Overclocked GTX 970 vs Overclocked R9 390

Vellinious

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It'd be tight at those clocks, but....1400mhz on a 970 is a pretty poor overclock, tbh. A good many of them run over that without changing anything on the overclock software with just boost 2.0. The 970s can easily hit 1500 on the core, and if they can't, they aren't trying very hard.
 

Poozle

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1450 is not. If my fan spins at 1450 vs 1150 RPM will I notice a huge difference when I have 8 fans? NO. It's how many, how well they are made, Physical design/architecture. Yes overclocking is good but honestly I never OC my 980ti even though I can get 1550Mhz stable and +235 memory. I just don't.
 

Poozle

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GCN is older, true. But that does not mean too much. Their new Fiji GPU are not that much better. As for clock speeds it doesn't matter if your 970 runs "50% faster" the actual frame rates do not run on a linear scale. So if I ran at 1550mhz on a 750ti or 950, I would see less of a performance boost than on a 980ti or 970.
 

Vellinious

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I have yet to find a 390 that can run with my 970....my buddy has a 390, and his frame rates always average just a tad lower. With his 390 running 1250 on the core, vs my 970 running 1620 on the core, it's not even a contest. And when comparing synthetic benchmarks online, the 390s just don't match up with a good overclock on a 970. I DID find a 290 that ran better than my 970, but....it was only that one. The rest of them don't get it done either.

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/6557355


 

Vellinious

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Clock speeds aren't comparable across architectures, man...... That's like comparing a 5GHz AMD processor with a 5GHz i7....or comparing 1200mhz from a Kepler to 1200mhz on a Maxwell. In order for the 970s to compete with a 390 @ 1200mhz, they need to be clocking 1500 or more.
 

Poozle

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I don't think this is legit. Please provide more than 3D mark for comparison. 3Dmark is a synthetic benchmark. Not actual frame rates or gameplay. Just go with whichever is cheaper. Amd wins DX12, nvidia is better drivers but has less actual power.( Stream processors to cuss cores.) so either way it's overkill for 1080p. I would rather have the bigger bus bit and more stream processors but whatever. DX12 isn't anytime soon either so meh.
 

Vellinious

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Gaming FPS averages were taken with Mirillis running, but not recording.....graphics test 1 and 2 in Firestrike, are very symbolic of what kind of performance you'll see from games. Those feed the "graphics score". lol

AMD is winning in DX12 now, but not by much....not after the the driver updates. My next card will likely be an AMD...I like to switch things up, and do quite often. I had a 290X that was a screamer....sold it and went with 2 x 970s for a while. Now I'm selling those and will be getting something different until Pascal or Arctic Island releases next year.
 

Poozle

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Pascal for sure. Cheers on that. Might get an amd card then. Waiting for hbm2
 

Vellinious

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I'm in wait and see mode.....I've bought into the hype around a release before, and won't do it again. = )
 

Vellinious

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Not really....at 1250 the 390 will outperform the 970 at 1250 without working hard at it....
 
According to HardOCP:

Quote:
"The final overclock on the ASUS R9 390 STRIX DCIII is with the GPU clock at 1190MHz and the memory at 6.7GHz, with the voltage set to 1350mV and power target at 150%, while the fans are manually adjusted to 70%.

This is the highest manual overclock we have seen on a R9 290 or 390 video card so far."
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/12/22/asus_r9_390_strix_directcu_iii_video_card_review/3#.VnopvRUrKUk
1450692089gP7yOsAJLZ_3_6.gif


That's also the highest overclock I've seen in any review.
 

Componentgirl90

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I just want to point out as I am not sure if people here realise. You can't compare MHz for MHz. Just because the 970 is several hundred MHz higher, it doesn't follow that it is therefore superior to the 1150 of the AMD card. There is way more to it than that. The 390 has more of a lot more other things that are important in a graphics card. Both cards are blocked higher than the 980ti but are obviously inferior.

You can almost never compare MHz to MHz in anything unless it is nearly exactly the same. It is a trap I fell into myself and now I realise that I do not really know enough about electronics.

Another thing. You can't just rely on one analysis. Some analyses are flawed as well and with all due respect to these people, a lot of the reviewers do not carry it out in a scientific way. I saw an analysis which decided the 390 was better but there many be other ones as well which contradict this.

They perform very similarly. WIth regards to crossfire/sli, if I wanted to, I wouldn't crossfire/sli either of them for the following reasons. I would want to SLI two 970s if it wasn't for the 3.5Gb RAM. I have no idea if that will be enough for 4k. Naturally that would lead me on to the 390 as it has 8GB RAM. I have an 850W PSU but a lot of people wouldn't have the PSU for these. But the real problem crossfiring the 390 for me is the noise. I have a 390x, it is so noisy that the only reason I am not unhappy with it, is that I always have headphones in. But with two of them, it will seriously sound like a washing machine, its that noisy. I wouldn't crossfire them for that reason, it would just ruin the gaming experience even with headphones! I am happy with my 390x but it is at the limit of the noise level I can tolerate.
 


False.
 

Componentgirl90

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They are so close. These debates always happen when they are so closed. If the reviewer includes a certain game, the results swing another way. They are close enough that I would say, look at the games you are most likely to play, as there is significant variation between games. You could always choose the 390 over the 970 in the hope directx 12 favours AMD (that's what people are saying).

I know that Mantle is supposed to increase frame rates for AMD cards by like 25% in battlefield 4. So that could be a factor. I'd be happy with either card for my 1440p set up.
 

Vellinious

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lol, no.....true. At 1250 the 390 is running a really good overclock, but the 970 is just barely breakin a sweat.

What GPUs have you been looking at? In order for a 970 to keep up with a 390 at 1250, it'd have to be running 1500+. lol