Is r9 290x a good upgrade from gtx 960 4gb?

[drkknghtavngr]

Just bought my first graphics card last month, i bought the 960 for only 100$, Im originally planning to keep it for alteast 2-3 yrs before upgrading, but I discovered the secret world of Bitcoin Mining and I can probably mine for 2-4 months and afford a 290x. My question is, how much faster is the r9 290x compared to my 960 and is it worth the upgrade?

[Bananasplit_00]

its quite a bit faster and i would say an OK upgrade but probably not the one i would take. id look for a 980 or 980TI instead on the used market

[Tiwaz]

7 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

its quite a bit faster and i would say an OK upgrade but probably not the one i would take. id look for a 980 or 980TI instead on the used market

the r9 290x needs more than twice the power and is 20% faster at best. I'd save up for a higher end gpu

[Bananasplit_00]

4 minutes ago, Tiwaz said:

the r9 290x needs more than twice the power and is 20% faster at best. I'd save up for a higher end gpu

i think it would preform a bit more then 20% faster but the power draw is pretty crazy, cant argu with that one. still like i said, finding a 980 or 980TI is a much better option

[Nena Trinity]

34 minutes ago, Tiwaz said:

the r9 290x needs more than twice the power and is 20% faster at best. I'd save up for a higher end gpu

*72% faster.

[Coaxialgamer]

Nearly 80% faster. Uses a lot of power though 

[Tiwaz]

2 hours ago, Coaxialgamer said:

Nearly 80% faster. Uses a lot of power though 

where did you get that information from? r9 290x=gtx 970 in terms of performance

[luigi90210]

2 hours ago, Tiwaz said:

where did you get that information from? r9 290x=gtx 970 in terms of performance

R9 290x>gtx970

 

 

Op should just get a R9 390x since he is mining and can afford to do such things. 

[GrayTech]

The R9 290X would be better then a GTX 960 4GB but it will run hotter. And to be honest, R9 290X are probably overpriced as well because of GPU mining. I would check out some nvidia GPUs in your case since many AMD GPUs are currently very expensive.

[Zodiark1593]

It will probably be about on par with running a pair of 960s in SLI, and draw even more power. 

 

I'll probably grab a 480 or 580 myself once miners start offloading their setups (presuming the price falls close to $100). For the time being, I'm not playing anything that is really struggling. 

 

I'd say keep the 960 for now. It isn't fast, but is reasonable for most anything today, especially with 4 GB of GDDR5. Hold out for cheaper cards. 

[LooneyJuice]

I will echo that it's not a bad upgrade at all if you can find it cheap. I would, though, try to at least find an 8GB version if possible. If you're going to make a purchase like that, it would make it count for longer.

 

Additionally:

 

2 hours ago, Tiwaz said:

where did you get that information from? r9 290x=gtx 970 in terms of performance

Just quoting this as part of the overall conversation preceding it. A 970 is in fact ~50% faster than a 960, and a 290X is a bit faster than a 970, so we're talking at least 60%, the rest is software dependent. Comparing between reference 970 and G1 960 in this article, the difference is ~44%. Comparing G1 to G1, it's 50-52 depending on chip variance. So there's plenty of extra grunt in this purchase as opposed to a 960.

 

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/gigabyte_geforce_gtx_960_g1_gaming_4gb_review,18.html

[Tiwaz]

1 hour ago, luigi90210 said:

R9 290x>gtx970

 

 

Op should just get a R9 390x since he is mining and can afford to do such things. 

an r9 290x isnt faster than a gtx 970, at best its as fast

[Frankieanime158]

I'm not sure where the 290x falls in comparison to my 8gb 480, but they're probably close. I upgraded from a 960 myself, and I saw literal doubling in FPS in a lot of my games. But on average, I'd say I get about 60% more out of it. The difference would be power draw though, so make sure you'd have a good PSU. That thing will suck your hydro dry

[Coaxialgamer]

3 hours ago, Tiwaz said:

where did you get that information from? r9 290x=gtx 970 in terms of performance

Its ever so slightly faster, but the 960 is a heck of lot weaker than the 970. For reference, it's about 50% the performance of the 980.

[luigi90210]

1 hour ago, Tiwaz said:

an r9 290x isnt faster than a gtx 970, at best its as fast

You're dead wrong. A 290x is a 390x with more vram options(4gb or 8gb vs 8gb only) and a 290/390x is at the level of a 980. 

A GTX 970 is like a slightly better R9 380x

 

You're thinking of the cut down R9 290/390 which is similar to a 970 just like how the R9 380/285 is similar to a GTX960

[luigi90210]

1 hour ago, Frankieanime158 said:

I'm not sure where the 290x falls in comparison to my 8gb 480, but they're probably close. I upgraded from a 960 myself, and I saw literal doubling in FPS in a lot of my games. But on average, I'd say I get about 60% more out of it. The difference would be power draw though, so make sure you'd have a good PSU. That thing will suck your hydro dry

The 290x/390x are slightly better(5-10%) than the RX480 but draws a heck of a lot more power than the RX480. 

[Tiwaz]

5 minutes ago, luigi90210 said:

The 290x/390x are slightly better(5-10%) than the RX480 but draws a heck of a lot more power than the RX480. 

i think the 390x needs more than a gtx 1080 ti

[VivashTech]

I'd upgrade to the rx570 or 580 (whichever you can afford) or the 1060/1070 

[Darkseth]

1 hour ago, Tiwaz said:

i think the 390x needs more than a gtx 1080 ti

Right.Under full Load, it can easy consume 200 Watt MORE than a equally fast (in gaming) GTX 1060.

 

GTX 1080 ti and titan XP both consume a good margin less, than a R9 390X.

 

Not worth getting this manifested inefficiency, as long your electricity prices are extremely low in your country, and it doesn#t matter if your PC consumes 200w or 400w.

[Tiwaz]

6 minutes ago, Darkseth said:

Right.Under full Load, it can easy consume 200 Watt MORE than a equally fast (in gaming) GTX 1060.

 

GTX 1080 ti and titan XP both consume a good margin less, than a R9 390X.

 

Not worth getting this manifested inefficiency, as long your electricity prices are extremely low in your country, and it doesn#t matter if your PC consumes 200w or 400w.

energy doesnt matter only in terms of PSU you own, but 200w more or less come down to a few Euros per year

[Zodiark1593]

3 hours ago, Coaxialgamer said:

Its ever so slightly faster, but the 960 is a heck of lot weaker than the 970. For reference, it's about 50% the performance of the 980.

Well, a 960 literally is half the 980 (physically) anyway. With it's L2 cut down to 1 MB and under-built memory subsystem, some games might not even reach the 50% mark.

[Princess Luna]

People are ignoring the fact OP is not going to manage any money from mining BitCoin from a GTX 960 to begin with to afford this r9 290 he's looking into.

[NicholasNicholasNicholas]

11 hours ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

i think it would preform a bit more then 20% faster but the power draw is pretty crazy, cant argu with that one. still like i said, finding a 980 or 980TI is a much better option

290x is like only a tad bit slower than a 980

[Vellinious]

5 hours ago, Tiwaz said:

an r9 290x isnt faster than a gtx 970, at best its as fast

No...the 290X takes the 970 to school and back.  I owned both, and the 290X was far and away the better GPU.  A well overclocked 290X can hand with the 980.

290X @ 1310 vs 970 @ 1633
http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/6557355/fs/7701597#
 

[Maxxtraxx]

In my opinion, given the choice, a 290 will be an upgrade and a noticeable one at that, however a 980 or preferably a 980Ti would be a much larger upgrade and likely give you better value given the inflated prices of AMD hardware at the moment.

 

6 hours ago, Tiwaz said:

an r9 290x isnt faster than a gtx 970, at best its as fast

I would personally feel that true for a R9 290 but the R9 290X tends to match a 970 pretty well step for step.

 

1 hour ago, Vellinious said:

No...the 290X takes the 970 to school and back.  I owned both, and the 290X was far and away the better GPU.  A well overclocked 290X can hand with the 980.

290X @ 1310 vs 970 @ 1633
http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/6557355/fs/7701597#
 

Regardless of what your firestrike says A Lot more depends on acutal gaming performance, luck with individual silicon lottery and individual card cooling performance(especially with GPU boost 2.0 and 3.0)

 

Certain games favor Nvidia's architecture and certain games favor AMD's.

 

But the rough idea of general Gaming performance from R9 290 up is as follows:

 

R9 290 < (970=290X=390) < 390X < (rx480 = 1060 6gb = 980) < (980Ti = 1070) < 1080 < 1080Ti

 

See reviews that show this in action below:

DF 2014: Here

DF 2015 in Witcher 3: Here

Jayz2cents 2015: Here

Anandtech Review: Here (have to page through all the tests with this one)