 at 19:05

This post has so many factual inaccuracies that it actually hurts. Let's correct some of them and provide links for proof.

humbug said:
GTX 970:
@ 1080P / 1440P the performance is about the same as a 290P / 780.

Actually it's about 14% faster:

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_970_SC_ACX_Cooler/images/perfrel_1920.gif

@ 4K the 290P has the edge.

No it doesn't, the 970 is around 4% faster on average at 4K:

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_970_SC_ACX_Cooler/images/perfrel_3840.gif

290P has better multi GPU Scaling.

Scaling matters very little if the performance is still worse.

970 SLI is faster than the 295X2 at 1080p and 1600p:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_970_SLI/20.html

And also very close at 4K.

970 is £50 more expensive than a 290P

Only because AMD's AIBs like MSI are taking a hit to their margins to offer the cards at prices where AMD doesn't think they're supposed to be.

AMD thinks that the 290 and 290X are competitive at their MSRPs:

http://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/75613-amd-cutting-price-radeon-r9-290-r9-290x-gpus/

GTX 980:
@ 1080P / 1440P the performance is 10% faster than a 290X, 5% faster than an 780TI

GTX 980 compared to 780Ti:
1080p: 7.5% faster
1600p: 5% faster
4K: 7.5% faster

GTX 980 compared to 290X:
1080p: 23% faster
1600p: 15% faster
4K: 11% faster

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_970_SLI/20.html

GTX 980 is £170 more expensive than a 290X.

Again read above, a limited time/supply deal from certain AIBs, AMD thinks that the 290X's MSRP is just fine:

http://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/75613-amd-cutting-price-radeon-r9-290-r9-290x-gpus/

The clock for clock performance is actually about the same as the cards they replaced, they just run higher clock rates.

Which is a non issue because the cards also OC considerably higher, I'd say around 200MHz higher than previous ones.

Average OCs:

http://hwbot.org/hardware/videocard/geforce_gtx_780_ti/
http://hwbot.org/hardware/videocard/radeon_r9_290x/
http://hwbot.org/hardware/videocard/geforce_gtx_980/

980 is almost 250MHz higher than the 780Ti on average and almost 300MHz higher than the 290X on average.

The die size (400mm^2) is also the same relative to GK110, actually the 970 is much larger than the 770, 100mm^2 larger.

die sizes:
GK110: 561mm^2
GK104: 294mm^2
Hawaii: 438mm^2
GM204: 398mm^2

GK110 die size is 40% bigger than the GM204 die (not the same size as you were trying to say) and still GM204 beats GK110. The performance boost from Gk104 to GM204 is also much bigger than the die size difference.

links for die sizes:

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/2621/geforce-gtx-980.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/2512/geforce-gtx-780-ti.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/342/geforce-gtx-680.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/2460/radeon-r9-290x.html

This, Nvidia have their new GPU's out before AMD, AMD's 7970 was 30% faster than the GTX 580 and used less power,

At the time of launch at the majority enthusiast resolution of 1080p the 7970 at stock was 11% faster than the GTX 580:

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/images/perfrel_1920.gif

Overclocking extended this to around 20% but the driver improvements that improved performance more over the 580 didn't start appearing before Nvidia already had their 680 out.

it took about 4 or 5 Months for Nvidia to bring out a competitor to it.

Actually you're off by a factor of 2. It took Nvidia 2 months and 2 weeks. A really short time considering the 6 month cypress to fermi difference or the 8 month GK110 to Hawaii difference.

7970 started selling on the 9th of january 2012, GTX 680 came out on the 22nm of march 2012. So yes, 2 months and 2 weeks.

Does that mean the 7970 was at the time the best GPU ever made?

For that 2 months and 2 weeks yes.

Maxwell is not any faster than Kepler, its not any smaller, yes it does use a lot less power.

Performance numbers and die size numbers above, around 7% faster than the full GK110 die, 30% smaller die and a lot less power.

No need to repeat the links.

Please get your facts straight next time.

Geeman1979 · 15 Oct 2014 at 19:08

Uncle Petey said:
About what?

About the performance difference between a 290 and a 970 is marginal.

It is what it is.... Performance can be measured in over ways, not just by out right speed.

Mal X · 15 Oct 2014 at 19:08

easyrider said:
I really don't think many people would in the know...not when buying new...

290 just went for 155 in MM ...few more weeks and they will be 125 second hand...

290 is dead tech...hot gfx cards are so yesteryear

all cards will be dead tech by next winter, because that's the way it goes around here :cool:

but crossfire will last you ages, as long as VRAM doesn't rise too far :eek:

Uncle Petey · 15 Oct 2014 at 19:10

Geeman1979 said:
About the performance difference between a 290 and a 970 is marginal.

It is what it is.... Performance can be measured in over ways, not just by out right speed.

Sorry, what?

Who cares if the actual performance difference is marginal? Really?

Geeman1979 · 15 Oct 2014 at 19:11

Uncle Petey said:
Sorry, what?

Who cares if the actual performance difference is marginal? Really?

Ya really...

You obviously do hence bringing it up.

Uncle Petey · 15 Oct 2014 at 19:12

At least try and make sense.

Geeman1979 · 15 Oct 2014 at 19:13

Likewise.

Uncle Petey · 15 Oct 2014 at 19:14

Well argued. Good job.

Geeman1979 · 15 Oct 2014 at 19:15

Uncle Petey said:
Well argued. Good job.

WTF does the difference in performance between a 970/290 have to do with how cheap 290's are going for on the MM?