G1 GTX 970 WF3X OC or SAPPHIRE R9 390? And their current drivers?

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doomixy

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Jan 10, 2016
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I know how common this question is lol... but I'm building a new gaming PC and I simply can't decide which card should I get!

My build:
i5 4460
8GB RAM
750W 80+ Silver power supply
1080p

I will have this GPU for a while, and I'll be using 1080p for the next 2 years. The rest I'll upgrade sooner or later...

The Sapphire Radeon R9 390 8GB or the G1 Gigabyte GTX 970 4GB Windforce 3x OC ?
R9 390 - better in benchmarks, higher average temperature, consumes more power, makes more noise...
GTX 970- still putting up a good fight in benchmarks, great for 1080p, quiet, cool and power efficient, better for OC...

Some people are arguing about the R9 390 8GB being more future proof than GTX 970 and its 3.5GB + 512MB. It's most likely that the R9 390 will never use its 8GB because by the time you'll need 8GB of VRAM, the graphic card will lack the rest. I'm aware of that.
But when you think about it, some games are already using like 3.5GB-4GB of VRAM. The GTX 970 is getting FPS drops once it's trying to access the remaining 512MB of VRAM. My theory is this - Games are going to consume 4.5GB or VRAM sooner or later, and I think the R9 390 will still have the power to handle this. The GTX 970? Not so much.

I have done my research, but for some reason I can't decide... Help me decide. :/

And one more question to any R9 3xx and GTX 970 users reading this - How are the drivers right now? Having problems? How's DirectX 12?
 
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renz496
The GTX 970 is getting FPS drops once it's trying to access the remaining 512MB of VRAM.
Click to expand...

As i own 970 myself i have seen what happen once the vram cross 3.5GB mark. Even before i get my 970 i can already predict what will happen once the vram usage exceed 3.5GB since i have 660SLI in the past. Turns out it really as i think it was only that 970 handles them a whole lot better. I played several VRAM hungry games that can easily filled 4GB even on 1080p (shadow of mordor, advance warfare, assassin creed unity, batman arkham knight) so far the only game that affected by the VRAM issue was unity. The game will stutter though it is not severe (happen from time to time). Frame rates are not affected.

So if you want to get 390 then...
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Vetsku

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Oct 28, 2015
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I would personally go for the 390, since the performance is better. I know it consumes alot more power but you dont have any problems with that since you chose a 750w PSU which is enough. And the noise usually depends on what manufacturers card you are using. Also that 8gb is kinda awesome too. It's just a preference question that do you want to have a better performance card, but it will be hotter and it will consume more power, or do you want to have a quieter and cooler card, but a bit lower performance. I can only speak for the AMD drivers since i dont own a Nvidia card. I had some driver crashes and stuff with the crimson edition 15.12 but the new 16.1 has worked fine for me. Usually the nvidia drivers are better.
 
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renz496

renz496

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Jun 16, 2009
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The GTX 970 is getting FPS drops once it's trying to access the remaining 512MB of VRAM.
Click to expand...

As i own 970 myself i have seen what happen once the vram cross 3.5GB mark. Even before i get my 970 i can already predict what will happen once the vram usage exceed 3.5GB since i have 660SLI in the past. Turns out it really as i think it was only that 970 handles them a whole lot better. I played several VRAM hungry games that can easily filled 4GB even on 1080p (shadow of mordor, advance warfare, assassin creed unity, batman arkham knight) so far the only game that affected by the VRAM issue was unity. The game will stutter though it is not severe (happen from time to time). Frame rates are not affected.

So if you want to get 390 then that's fine since 390 does not affected by this issue. All this vram thing will not be a problem if nvidia release 8GB 980/970 :D
Though i imagine nvidia did not release 980/970 8GB because they don't want card slower than 980ti to have more vram than 980ti.

As for DX12....we really can't make absolute conclusion as which that will going to have definite advantage. Each company have their own perk. Probably we going to next gen gpu from both company to take advantage DX12 properly.
 
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