Who is the fanatic, really? Yes, it's one of those threads again

[Lolzious]

I'm curious where people get the idea that X company needs Y company or else they can charge three times more... they can't do that for one simple reason: value. Competition drives prices down to some degree, but not by much. Otherwise the prices would just endlessly drop into nothing if it was really a case of back and forth price lowering. Cost of manufacturing (and setup of factories and such) and how much people are willing to pay make a huge impact on the prices...

 

It's not like if AMD went out of business people would suddenly be cool spending $500 for a GTX 960, or $600 for an i5-4690K.

 

The hardware market is much more profitable when you sell TONS of units with an o.k. margin than if you sell a few with massive margins. Like if Nvidia sold only GTX 960s and nothing else, they'd be more profitable than if they sold only GTX Titan Zs and nothing else.

You don't know how it might go. AMD could go bankrupt, Microsoft could buy Nvidia, jack up prices, making PC gamer's go to console, aka, a much more controlled market.

[Dinkleberg]

Can you find any sources demonstrating this? I've never found driver updates to make much of a difference in games. When they say "up to x% performance gain in Y game" it's usually negligible for most people and under some circumstance and configuration they improved it.

 

On my own system using GTX 760 I can use drivers from 2 years ago and drivers from today and get basically identical performance in every game, even games released long after those old drivers... such as GTA V. Same deal with my friend's R9 270 system... upgraded him to the GTA V driver and it made no noticeable difference in performance.

 

I find it hard to believe that across the board there were significant improvements to framerates across most games on AMD cards but if it can be demonstrated I'll eat my words

 

edit:

Found a source that tested 15.7... doesn't seem like the driver made a meaningful difference.

http://www.babeltechreviews.com/catalyst-15-7-whql-performance-analysis-featuring-fury-x-290x-3/3/

With all due respect, you are wrong, drivers are THE thing that makes the difference, remember when the 290X used to get beaten by quite a margin by the 780 Ti ? Well, it performs nearly on par with it now, beating it in most games, all due to, wait for it, driver updates.

[Prysin]

I am fairly confident Nvidia, if left with no competition would go "full Apple" and charge big money for products inferior to their former ones, but they would just screw Ower old customers with drivers. They already do this to a small degree. Without competiton, expect them to increase all prices by at least 100USD or more

[Megahurt]

I never used shadowplay, I uninstalled geforce experience because I hated it and it was useless, I don't think 25W difference should even be an issue, and I haven't had driver problems with amd or nvidia.

 

Freesync is cheaper than g-sync.

 

However, once overclocked the the 980Ti will usually perform better than the fury X.

[D2ultima]

I am fairly confident Nvidia, if left with no competition would go "full Apple" and charge big money for products inferior to their former ones, but they would just screw Ower old customers with drivers. They already do this to a small degree. Without competiton, expect them to increase all prices by at least 100USD or more

You seriously, SERIOUSLY, have no idea how bad it's going on right now. It just hasn't hit desktops excepting the 970... yet.

[Dinkleberg]

You seriously, SERIOUSLY, have no idea how bad it's going on right now. It just hasn't hit desktops excepting the 970... yet.

I'm still amazed by the stupidness if some people, on PCPP most builds have a GTX 970, a card that's inferior in every way to its similarly priced competitor and that's broken by design. You also forgot to mention the 960.

On the mobile side, the 960M is the exact same chip as the 860M, they just bumped up the clocks. Also, do you remember when they called mobile GPU overclocking a bug that they fixed, then quietly restored overclocking to mobile cards ?

[D2ultima]

I'm still amazed by the stupidness if some people, on PCPP most builds have a GTX 970, a card that's inferior in every way to its similarly priced competitor and that's broken by design. You also forgot to mention the 960.

On the mobile side, the 960M is the exact same chip as the 860M, they just bumped up the clocks. Also, do you remember when they called mobile GPU overclocking a bug that they fixed, then quietly restored overclocking to mobile cards ?

You still don't even know the half of it.

I called the 970 only because it's a broken-by-design card. End-of. 960 is just a card that's in a far higher tier than it should be.

 

Let me put it this way.

980Ms are missing VRMs and have low voltage memory that can't even hit 6000MHz effective memory clock. Overclocking them is a joke past a certain (small for mobile cards) point because their VRMs just overheat and give out. There's an entire three extra slots on the MXM board for more VRMs for all 980M MXM cards... and no other card (except VERY rare 970Ms)

970Ms are a huge cut down, but overclock so far you'd think it was a joke. It's common for people to get +400MHz and more on a 970M without issue.

nVidia told us they never did anything to avoid OCing except a driver block, but started sending new vBIOSes to consumers for mobile cards that had an overclocking block. It took us bitching at them after 350.12 and 352.86 allowed the OC block in vBIOSes to counter OCing even though if you used a custom/unlocked vBIOS it allowed overclocking for them to grant us 353.00

353.06 comes, and it's broke to all hell for everyone.

Then, older alienware machines prior to the AW17 R2, AW15 and AW13 (aka the former kings of the gaming laptop market) have been even unable to hold stock clocks under load, far less when overclocked.

Random power limitations keep showing up again and again.

Any driver past 353.06 will crash, conflict, and possibly destroy your windows install if you're using a bigfoot networks killer wifi card and have the suite installed

We STILL need to reboot our PC to toggle SLI (unless we regedit the driver install, or modify the driver before installation)

I've seen evidence from a user that we likely can't modify our .ini files if we upgrade GPUs for newer drivers if using Windows 10 (not fully confirmed/tested by many)

GTX 880Ms had throttle-prone, overheating, disgusting vBIOSes that caused numerous crashes and disallowed you from even hitting regular stock clocks in the majority of laptops without serious elbow grease by users. ManuelG aka "Pidge" claimed to try and fix it, asked for a bunch of BIOSes... then shut up. Never fixed, nothing. A solid $900 USD card released to the public replacing the far superior 780M that a lot of users bought and it'll NEVER work properly. Broken pile of shit.

nVidia also didn't say a bloody peep about blocking OCing until various news sites picked it up... meaning they didn't care unless they were getting bad publicity from our perspective. What do you think will happen in the future when they axe more things that people don't know about, care about, care to learn about or bother to report on? It's like the whole throttling CPU fest going on right now... "yeah I managed to keep 3GHz turbo down from 3.4GHz but it wasn't throttling!" O YEAH? Open intel XTU and turn on its "Current Limit throttling", "Power Limit throttling" and "Temperature Limit throttling" flags on its graph and watch at least one of them light up as you sit at 3GHz playing GTA V and tell me it's not throttling.

 

As bad off as the desktop market is for the nVidia side, they're a dream in a field of meadows compared to the utter fuckery we laptop users have been dealing with since the 880Ms came out. And nobody cares, because "well it's just a laptop, if you want something to work get a desktop". If desktop users ever end up with HALF the issues we've been dealing with, I guarantee you the outrage will be three hundred fold what we got for the clockblock scandal.

[gilang01]

I'm still amazed by the stupidness if some people, on PCPP most builds have a GTX 970, a card that's inferior in every way to its similarly priced competitor and that's broken by design. You also forgot to mention the 960.

On the mobile side, the 960M is the exact same chip as the 860M, they just bumped up the clocks. Also, do you remember when they called mobile GPU overclocking a bug that they fixed, then quietly restored overclocking to mobile cards ?

What's wrong with the 970? Is a perfectly good card.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

What's wrong with the 970? Is a perfectly good card.

A portion of its vram doesn't run at the same speed. That's about it...

[don_svetlio]

A portion of its vram doesn't run at the same speed. That's about it...

IIRC it also suffered from coil whine on a quite grand scale and correct me if I'm wrong but it had a 224-bit buss, not a 256-bit one.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

IIRC it also suffered from coil whine on a quite grand scale and correct me if I'm wrong but it had a 224-bit buss, not a 256-bit one.

 

Yeah coil whine was more frequent but isn't really that big of an issue... Actually it is a 256-bit bus, the bandwith is 224GB/s.

[Masada02]

He's talking about the Fury X. The watercooled one is reference design only... which sucks because there could be better quality pumps.

 

You have no idea. Cooler Master needs to get their shit together.

 

 

IIRC it also suffered from coil whine on a quite grand scale and correct me if I'm wrong but it had a 224-bit buss, not a 256-bit one.

SO MUCH COIL WHINE, like way more than you'd expect. At least that was my experience with my 2 970's.

 

[PudgyAstronaut]

I like the part where you reduced the entire nVidia vs AMD situation to a single card segment in a single generation. The 980ti and Fury X are very different cards; the 980ti is slightly better price/performance (right now, but sales could change this for some people at some point) but the Fury X allows some unique builds. Enjoy your nVidia card good sir, may it serve you well.

[PudgyAstronaut]

What's wrong with the 970? Is a perfectly good card.

 

Nothing is wrong with a 970. If you want raw price/performance you should probably go with a 390, but if you value certain nVidia features or low power consumption, etc then the 970 may be a better choice for you as an individual.

 

Similarly if you want raw price/performance you should probably go with a 980ti, but if you value the form factor/cooling solution, etc of the Fury X then it may be a better choice for you as an individual.

 

When the differences are so minute, fanboy rants seem even more pathetic. It is natural to want to justify our decisions and feel we made a good one, but there is a definite line.

[Prysin]

You still don't even know the half of it.

I called the 970 only because it's a broken-by-design card. End-of. 960 is just a card that's in a far higher tier than it should be.

 

Let me put it this way.

980Ms are missing VRMs and have low voltage memory that can't even hit 6000MHz effective memory clock. Overclocking them is a joke past a certain (small for mobile cards) point because their VRMs just overheat and give out. There's an entire three extra slots on the MXM board for more VRMs for all 980M MXM cards... and no other card (except VERY rare 970Ms)

970Ms are a huge cut down, but overclock so far you'd think it was a joke. It's common for people to get +400MHz and more on a 970M without issue.

nVidia told us they never did anything to avoid OCing except a driver block, but started sending new vBIOSes to consumers for mobile cards that had an overclocking block. It took us bitching at them after 350.12 and 352.86 allowed the OC block in vBIOSes to counter OCing even though if you used a custom/unlocked vBIOS it allowed overclocking for them to grant us 353.00

353.06 comes, and it's broke to all hell for everyone.

Then, older alienware machines prior to the AW17 R2, AW15 and AW13 (aka the former kings of the gaming laptop market) have been even unable to hold stock clocks under load, far less when overclocked.

Random power limitations keep showing up again and again.

Any driver past 353.06 will crash, conflict, and possibly destroy your windows install if you're using a bigfoot networks killer wifi card and have the suite installed

We STILL need to reboot our PC to toggle SLI (unless we regedit the driver install, or modify the driver before installation)

I've seen evidence from a user that we likely can't modify our .ini files if we upgrade GPUs for newer drivers if using Windows 10 (not fully confirmed/tested by many)

GTX 880Ms had throttle-prone, overheating, disgusting vBIOSes that caused numerous crashes and disallowed you from even hitting regular stock clocks in the majority of laptops without serious elbow grease by users. ManuelG aka "Pidge" claimed to try and fix it, asked for a bunch of BIOSes... then shut up. Never fixed, nothing. A solid $900 USD card released to the public replacing the far superior 780M that a lot of users bought and it'll NEVER work properly. Broken pile of shit.

nVidia also didn't say a bloody peep about blocking OCing until various news sites picked it up... meaning they didn't care unless they were getting bad publicity from our perspective. What do you think will happen in the future when they axe more things that people don't know about, care about, care to learn about or bother to report on? It's like the whole throttling CPU fest going on right now... "yeah I managed to keep 3GHz turbo down from 3.4GHz but it wasn't throttling!" O YEAH? Open intel XTU and turn on its "Current Limit throttling", "Power Limit throttling" and "Temperature Limit throttling" flags on its graph and watch at least one of them light up as you sit at 3GHz playing GTA V and tell me it's not throttling.

 

As bad off as the desktop market is for the nVidia side, they're a dream in a field of meadows compared to the utter fuckery we laptop users have been dealing with since the 880Ms came out. And nobody cares, because "well it's just a laptop, if you want something to work get a desktop". If desktop users ever end up with HALF the issues we've been dealing with, I guarantee you the outrage will be three hundred fold what we got for the clockblock scandal.

well, look at the bright side. Carizzo APU laptops are supposed to start shipping pretty soon (AMD has had HUGE delivery probs due to low yields of the super high density chips it seems)... Now, a APU that has onboard H.265 decoders on-die just to stream/play 4k media content... Sure, its a AMD APU, it will be good for gaming. But when 4k YT/Twitch streaming is also "enabled" by hardware features that save battery... man, that is a DREAM for laptop users.

I remember my old Fujitsu laptop... its so old HD wasnt even part of consumer products, but its still alive... Just trying to play 720p content on it sucked the battery out of it within 2 hours (when the laptop was just 2 years old)... Now, i cannot imagine a laptop having a good day dealing with 4k content when most of them doesnt even have a display higher then 768p....

[Prysin]

Nothing is wrong with a 970. If you want raw price/performance you should probably go with a 390, but if you value certain nVidia features or low power consumption, etc then the 970 may be a better choice for you as an individual.

 

Similarly if you want raw price/performance you should probably go with a 980ti, but if you value the form factor/cooling solution, etc of the Fury X then it may be a better choice for you as an individual.

 

When the differences are so minute, fanboy rants seem even more pathetic. It is natural to want to justify our decisions and feel we made a good one, but there is a definite line.

The amount of time you must use a AMD card to make up the electricity cost is rather huge. Also, you MUST use the AMD card at 100% load.

If it isnt loaded to the max, it is rather efficient.

 

Just look at 390X STRIX version. This is a refurbished R9 290X, the hottest GPU we have seen on the market in A LONG TIME. In some games, it doesnt need to draw enough power for even the fans to kick in. Which means, its ACTUALLY not that hot unless under heavy load.

 

The power draw argument has so many weakspots in terms of usage and such.

I got a R9 295x2, and its overclocked.... There isnt ANY single card solution that draw this much power. My GPU alone is responsible for aproximately 650-675w power usage when running Valley... It has almost TWICE the power draw of a 980Ti at full load.

Reduce the load to say 50%, and it will just shut off the other GPU and run 1 GPU at 95-100%... result is that i get around 320-330w power draw... Just because i didnt need to use maximum power, my power draw also didnt increase that dramatically... Sure its high, but considering the difference between 100% and 50% capacity,

 

Usage is everything, and AMD is extremely efficient at saving power if you account for other functions. Take "Zerocore". If you leave your PC in hibernation or just turn the monitor OFF. Then a Nvidia card would draw 15-20w just idling.... AMD draws ZERO watt... ZERO. It shuts off the GPU completely when it isnt used. End result is that Nvidias efficiency OVER TIME, goes down due to higher power usage during long-term-idle. While AMD doesnt...

 

When the difference between 100% of a Nvidia 970 and a AMD 390 is about 50-75w... then thats just 3-4 hours of hibernation/monitor off to make up for the difference. Everything past those 3-4 hours is PURE power saving with AMD, and PURE consumption with Nvidia.

 

So, if you left your computer in hibernation while you sleep, a 970 would consume around 120-180w... AMD on the other hand would be around 10w over a 8 hour period (the system will ping the card from time to time, its called zerocore because its realistic power usage is something under 0.0x W/hour....)...

 

There are certain things that isnt AS straight forward. Habits, usage and features that often go unnoticed plays a crucial role here.

[gilang01]

The amount of time you must use a AMD card to make up the electricity cost is rather huge. Also, you MUST use the AMD card at 100% load.

If it isnt loaded to the max, it is rather efficient.

Just look at 390X STRIX version. This is a refurbished R9 290X, the hottest GPU we have seen on the market in A LONG TIME. In some games, it doesnt need to draw enough power for even the fans to kick in. Which means, its ACTUALLY not that hot unless under heavy load.

The power draw argument has so many weakspots in terms of usage and such.

I got a R9 295x2, and its overclocked.... There isnt ANY single card solution that draw this much power. My GPU alone is responsible for aproximately 650-675w power usage when running Valley... It has almost TWICE the power draw of a 980Ti at full load.

Reduce the load to say 50%, and it will just shut off the other GPU and run 1 GPU at 95-100%... result is that i get around 320-330w power draw... Just because i didnt need to use maximum power, my power draw also didnt increase that dramatically... Sure its high, but considering the difference between 100% and 50% capacity,

Usage is everything, and AMD is extremely efficient at saving power if you account for other functions. Take "Zerocore". If you leave your PC in hibernation or just turn the monitor OFF. Then a Nvidia card would draw 15-20w just idling.... AMD draws ZERO watt... ZERO. It shuts off the GPU completely when it isnt used. End result is that Nvidias efficiency OVER TIME, goes down due to higher power usage during long-term-idle. While AMD doesnt...

When the difference between 100% of a Nvidia 970 and a AMD 390 is about 50-75w... then thats just 3-4 hours of hibernation/monitor off to make up for the difference. Everything past those 3-4 hours is PURE power saving with AMD, and PURE consumption with Nvidia.

So, if you left your computer in hibernation while you sleep, a 970 would consume around 120-180w... AMD on the other hand would be around 10w over a 8 hour period (the system will ping the card from time to time, its called zerocore because its realistic power usage is something under 0.0x W/hour....)...

There are certain things that isnt AS straight forward. Habits, usage and features that often go unnoticed plays a crucial role here.

Lower power consumption means you Less worry about getting a big capacity psu. At least thats what the majority of builders want here in my country. Best performance per dollar. The lesser the cards consume, the cheaper the psu.

[Caeradwyn]

Not being a fanatic, I'm not sure I'm really qualified to have an opinion here? But hey, I'll give it a go anyway.

At this price/performance level (i.e. GTX980Ti vs. Fury X), it's will generally not be a question of "can it offer me playable framrates at high settings", because both cards can and will, unless you're gaming at 4k, in which case both will struggle at the higest end settings (although from the benchmarks I've seen, the Fury X is starting to look a whole lot better at 4k).

So, the question is really: "Does one manufacturer offer some features that you are especially interested in?"

If the answer is "I'm going to be using ShadowPlay a lot", then go with Nvidia, because the choice is already made for you.

Personally, as I wouldn't use that, it stops being a selling point. Sure, it's there IF I suddenly wanted to use it, but then again, there are other options.

I've been using both Nvidia and AMD cards over the years, and from personal experience, I'd say they both have equally good, or bad, drivers. I've had Nvidia drivers that have been regularly causing problems, but I've had the same thing with AMD's drivers, so to me, this isn't a selling point either. If it is to you, then perhaps the choice is already made for you.

As for the GTX980Ti having 6GB vs. the 4GB on the Fury X, as most benchmarks have shown so far, if you crank the settings up high enough, and run at 4k, the Fury X generally comes out looking better than the GTX980Ti, and even the mighty 12GB Titan X, while at 1440p, it's generally the other way around. This suggests that the extreme memory bandwidth of HBM actually helps to alleviate the need for such high amounts of VRAM. Is this a selling point? Naw, not really, as the prices are pretty similar.

Does being an early adopter of new tech sound like a selling point? It does to some.

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: At $650ish we're already past the point of necessity, and well into overkill for most purposes, and so we get the luxury of choosing which one we feel have the highest "cool factor" or whichever offers some specific feature we'd like. If Shadowplay is a "need to have" feature to you, then as I mentioned before, the choice is already made for you. If being an early adopter sounds cool, or if space for a long video card might not be possible in your case, then perhaps the Fury X is the better choice.

I'd also like to point out something it seems people have forgotten. GeForce GTX980(Ti) is one generation newer than the R9 290(X) (including the rebrands 390(X)), and these were never meant to compete with each other. The R9 290X was designed to compete with the 780Ti, something it did admirably. In fact, it was so close to the (then) new 980, that people seemed to get the idea that this was the cards that were supposed to compete with each other. But fact is, Fury and Fury X are the direct competitors to 980 and 980Ti... And what do you know? They are pretty much within a similar performance range. Wow, surprising isn't it? Who would've thought?

[Caeradwyn]

I'm curious where people get the idea that X company needs Y company or else they can charge three times more... they can't do that for one simple reason: value. Competition drives prices down to some degree, but not by much. Otherwise the prices would just endlessly drop into nothing if it was really a case of back and forth price lowering. Cost of manufacturing (and setup of factories and such) and how much people are willing to pay make a huge impact on the prices...

 

It's not like if AMD went out of business people would suddenly be cool spending $500 for a GTX 960, or $600 for an i5-4690K.

 

The hardware market is much more profitable when you sell TONS of units with an o.k. margin than if you sell a few with massive margins. Like if Nvidia sold only GTX 960s and nothing else, they'd be more profitable than if they sold only GTX Titan Zs and nothing else.

 

"How much people are willing to pay" is directly affected by what's available at which price. Sorry, but why does everybody always seem to think that only extremes exist?

If AMD went out of business, Nvidia would SLOWLY start bringing their prices up. Not by 50% or 20%, but by 1-2% every so often. And prices would remain higher for longer. Now, prices of a specific product drop as it ages, this would happen much more slowly with only one major player in the market. Thinking anything else is simply naive. Do you really think that we live in a world where businesses primarily exist to be nice to people and offer the best possible products at the most affordable price possible? Sheesh. Seriously. If Nvidia or AMD thought they could get away with selling graphics cards for $20000, they would. If there was only one company supplying a specific type of hardware, that company would keep probing the market to see just how much they could charge for their products and still sell. And if you only had one choice, it would become a choice between not buying at all or paying too much.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

Lower power consumption means you Less worry about getting a big capacity psu. At least thats what the majority of builders want here in my country. Best performance per dollar. The lesser the cards consume, the cheaper the psu.

 

Hey hey hey. That ain't an excuse to cheap out on a PSU and don't make it into one.

[Caeradwyn]

Hey hey hey. That ain't an excuse to cheap out on a PSU and don't make it into one.

 

I agree. I'd never buy a cheap power supply to run a high end gaming system, regardless of how power efficient it is. A good, solid power supply is a vital part of a good well built system.

[don_svetlio]

I agree. I'd never buy a cheap power supply to run a high end gaming system, regardless of how power efficient it is. A good, solid power supply is a vital part of a good well built system.

Agreed. I use to run a high wattage TT PSU - coil whine, clicking and etc. Thus I went and bought a better one.

Though at the same time, I use to run an Athlon II X2 and 6850 off a 400W CM Elite PSU. Sometimes cheapos work fine.

[Caeradwyn]

Agreed. I use to run a high wattage TT PSU - coil whine, clicking and etc. Thus I went and bought a better one.

Though at the same time, I use to run an Athlon II X2 and 6850 off a 400W CM Elite PSU. Sometimes cheapos work fine.

 

Yeah, some of the cheap PSUs can be fine, but if I was running a top of the line graphics card, I'd rather be safe than sorry. For a second "spare parts" PC, I'd go with something affordable with good reviews. I've got an OCZ ModXtreme (or something of that sort) as a spare power supply, which I used for a retro system at the moment, and despite being cheap, it's modular and received pretty good reviews. So sometimes you can get lucky.

[Prysin]

Lower power consumption means you Less worry about getting a big capacity psu. At least thats what the majority of builders want here in my country. Best performance per dollar. The lesser the cards consume, the cheaper the psu.

 

the cheaper the PSU, and the closer you get to MAX capacity, the more voltage ripple you get.

 

As a rule of thumb when it comes to power supply, or even electrical installations. Never, ever exceed 80% of electrical conductive capacity.

 

Above 80%, you start to wear components in normal house installations. It will take years to show up, but heat buildup and the insulation on wires will deteriorate faster.

For powersupplies, it has a different effect. In their case, you end up with more voltage ripple. So the voltage spikes and dips more the higher the load.

 

Do you know why most AMD card vendors, like XFX, Sapphire, MSI, Gigabyte, Asus etc RECCOMENDS at least 650-750w for a R9 290x?. Sure, the 290X uses 375w in most games, maybe 400w in furmark. Add a i5 that barely ever exceeds 75-80w unless under full load where it MIGHT reach around 100w power consumption....

 

At most, these companies reccomend setups where you have, after accounting for RAM, HDDs, FANS, Pumps etc... still 150-200w in reserve... Do you know why? Because they need to offer some leeway for your system, but also because even if they managed to figure out that at most you need 550w in a rig using several HDDs and fans and stuff. That would be too close.

 

Most PSUs, even the good ones, really starts to wear itself out when they run 100%, because they never really is cooled effectively enough. And while overall efficiency may be within rated specifications, certain parts such as the AC to DC converters may run at a much much lower efficiency, or they may become very slightly unstable and cause rippling. And voltage ripples CAN KILL YOUR SYSTEM. Depending on the motherboard you are using, and the type of protective mechanisms the motherboard has.

 

So, those who build a PC with the aim to skimp a little on the PSU, maybe get a smaller one because they do not need lots of headroom. Think again, Real world power draw IS NOT what it says on the paper specs and often NOT EVEN what is shown in reviews. Usage, system configuration, hardware used impact things a lot....

 

 

So as a rule of thumb, if you can find a PSU that is 150-200w above what you need that doesnt cost that much more, OR if you can find a 80+ Gold or higher rated PSU within your pricerange, then GET THOSE. As once you start to OC your parts or get close to or over the 80% load limit on the PSU, the PSU may not behave like you think it would.

[gilang01]

Hey hey hey. That ain't an excuse to cheap out on a PSU and don't make it into one.

No one's cheaping out on PSUs lol. It's just cheaper to get a for ex. 500 watt gold power supply than a 650 Watt one.

I've tried recommending the 390 and 390x to the folks at my forum but they won't budge. People here are all into the "green pc" image lol, not because the can't afford the electricity, but because they wanted to.

Plus the ambient temperature here are already high enough being smack in the middle of the equator, no one wants a heater in the house. My 280x turned my room into an oven hahahaha thankfully after switching to the 970, the temps are a bit lower.