keycolony

Given the games mentioned, gonna go with hardware. Cpu or ram. Just monitor everything and it will tell you. 

Looks like you're using MSI afterburner, you should be able to detach the graph (small button in the middle right above the graph on stock skin) and scroll down to show the individual thread usages. Simply run the game with afterburner open, when the fps drops happen close game and look at graph to see if a big jump occurs on CPU around same time as a GPU usage drop. You can right-click anywhere on graph and select pause to give time to compare

looks like the CPU ain't keeping up, you could overclock, but it won't make a big difference or look to pick up an 4790k, the hyper-threading does make a difference these days in some games.
 
 

I have a pair of R9 290X's on waterblocks. Specifically XSPC brushed steel with clear acrylic. The metal expanding and contracting with the screws threaded through the acrylic I get periodic popping/cracking sounds. I'll look over and inspect the noise but nothing's spewing water. Acrylic is squeaky like that expecally when threaded and attached to something that expands & contracts. I'm wondering if it's related to your issue.

Just get the 980ti, its an insane card especially for what you have to pay and when you want to wait until the 1080 (or whatever they will be called) and all the new cards are on the market you will have to wait endless because there will be refrence designes "only" on the market for a long time, like it was with the 900 series cards. 

First advice I can give you; get rid of gpu Tweak and go grab MSI Afterburner. The base I would give you is add 150 Core, and 400 memory, that's pretty easily done on an aftermarket pcb. You can also go into Afterburners settings and change the fan curve, I cringe seeing gpu's running at stock fan curves. Even when I had a reference 980ti I would ramp the stock cooler up to 60% while gaming to keep it at a much more respectable 60 Degrees.

the recommended voltage limit for haswell cpus is 1.35-1.4v, so you can go up to there , depending on your temps and personnal preferences.
 
You should easily be able to reach 4.5ghz though , just overclock like you normally would

This CPU usage is normal, especially when using windows. You pretty much answer your own question:
 
"Ive got an i5 4690k overclocked to 4.3 Ghz and its running fine and stable, i mostly play very demanding games like witcher 3 but my cpu is sometimes maxing out over 90% when i play such titles, it idles completly normal when im on my desktop or in my browser and soon as i play a game it maxes out to 90% (or above) and goes down, up, down, and im not sure if this is right because most games are not that cpu intensive."
 
Since you overclocked your CPU, it will definitely report (in my experience) what might seem high. I addition, you are playing intensive games, and you are only reaching 90%, and bounces around. Completely normal. Some scenes are harder than others on the CPU.
An OC 4690k will not bottleneck pretty much anything for a while to come. 90% is not a bottleneck since it isn't maxed out.
 
Tl;Dr: You're good.

Its all on Gophers vid. If you updated to the latest NMM you may need to re install your mods.When you update it tries to save your previous mod list and you need to re install them. Just double click on the them again on the mod list.
When I upgraded NMM saved my previous mods intalled. So yeah should be easy you only have 80. I have 247 plugins plus retextures to a total of 300+

Any kind of sync adds input lag. So OFF. But you want 200+ fps at all times.

While the matrix range of gpus are generally beasts, it isnt quite that simple, as overclocking is also dependent on the way the gpu core itself is built, and the maxwell series of gpus tend to overclock well regardless of which brand you go for.
 
The strix 970 can most likely still get up to the clocks i stated before, even though it may be a lower end asus design...
 
and even with crossfire/ sli, the respective variable refresh rate monitor will still work (ie, free sync will work fine with crossfire, and g-sync will still work with sli)

The 2 cards perform similarly at stock clocks, with a light vram advantage for the amd side (regarding the whole 3.5 gb ram debacle with the gtx 970), however it is also dependent on your case airflow, and PSU, as the 290x's will consume substantially more power, and release much more heat than the 970's.
 
If you are into overclocking, the 970 will be the bees knees, as many of them can reach 1500mhz (partly due to their lower power requirements/ and heat output) rivaling the performance of a stock 980, while the 290/290x dont take kindly to overclocking...

Or you can wait. That's what I am doing. Its only months not years. Just depends on how much of a itch you have to upgrade.
 
If you have the money get a Titan X or wait getting two 980ti "which I am thinking of doing". Might preform better than two Titan X at a lower price. But that's just rumours atm so don't take my word on that just yet.

The 960 is actually better than the R9 280. Only the R9 280X can beat it when it comes to FPS.
Have you ever read benchmarks? 
Also we're talking about a TDP of 120w vs. 250w. Of course the 280X will perform better. My Audi A4 will also perform better than a porsche if I slam a V12 into it...

Nope. SLI has to run the same clocks. And OP, 4K is what you're looking for... with 2x 970s anything less (unless you have a whole lot of stuff going on) is wasted.

You might not have SupremeFX installed or it might not recognize the "new" drivers.
If you have it installed, uninstall it, download it from the Asus website and install it.
If you don't have it installed just download it and install it.

Short checlist:
Did you check if Windows is outputting to the correct device? (Right-click the speaker icon, Playback Devices If you go into Device Manager, are there any devices without drivers? 
If so, try Driverpack Solution (do a Google search, they're pretty high).
It's software that detects and installs drivers for you. If you have the driver you could try to reinstall it with the above method.

There are no nooby questions.
 
The real noobs already "KNOW" everything and will never change their mind.

You'll be fine.

980. It's not really a big upgrade from 970, thats the problem. Maybe SLI 970?

Fans via motherboard and the pump you don't dare even touch the speed cause you will ruin it.

a good 500w psu is good enough, if he plain on going SLI later I suggest 750w minimum

Not using the same chip. The 980 uses a fully-enabled GM204, so the only way they could make a stronger card would be to make a larger chip. 
 
That would be the GM200, which is used in Titan X..
 
It would be fairly unlikely for them to release a ~$500-600 gaming card stronger than the 980 until AMD releases something that's competitive with 980.

Intel CPUs are a much better choice fro gaming. I would suggest an i5-4440 if you can stretch your budget a little more. Otherwise, the FX-8320 is the best 'bang-for-buck' AMD CPU in the $150 price range.

Gigabyte G1 Gaming m8, and thats coming from a hardcore EVGA fanboy.