GTX 970 vs R9 390?

[LeddBate]

I am currently considering between GTX 970 and a R9 390 (Nitro) myself. I am leaning towards the 390 because of the 8GB of DDR5 memory buffer. Yes, I know that's way more than you need for any game currently out there (even the Witcher 3) but I like to mod a lot of my games heavily. And as others have pointed out above, many mods do not use VRAM efficiently. -So, the more mem buffer you have, the better if you mod heavily.

 

The memory issue with the 970 will only effect you if you mod heavily, and even then the slowdown is liable to be in the single digits of FPS difference.

 

I don't know PSUs very well, but I do know that you should always seek one with an 80+ bronze (or better) rating. A wattage of 550 will suffice to run any single card setup below a Titan. 650 watts will run almost any conceivable two card setup. 800+ watts is pretty much overkill unless you're running tri-SLI 980ti's or something similar.

[raveout]

I'll be sticking to the NVIDIA GeForce Experience. No reason really, just the experience (ahhhhh!?). I've used Radeon before, and AMD chipsets. Most cards I'd assume are used roughly 5 years before the game experience is so degraded and needs updated due to hardware limitations, while continuing to purchase newer titles, just like consoles are updating at that same rate.

 

I do think though, comparative to 8 years ago, graphics cards from both Radeon and NVIDIA are now pretty neck to neck on price per performance, no longer focused on stability/quality/price/performance since all offer roughly a plus or minus advantage that can't definitively make it's own solid reason of purchase.

 

GPUBOSS.com

 

Use it.

[raveout]

And there is this too....

 

http://wccftech.com/fallout-4-nvidia-gameworks/

[obobski]

One thing you need to understand about Nvidia cards is the "boost" clocks are a gimmick and won't net you real world gains in demanding games. You only get a core clock boost when the load is under 100%. Demanding games will push that load to 100%. If your load is under 100%, then you don't need the boost clock anyway. A straight up OC is all that matters.

 

MSI R9 390 gaming 8G is a good model for the price. I got one in one of my PCs, and I'm happy with its performance. The GPUs are neck and neck in most games, which one pulling slightly ahead over the other in some titles. But at the end of the day, Nvidia lied about the 970 having 4GBs of GDDR5 Vram, and they lied about DX12 support. R9 390 owners don't have to worry about Vram or DX12 support. As soon as DX12 games start getting released the 390 is gonna smoke the 970 like nobodies business. If you're playing somewhere between 1080p - 1440p, the 390 will last you a decent while into the future. I can run 1440p on Fallout 4 ultra everything except for shadow draw distance, and I'm pegged at 60 most of the time.

 

That isn't entirely true wrt Boost - it isn't based on "GPU load" (e.g. being at full load doesn't "cancel out" Boost) its based on the TDP envelope being monitored in real-time. If the card is sufficiently cooled *and* the load is sufficiently demanding (e.g. a heavy game) it will clock up to Boost clocks, and then reduce to nominal (or lower) clocks if thermals dictate it.

 

As far as "Radeon will smoke GeForce once DX12 comes out" - maybe, maybe not. Maxwell doesn't support async compute in hardware correctly, but supports the rest of DX12's features and will have DX12-drivers; early synthetic benchmarks that rely on async compute show the Radeon having an advantage but whether or not this will translate into real-world benefits is (at this point in time) completely unknown.

 

I am currently considering between GTX 970 and a R9 390 (Nitro) myself. I am leaning towards the 390 because of the 8GB of DDR5 memory buffer. Yes, I know that's way more than you need for any game currently out there (even the Witcher 3) but I like to mod a lot of my games heavily. And as others have pointed out above, many mods do not use VRAM efficiently. -So, the more mem buffer you have, the better if you mod heavily.

 

The memory issue with the 970 will only effect you if you mod heavily, and even then the slowdown is liable to be in the single digits of FPS difference.

 

I don't know PSUs very well, but I do know that you should always seek one with an 80+ bronze (or better) rating. A wattage of 550 will suffice to run any single card setup below a Titan. 650 watts will run almost any conceivable two card setup. 800+ watts is pretty much overkill unless you're running tri-SLI 980ti's or something similar.

 

That's not at all what I said wrt memory management or VRAM - 32-bit games simply can't use that much memory, and it is unknown whether or not 64-bit games of the future will be sufficiently handled by modern GPUs (just like how years ago, you could get 512MB cards that are not fast enough for modern games that need that much RAM). The extra VRAM isn't a guarantee of mods (because again, mods do not actually see the memory management of the engine, let alone physical memory addressing).

 

On the PSUs, that's also not entirely accurate - Titan isn't a high watermark for power consumption (the Hawaii-based AMD cards use more power, especially relative to Maxwell Titan); 550W may be sufficient depending on the rest of the system for many single-card configurations, 650W will be a problem with many dual-card configurations (many of the higher-end cards out there today have TDPs over 200W) - 850W+ is a good candidate there, and for triple or quad GPU you should probably consider 1kW+ (triple 980s is also not that high of a watermark either, as far as power consumption). You don't want to load a PSU to 100% of its loading capacity, as it will generally behave less efficiently and run hotter; ideally you load it to more like 40-60% of its capacity, so if you need 600-700W (DC side) of power, a 1000-1200W PSU is a more conservative/appropriate choice. If you're going after a very high performance machine with 3-4 graphics cards, a high end CPU (or two), lots of hard-drives, etc you may realistically need to consider a dual PSU configuration (as your DC side power draw may be well over 1000W). But for conventional systems that's very esoteric, and a single, sufficiently-sized, PSU is more often than not appropriate. Rely on thorough reviews (e.g. jonnyguru) to check out a PSU prior to purchasing, as in many cases the "manufacturer" (brand) you're shown at retail is just window dressing, and its best to know whats actually inside the thing and how it measures.

 

 

[DonnieBrasco453]

So yeah, after a lot of research, I kept coming across numerous arguments about how one card is better over the other, and then i came across some conspiracy theories about how nvidia is worse than AMD, vice versa, and all of this other confusing stuff about graphics and benchmarks and blah blah blah.

 

In the end, it all ended just feeling WAAAAAAAAAAAY too complicated. So in the end I'm gonna go with the MSI 390 mainly because its cheaper, and I've heard from numerous sources that its better than the 970.

 

I also decided to go with this PSU. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817438017 What do you guys think of it, and is it compatible with the 390?

[DonnieBrasco453]

I'll be sticking to the NVIDIA GeForce Experience. No reason really, just the experience (ahhhhh!?). I've used Radeon before, and AMD chipsets. Most cards I'd assume are used roughly 5 years before the game experience is so degraded and needs updated due to hardware limitations, while continuing to purchase newer titles, just like consoles are updating at that same rate.

 

I do think though, comparative to 8 years ago, graphics cards from both Radeon and NVIDIA are now pretty neck to neck on price per performance, no longer focused on stability/quality/price/performance since all offer roughly a plus or minus advantage that can't definitively make it's own solid reason of purchase.

 

GPUBOSS.com

 

Use it.

What is that article trying to say, anyway? Fallout 4 runs better on Nvidia cards or something?

Edited January 2, 2016 by DonnieBrasco453

[obobski]

So yeah, after a lot of research, I kept coming across numerous arguments about how one card is better over the other, and then i came across some conspiracy theories about how nvidia is worse than AMD, vice versa, and all of this other confusing stuff about graphics and benchmarks and blah blah blah.

 

In the end, it all ended just feeling WAAAAAAAAAAAY too complicated. So in the end I'm gonna go with the MSI 390 mainly because its cheaper, and I've heard from numerous sources that its better than the 970.

 

I also decided to go with this PSU. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817438017 What do you guys think of it, and is it compatible with the 390?

 

 

 

What is that article trying to say, anyway? Fallout 4 runs better on Nvidia cards or something?

 

 

PSU looks very nice; should be no problem. Fallout 4 is a Gameworks game, and there have been documented instances in the past of nVidia using Gameworks towards anti-competitive ends (that is, Gameworks games deliberately performing worse on Intel/AMD graphics) - Guru3D's benchmarking of Fallout 4 shows both nVidia and AMD cards doing well though, and in the past I don't think Bethesda has ever been overtly pro or anti either vendor, so whatever they're using from Gameworks is probably innocuous.

 

Guru3D's article:

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/fallout_4_pc_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,7.html

 

Everything falls about where it should, relatively speaking, with Titan X still being the fastest single GPU on the market, Fury X being the fastest AMD single-GPU, etc.

[Escoffier]

I have a GTX 970 myself. Never regretted it. I only play on 1920x1080 scrub resolution though. Depending on what 970 you go for can have a big outcome on your experience. Not just about FPS. You don't want to have a card which is too loud. So that's why I went for an Asus 970 Strix, because it has a backplate which means unless your running a game the fans are off, consumes less power and it's quieter than your equivalent card without that extra heat dissipation. And it's till capable of getting results like this: http://i.imgur.com/nbgGCk5.jpg

[obobski]

I have a GTX 970 myself. Never regretted it. I only play on 1920x1080 scrub resolution though. Depending on what 970 you go for can have a big outcome on your experience. Not just about FPS. You don't want to have a card which is too loud. So that's why I went for an Asus 970 Strix, because it has a backplate which means unless your running a game the fans are off, consumes less power and it's quieter than your equivalent card without that extra heat dissipation. And it's till capable of getting results like this: http://i.imgur.com/nbgGCk5.jpg

 

+1 on aftermarket cooling solutions on cards - lots of OEM design cards these days use blower fans that can get obnoxiously loud when working, but there's many good options from third-party designs (e.g. Asus, XFX, EVGA, Gigabyte, etc) that very often yield quieter *and* cooler running cards (vs their stock counterparts).

[DonnieBrasco453]

Well, this is embarrassing. So after installing the r9 390 and EVGA 650W PSU, they both worked great for a few days....until I suddenly had this issue where my monitor was black and would not display anything, despite the keyboard, mouse, and tower being completely on. After inspecting the parts inside my PC and trying out a few things, I determined that the 390 was a broken card, and that the PSU couldn't be the problem since it powered everything else in my rig just fine. I had to install my old 750ti back in, and loe and behold, my monitor is actually able to display things now. So I think newegg shipped me a broken 390...in any case, I think I'm going to return it and get the 970 instead. This incident kind of left a bad taste in my mouth for the 390 since after spending 400+ dollars I expected it to work, dang it.