GTX 970 SLI vs R9 390 Crossfire

AlbinoTech

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Jan 15, 2016
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Hello, I currently have GTX 970 in my system and was thinking of SLI'ing it. I've been debating for a whole week if I should get a second 970 or get a R9 390 with more vram as most of us know now that 970 has 3.5gb of vram instead of advertised 4gb.
I've been user of both AMD and Nvidia for a decade and I did have little better experience with Nvidia but AMD seems to be doing well these days.

So the question is, should I keep the 970 or sell it and get r390 Crossfire for the future proof of vram? Or should I get second 970, as some say vram doesn't matter as much?

My next upgrade will be getting Ultrawide 34" monitor, which is probably at 1440p i believe, is it worth getting r9 390 crossfire for it? This way i have to get a new power supply as well, i have CM 800W silent pro gold at the moment.

I'd appreciate for any suggestions, cheers.
 
First: Wrong, 970 comes with 4 entires GB, the last 0.5 are accesed lower than the first 3.5GB.

If you would upgrade your monitor to 1440p, SLI 970 will do fine but i choose sell it and go for 980Ti. For 390 -CROSSFIRE- you will need at least a 1000W psu.
 

king3pj

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I would get another another 970 and run them in SLI. That is the cheapest option and game benchmarks show that 2 970s performs as well as a single 980Ti in most games.

If you didn't already have a 970 and were starting a new build I would agree that a 980Ti makes more sense. Since you already have a 970, switching to a 980Ti would just cost you more money and not provide better performance in most games. I would throw out the idea of going with 2 390s though. If you are gonna start fresh on GPU you would be better off with a 980Ti at that point.

My current build is 2 GTX 970s in SLI and an i5-4690k overclocked to 4.4GHz. I play at 2560x1440 and I haven't tried a single game that this system can't handle at 60FPS.

As an SLI user I can tell you that the problems often posted about SLI here are greatly exaggerated. Most AAA games have SLI support at launch and the ones that don't usually have it within a week. Some smaller games never get AAA support but those games are capable of running on a single 970 anyways.
 

AlbinoTech

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Jan 15, 2016
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Thanks guys, I just received ASUS 970 offer for 350 CAD at the same time as you guys replied (i believe MSI 4GD5T OC and Strix would work in sli). So i will take it as a sign, I really appreciate for your quick replies.
And yea i figured majority of the Multi GPU threads in most forums are over-exaggerated haha..
 

king3pj

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In most cases you want to buy a second GPU that is identical to your current one when you are going to SLI. Different brands and models will usually work together as long as they are both 970s but they will both run at the speed of the slower card.

Both of my 970s are identical EVGA ACX 2.0 SC models and they have been running well together in SLI for about 8 months now. No problems with heat and my EVGA G2 Supernova 850W power supply has had no problems powering my 2 GPUs and overclocked CPU.