GTX 970 SLI or R9 290X CF for 4K

B3NDY

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Apr 18, 2014
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So I am looking to game at 4k if possible and 1440p when I can't play at 4k. I am also planning to watercool both cards in a custom loop as well to keep noise and temperatures as low as possible.

Now my initial idea was to use 2 970s in SLI because of the amount of RAM is okay for 4k and in SLI there is enough performance to play a lot of games in 4k. I really like the shadowplay that comes with it and the efficiency as well as cool temps that come with it.
Now as most will have heard, there is only 3.5GB of fast RAM on the 970 so I am now wandering whether this is a good for 4k since most games will use more than this. The 970 would have been perfect until this problem came up.

Another option would be to get 2 R9 290Xs because they perform only slightly worse in most cases but have the FULL 4GB of RAM so actually will have enough for 4k. The problem with this is that I won't get shadowplay, it will run hotter, will cause to my system to be louder. Now I am just wandering whether it is worth these bad points for the extra RAM that is worth using.

My final option is to wait until AMD realise the 3** series which could have better performance than the 290X or wait for another card from Nvidia. Problem with this is I can only wait untill Q2 this year.

I really don't know what to do now the 970 only has 3.5GB of fast RAM
 
Solution
The GTX 970 should still be perfectly fine, but if you can wait a while before ordering, I would wait. Then figure out what you want to do later.

Francisco Costa

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Nov 16, 2013
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Yes, it does, but that PSU uses poor capacitors, I don't really like it.
 

B3NDY

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I'll keep that in mind, looking to upgrade to a 1000w EVGA supernova soon so should be alright.
 

090909090909

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Don't worry. the Vram issue won't make any difference. look at the benchmarks :
Avg-Perf-2160.png

Avg-Perf-1080.png

the time which is the benchmarks made at is the same time that the GTX 970 had the issue , but it wasn't discovered .
and that makes the GTX 970 beats the R9 290X at 1080p and makes the GTX 970 and THE R9 290X are equal at 4K.
I prefer the SLI GTX 970s because the 290X CF will make alot of heat and will need a great PSU and CF mode has a lot of problems and needs a lot of fixing and (trouble shooting)