Should I try trading my GTX 970 FTW for a R9 390?

sadab0 · Jul 19, 2015

I have a EVGA GTX 970 FTW, should I trade it for a R9 390?

Does AMD have stuff like Geforce Experience and Nvidia Control Panel?

I have a 720p TV/Windows 8.1 Pro for a display atm so DSR is important.....does AMD support this?

What other pros and cons are there?

GPU is pretty much used mainly for gaming and rendering video with madVR/mpc-hc but my 970 pretty much renders flawlessly so my primary concern is gaming.

May or may not use this for 4K in the future but obviously not for stuff like Asassins creed, maybe for WoW.

Woody1999 · Jul 19, 2015

No, it's not worth it.

At lower resolutions (i.e. 720p) the GTX 970 performs better than the R9 390. If you're looking at 4K in the future, you should be thinking about a much more powerful card (like the R9 Fury X). AMD has it's own Catalyst Control Centre, equal to the Nvidia Control Panel.

Woody

madmatt30 · Jul 19, 2015

In a word NO in my opinion.
It performs a bit better in gaming than the 970 at the expense of temps ,power & noise.
Its still not good enough for 4k so that point is irrelevant.
For rendering with the software you're using cuda is faster from what i see so id be 110% sure youd actually see a drop in render speed switching to amd.

neieus · Jul 19, 2015

I agree with woody it's not worth it but to answer your other question yes they have a DSR like and geforce experience like feature.

madmatt30 · Jul 19, 2015

I can only imagine what fps you're currently pulling at 720p with a 970.
The fact is though whatever upper limit you're hitting will be down to your fx CPU rather than your GPU.
You can go as powerful a GPU as you like but at the end of the day at any res lower than 1440p you're not going to see any fps increase on the upper limits - you will end up entirely CPU bound (I refuse to use the term 'bottleneck' )

Memhorder · Jul 19, 2015

I don't know. I think the r9 390 outdoes the 970 with it's massive 8 gigs of Vram. Weather it's enough to upgrade? Who's to say because the increase is marginal.

Woody1999 · Jul 19, 2015

Aye, at this level the FX-8350 is the limiting factor, especially if at stock speeds. Before you think about getting a new graphics card, think about getting a new monitor. The GTX 970 easily pulls 60FPS at 1080p with most games, high-ultra settings.

Woody

sadab0 · Jul 19, 2015

Yea the only reason I was even considering the 390 was because of the 8GB VRam especially with the 3.5 GB issue that the 970 has but I guess it's not necessary for 1080p DSR gaming and to be precise my display is 1080i native (1366*768) and i was getting consistent 60 fps on witcher 3 most of the time with some frame drops that I guess was the CPUs bottleneck

Woody1999 · Jul 19, 2015

Memhorder :

720p is such a low resolution nowadays, having an 8GB card is not going to make it any better.

Think of it this way: you have a 720p monitor that requires no more than 2GB of VRAM even with DSR. You have the choice of a 4GB graphics card for free or an 8GB card for about $100 more. Which would you choose?

Woody

sadab0 · Jul 19, 2015

Woody1999 :

Yea I could buy a 1080p TV right now (I hate monitors, I honestly think that 1080p and higher goes to waste on such a small screen) but then again I could save up for a 4k TV, both of them are tempting.

madmatt30 · Jul 19, 2015

There's not really am issue with vram in my experience - I've been trying a lot of stuff lately at 2k DSR on a 1080p screen & seen absolutely no sign of issues.

HEXiT · Jul 19, 2015

madmatt30 :

your rite not to use bottleneck because its the screen that will limit the gpu not the cpu in this case.

Memhorder · Jul 19, 2015

Woody1999 :

Memhorder :

720p is such a low resolution nowadays, having an 8GB card is not going to make it any better.

Think of it this way: you have a 720p monitor that requires no more than 2GB of VRAM even with DSR. You have the choice of a 4GB graphics card for free or an 8GB card for about $100 more. Which would you choose?

Woody

True. And I would stick with the 970. 4 gigs is plenty for 1080p

madmatt30 · Jul 19, 2015

I can tell you now that 2k DSR on a 60 inch 1080p TV looks absolutely ******* awesome from 8 feet away - I see no need for 4k.
Running a dirt rally replay the other day ,a mate walked in the room & asked what TV channel live rally was on;-)

sadab0 · Jul 19, 2015

madmatt30 :

Lmao, alright you convinced me to buy the 1080p TV, I'll buy 4K when the graphics card range for 4K gaming reach ~300-400 dollar range.

Woody1999 · Jul 19, 2015

Yeah, 1080p with DSR looks almost as good as 1440p, even if you don't get the advantage of more "space" on the screen.

The 1080p TV was a good choice, you'll see a big difference over your current 1080i screen.

Woody

sadab0 · Jul 19, 2015

Woody1999 :

I'm playing Bioshock Infinite right now at near 1440p DSR, that s*** looks crazy already.

Woody1999 · Jul 19, 2015

Surely that looks a little blurry on a 720p screen? That's a helluva lot of extra rendering for each pixel.

Woody

sadab0 · Jul 19, 2015

Woody1999 :

Honestly I can't tell, I don't have that gamers eye that most long time PC gamers have because I upgraded from a PS3 to PC but I know for sure that it looks 5x better than on the ps3.

Woody1999 · Jul 19, 2015

If you enjoy your current setup, then don't bother with new stuff just yet. You might as well keep saving until you can afford a noticeable upgrade.

Woody

sadab0 · Jul 19, 2015

Woody1999 :

I would agree but my TV sucks. I bought it 3 years ago when I didn't know anything about anything and it doesn't even support HDMI with PC, and also because I see noise (black horizontal lines) sometimes when I'm playing some games , not to mention the colors are dull. Although I'm not sure if the noise is from my setup.

Woody1999 · Jul 19, 2015

The noise would be the TV, and if the colours are dull you might be having a problem with the panel settings. Even TN panels have some stunning colour reproduction nowadays.

Woody

sadab0 · Jul 19, 2015

Woody1999 :

Maybe but I don't know how to configure my panel settings properly for my TV and I doubt there's a guide seeing as how its a no name brand.

Edit: yea just did a quick google search and found nothing on calibration

Woody1999 · Jul 19, 2015

Ugh. Well, a 1080p screen would probably be your best bet, then. Despite your hate of them, monitors tend to have much better colour reproduction and response time compared to TVs.

Woody

sadab0 · Jul 19, 2015

Woody1999 :

Yea I know but I would prefer to trade a little contrast for better immersion and some TVs do have short response time. Even if I wanted to get a monitor I don't even have a computer table to set it up on or a computer chair. The closet thing to a table I have would be at least a foot below eye level.

Should I try trading my GTX 970 FTW for a R9 390?

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