Anyone still choosing 970 over 390?

[KarateHottie93]

Just curious...

[Interfectorem]

I got my 970 before the R9 300 series conception, but general consensus is to purchase the R9 390 over the GTX 970 here on the forums, to which I would agree.

[GalacticRuler]

Just curious...

People who do mostly 3D rendering would choose a GTX 970 over a R9 390.

[Marvzl1357]

I've got the 390 on my wishlist, but i could see why people would get the 970 for maybe 144hz g-sync 1080p for the potential of cranking all graphical settings to high and still get >60fps. Edit: but then again, amd can do that better and for cheaper

Or you know, just nvidia fanboys, like one of my friends that simply can't accept that the 390 beats the 970 in both price and performance and anytime you simply utter "amd" he responds with "why would you do anything with amd, it's crap nvidia's better"

[AresKrieger]

Got my 970 before 390 existed, I'm sure some people are, as some people hate amd and/or love nvidia, tbh I won't buy CPU's from amd but that's due to a customer service issue that wouldn't apply to gpus if I bought non-reference (like a normal person)

 

 

People who do mostly 3D rendering would choose a GTX 970 over a R9 390.

 

CUDA is a very valid reason to ignore amd (if you use certain software)

[Kobathor]

I've got the 390 on my wishlist, but i could see why people would get the 970 for maybe 144hz g-sync 1080p for the potential of cranking all graphical settings to high and still get >60fps. Edit: but then again, amd can do that better and for cheaper

Or you know, just nvidia fanboys, like one of my friends that simply can't accept that the 390 beats the 970 in both price and performance and anytime you simply utter "amd" he responds with "why would you do anything with amd, it's crap nvidia's better"

MY FRIEND IS EXACTLY THE SAME. He says "I will never put an AMD part in my system" since he's such a fanboy. He doesn't even use Geforce Experience or anything, I think the last time he updated drivers it was by accident.

[Ramontes]

I've got the 390 on my wishlist, but i could see why people would get the 970 for maybe 144hz g-sync 1080p for the potential of cranking all graphical settings to high and still get >60fps. 

Or you know, just nvidia fanboys, like one of my friends that simply can't accept that the 390 beats the 970 in both price and performance and anytime you simply utter "amd" he responds with "why would you do anything with amd, it's crap nvidia's better"

all i hear from my 2 friends building their pc is "amd runs hot" but like i mean the coolers are there for a reason and that probably made sense if you go a blower style cooler only real downside I see is power consumption but I personally can live with that oh and that some of the custom coolers are extremely large because of the big heatsinks

[Enderman]

If I had to choose between a 970 and 390 right now I would go with the 970 because I use shadowplay a lot, and the one click driver updates that take 60 seconds are really convenient, since i try to have 0 down time for my servers

Also my case doesn't have the best airflow and I like to run my fans below 600rpm, so having a slightly cooler running GPU also helps

 

tbh though I'm not a gamer, I'm a PC enthusiast

its not the same thing

I don't go for the best price to performance, as you can probably tell by the fact that my GPU costs less than 1/10th the price of my PC setup

 

But I don't need a GPU right now, so I'm buying neither

I'll wait until pascal, then upgrade to better performance+HBM2 and then also to 4k at the same time

[Whorax]

Most of time it's Nvidia fanboys being horrible consumers.

 

There are exceptions though. A very select few exceptions.

[Marvzl1357]

MY FRIEND IS EXACTLY THE SAME. He says "I will never put an AMD part in my system" since he's such a fanboy. He doesn't even use Geforce Experience or anything, I think the last time he updated drivers it was by accident.

non-techie AND fanboy is possibly the worst combination possible

 

all i hear from my 2 friends building their pc is "amd runs hot" but like i mean the coolers are there for a reason and that probably made sense if you go a blower style cooler only real downside I see is power consumption but I personally can live with that oh and that some of the custom coolers are extremely large because of the big heatsinks

Yeah but that doesn't hide the fact that it'll dump a lot of heat into your system. But that doesn't really matter anyway, just improve your case ventilation

[Ramontes]

non-techie AND fanboy is possibly the worst combination possible

 

Yeah but that doesn't hide the fact that it'll dump a lot of heat into your system. But that doesn't really matter anyway, just improve your case ventilation

true i have one 140 and 2 120's on my radiator and 1 on the front probably going to put 2 140's with green led's some time soon so thats not really an iss ue for me i suppose in smaller cases it might be

[Kobathor]

non-techie AND fanboy is possibly the worst combination possible

He's not the least techie, he build his computer off of trading websites (got his 4770k BRAND NEW for $100 and a new PSU worth $60,) but he's definitely not me. Until a week ago he was afraid his PC would cook itself if he OC'd his CPU to 4.0Ghz.

[MrNicolasRage]

I just purchased a 970 for my build over an R9 390. It was not an easy decision, but here were my main reasons behind my choice:
First, The performance difference. While it's totally true that the R9 beats the 970 in nearly every category on paper,the 970 still seems to perform better in games at 1080 and 1440, which was my resolution of choice. If 4k is in your future, R9 390 all the way.
Reason #2 is the second hand market. The r9 390 being a relatively newer card means that it won't be available to snag used for a crossfire setup for some time to come. The 970 is an older card, and therefore more available second hand. Always buyer beware with used cards, but 970s can be had readily on Ebay for cheap, and with ebay's buyer protection, you should be *mostly* okay to look into second hand cards in the future. 
The kicker for me was reason #3. The R9 390 is an absolute power hog at 275 watts listed max load, which for me meant buying a slightly more expensive PSU and having less overclocking headroom overall. Additionally, it meant the computer would be less power efficient, as the AMD chip uses more power more of the time. For me, this made the 970 a better real world value proposition, when compared to the equally priced R9 390. About $50 in savings over 1 year, when combining the more expensive PSU with the added utility cost(energy is pretty cheap where I live too).  

These factors made me opt for the GTX970 over the R9 390, in spite of the superior performance of the AMD card. I might be eating my words in another couple of years when games use substantially more than 4GB of VRAM, but the gameplan is to go SLi at that time, likely with a cheap Ebay card. 

[KarateHottie93]

Interesting indeed. If I was limited to one of the two I'd get a 970 HOF just for the looks but only game I ever play is WoW. If I was a gamer though and those were my only options...those 8gbs vs 3.5 look nice.

[KarateHottie93]

I just purchased a 970 for my build over an R9 390. It was not an easy decision, but here were my main reasons behind my choice:

First, The performance difference. While it's totally true that the R9 beats the 970 in nearly every category on paper,the 970 still seems to perform better in games at 1080 and 1440, which was my resolution of choice. If 4k is in your future, R9 390 all the way.

Reason #2 is the second hand market. The r9 390 being a relatively newer card means that it won't be available to snag used for a crossfire setup for some time to come. The 970 is an older card, and therefore more available second hand. Always buyer beware with used cards, but 970s can be had readily on Ebay for cheap, and with ebay's buyer protection, you should be *mostly* okay to look into second hand cards in the future. 

The kicker for me was reason #3. The R9 390 is an absolute power hog at 275 watts listed max load, which for me meant buying a slightly more expensive PSU and having less overclocking headroom overall. Additionally, it meant the computer would be less power efficient, as the AMD chip uses more power more of the time. For me, this made the 970 a better real world value proposition, when compared to the equally priced R9 390. 

These factors made me opt for the GTX970 over the R9 390, in spite of the superior performance of the AMD card. I might be eating my words in another couple of years when games use substantially more than 4GB of VRAM, but the gameplan is to go SLi at that time, likely with a cheap Ebay card.

The only problem with that is that SLI only stacks the VRAM in DX12. I'm sure most games will use by that time anyways though.

[trag1c]

I would never choose AMD...................................................................................................................at least until a lot of software can use OpenCL.

[Ramontes]

I would never choose AMD...................................................................................................................at least until a lot of software can use OpenCL.

This is also a big point thanks for pointing that out 

[Ramontes]

The only problem with that is that SLI only stacks the VRAM in DX12. I'm sure most games will use by that time anyways though.

but when will that happen i dont believe thatfeature is available as of now and wont be until much later

[App4that]

I'm very tempted to get a 970 just to see what the difference is. But it would mean not getting the 4790k, so probably won't.

[KarateHottie93]

but when will that happen i dont believe thatfeature is available as of now and wont be until much later

Pretty much my point. You can't stack vram until the future and we have no idea when or even if that will ever be.

[Dobbsjr]

I got mine before the 300 series launch(like a lot of people), but sort of regret it now.

[Predator50]

got mine months after 300 series release.

Reasons:

1. Warranty: Most Amd cards carry only 1 year warranty here. mine has 3 years warranty

2. Availability: Most shops here only has r9 280 up and r9 370 below. Shipping will cost more money.

3. Temps: i own r9 270x vapor and toxic edition cards and the temps where hitting 75 c during gameplay (fan speed is 50% +)and now it still reach 70 to 71 c but due to gpu boost and only.

[MrNicolasRage]

The only problem with that is that SLI only stacks the VRAM in DX12. I'm sure most games will use by that time anyways though.

I should have done my homework better, this would have made this decision even more difficult. We're already running into games pushing up against 4GB of VRAM, like AC:Syndicate, for example, so the R9 390 probably would have been a better call in the long run. Card is still in the mail. Wonder what newegg's return policy is like, this leads me to believe the r9 390 may have more staying power than the 970 in the coming year or two. Interesting. Thanks for the info.

[typographie]

I get that the R9 390 may average out to be a little faster, but it's things like this that bother me:

 

 

That's a frame latency graph from a Tech Report benchmark. Those spikes from the R9 390 are sudden jumps in the time it's taking to render the next frame, sometimes spiking nearly to 50 ms. For reference, at 60 FPS it takes 16.6 milliseconds to deliver each frame. At 30 FPS it's 33.3 ms, and 20 FPS at 50 ms. While those spikes are very quick and wouldn't be noticeable if they only happened rarely, games feel terrible when it happens a lot.

 

AMD competes with Nvidia easily in performance per dollar if you just look at average performance, but we absolutely cannot ignore that this happens. It's not every game, but it's often enough that buying an AMD card feels like a risk to me right now.

[KarateHottie93]

I should have done my homework better, this would have made this decision even more difficult. We're already running into games pushing up against 4GB of VRAM, like AC:Syndicate, for example, so the R9 390 probably would have been a better call in the long run. Card is still in the mail. Wonder what newegg's return policy is like, this leads me to believe the r9 390 may have more staying power than the 970 in the coming year or two. Interesting. Thanks for the info.

No problem and Newegg has a good return policy. I'd give it a try and see how it feels first. The 970 actually has 3.5 usable gigs instead of 4 btw lol. Still though, it's a great card and will likely be viable, at least for a couple more years, even with the lower VRAM I'd imagine. Hopefully by the time it becomes a big issue other than the occasional slight drop in frames it at 1440 or 4K in a very small number of games, DX12 will be out in full effect and SLI VRAM stacking will work as advertised