GTX 970 or R9 390?

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Kybz

Kybz

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Going for a budget build for my new custom built pc, but I don't know whether to get a GTX 970 or an R9 390.

- I want the card that will get me high fps over a long amount of time without me needing to upgrade it to something better. (e.g. GTX 980 Ti)
- I want the card that will get me higher fps in games in general.
- I don't care about the power required to run the cards, or the noise they make.

I will be overclocking the cards, so which one would get me more fps? GTX 970 OC or R9 390 OC? I know it depends on your individual card but do you guys have any rough estimates? I think the R9 390 would be better for the future as it has double the Vram of GTX 970, and as newer titles have confirmed, more Vram will be needed to run games in the future (Assassins Creed Unity).

For these reasons, I'm totally torn between the two cards - I don't know which one to get, but I want to be absolutely sure before buying the card.

Do you guys have any idea as to which card will be better for me?

The rest of my build:
Processor: i5-4690k
Processor Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
PSU: I don't care, I'll change my PSU to whatever W the cards need.
RAM: 16GB
OS: Windows 8
Motherboard: Asus Z97-P
 
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JackNaylorPE


The call for ever increasing amounts of RAM has been going on for along time (since 770 days) and has never been borne out by actual testing. Being able to "use more than X GB" and "suffering a decrease in performance at X GB" are two very, very different things.

There is one last thing to note with Max Payne 3: It would not normally allow one to set 4xAA at 5760×1080 with any 2GB card as it claims to require 2750MB. However, when we replaced the 4GB GTX 770 with the 2GB version, the game allowed the setting...
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p_nut_uk

p_nut_uk

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Honestly I think they're 2 very closely matched cards, the 390 is ever so slightly better stock but once overclocked I don't think you could tell the difference.

I bought a 970 and wished I got a 390 instead, only because my girlfriend loves modding games and the extra ram would have been beneficial.

In the UK at least they seem to be identically priced.
 
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FearfulSPARTAN

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If you going for a card that will last longer well nobody knows for sure but I would argue for the 390 simply for the extra vram. At stock they are about the same maybe slightly in eithers favor but not much, the 970 can overclock a little bit better from what I hear.
 
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Martell1977

Martell1977

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But how much do those percentages effect performance? If I OC a 390 by 8% and a 970 by 22%, but the performance is equal or near equal, that doesn't mean the 970 is better. Just throwing percentages out there is not really helpful.


To the OP, for longevity, the 390 is the better option due to the VRAM, since both perform very well.
 
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JackNaylorPE

JackNaylorPE

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This issue is addressed in detail in many Fury X articles and the conclusion drawn was the 4Gb is more than adequate.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_Fury_X/36.html

AMD's Fury X "only" comes with 4 GB of HBM memory, which is a technological limitation as there are no bigger HBM chips available at this time. My numbers show that at this time, there is no need for more than 4 GB of VRAM when targeting playable framerates. While I can't predict the future, I doubt properly optimized games will need more than that. Sure, there will be lazy game developers that will fill all the VRAM up with unnecessary junk, but those games will be the exception, not the norm. The bigger issue for AMD here is in the perception of the less-educated user base; I'm sure forums will be full of "don't buy Fury X, 4 GB VRAM is not enough" posts that might affect the buying decisions of consumer-level-orientated gamers.
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The article also provides a good example of how overclocking factors in

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_Fury_X/31.html

At 1440p, the 980 Ti is just 9% faster than the Fury X; let's gibe the Fury X the benfit of the doubt and say that new drivers will fix WOW and Project Cars and use the 104% for the Fury X and 109% for the 980 ti .... so based upon what we read so far ... it's pretty close.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_Fury_X/34.html
Here it shows that the Fury X overclocked is 5% (108.1 / 102.9) faster than the reference Fury X

104% x (108.1 / 102.9) = 109% overclocked

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyte/GTX_980_Ti_G1_Gaming/33.html
Here it shows that the Giga 980 Ti overclocked is 31% (134.8 / 102.6) faster than the reference 980 Ti

109% x (134.8 / 102.6) = 143% overclocked

So at stock, if this was a horse race, the 4.8% win would be a win by 48 lengths. Overclocked, it's a win by 309 lengths. This turned out to be bad example but if you do the same thing with the 970 .... it goes from a moderate loss to a teeny win at 1440p with the 390x
 
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FearfulSPARTAN

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But if you read the Anandtech article you will see that 4gb is just enough for now at high resolutions, with newer games requiring more vram this is one area where I wouldnt settle on just enough if your keeping a card for 3+ years
 
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JackNaylorPE

JackNaylorPE

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Reference 390x (98%) has 7% advantage over the reference 970 (91%)

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/R9_390X_Gaming/33.html

MSI 390x overclocked has a 7.1 % (90.3 / 84/3) improvement over reference card

98 x (90.3 / 84/3) = 104.98

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_970_Gaming/30.html

MSI 970 overclocked has a 17.1 % (133.5 / 114.0) improvement over reference card

91% x (133.5 / 114.0) = 106.57

Again, limited overclocking of the R9 series makes a big difference taking the 970 from a 7% deficit for the reference cards to a virtual tie with the 390x..... At just a 1.6% advantage I hesitate to call it a win.

 
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JackNaylorPE

JackNaylorPE

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The call for ever increasing amounts of RAM has been going on for along time (since 770 days) and has never been borne out by actual testing. Being able to "use more than X GB" and "suffering a decrease in performance at X GB" are two very, very different things.

There is one last thing to note with Max Payne 3: It would not normally allow one to set 4xAA at 5760×1080 with any 2GB card as it claims to require 2750MB. However, when we replaced the 4GB GTX 770 with the 2GB version, the game allowed the setting. And there were no slowdowns, stuttering, nor any performance differences that we could find between the two GTX 770s.
Click to expand...

http://alienbabeltech.com/main/gtx-770-4gb-vs-2gb-tested/3/
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/gigabyte_geforce_gtx_960_g1_gaming_4gb_review,12.html
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Video-Card-Performance-2GB-vs-4GB-Memory-154/

I have never seen a test on a reputable web site showing a 2 GB 770 performing worse than a 4 GB one at resolutions up to 5760 x 1080 and never seen anything published about a current generation card showing 4GB being inadequate. As with the red herring about b3.5 GB being a problem, every web site that tested it could not recreate the problem under normal playing conditions.

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor-geforce-gtx-970-vram-stress-test.html

I am not saying it can't happen or that it will never happen, but anything to the contrary is pure speculation until someone performs the test and publishes the results showing an impact. One with think, if this was a 'thing", someone would have wanted to break the news to the world.



 
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