Should I upgrade

[Gaming-for-life]

Hey guys, I have a GTX 970 and I was wondering if I should return my GTX 970 and get a R9 390 instead for the price? its superior in terms of specs and with 8 GIGS of Vram the r9 390 will blow out the GTX 970. The heatsink for the 390 is way better than the gtx 970 with the msi twin frozr design. For for my desired price I was debating whether I should sell the 970 and get the 390 or not. what do you think guys??? ( I got the card in december of 2014.)

[Aytex]

if your going 1440p and 4k then yes

if not then dont bother

[VortexS]

No. You can't return it anyway and get your full price back, and those two cards are incredibly similar performance wise but the 390 is slightly hotter and less power efficient.

[OAcesync]

It's not worth it and I doubt you could return it anyways

[Gaming-for-life]

It's not worth it and I doubt you could return it anyways

 

No. You can't return it anyway and get your full price back, and those two cards are incredibly similar performance wise but the 390 is slightly hotter and less power efficient.

 

if your going 1440p and 4k then yes

if not then dont bother

I just bought GTA V Disc version and I was wondering if I can run Ultra settings without patch because it requires a 5GB patch ? and I doubt I could return it too.

[Cvdasfg]

No. You can't return it anyway and get your full price back, and those two cards are incredibly similar performance wise but the 390 is slightly hotter and less power efficient.

This.. dont bother

[typographie]

its superior in terms of specs and with 8 GIGS of Vram the r9 390 will blow out the GTX 970.

 

Those are some lofty assumptions. The specs don't matter when comparing two different architectures: frames per second do. Also, while 8 GB could theoretically help in VRAM-limited situations, it's likely that neither card is powerful enough to still be playable in a scenario where you actually needed 8 GB.

 

The two cards seem to perform more or less the same on average. The 970 costs a bit more but has some advantages: it has far more overclocking headroom than a 390, and eats up less power/produces less heat in the process. And at the risk of sounding like a fanboy, AMD's drivers seem to have a much higher performance penalty than Nvidia's, at least in some games.

[VortexS]

I just bought GTA V Disc version and I was wondering if I can run Ultra settings without patch because it requires a 5GB patch ? and I doubt I could return it too.

 

You can't run ultra on a 970 or a 980 for that matter. You really need a 980 Ti to run GTA 5 completely smooth at ultra. You can run it on very high though, which looks really good anyway.

[don_svetlio]

Those are some lofty assumptions. The specs don't matter when comparing two different architectures: frames per second do. Also, while 8 GB could theoretically help in VRAM-limited situations, it's likely that neither card is powerful enough to still be playable in a scenario where you actually needed 8 GB.

 

The two cards seem to perform more or less the same on average. The 970 costs a bit more but has some advantages: it has far more overclocking headroom than a 390, and eats up less power/produces less heat in the process. And at the risk of sounding like a fanboy, AMD's drivers seem to have a much higher performance penalty than Nvidia's, at least in some games.

Well, I feel I should point out 1 MHz on Nvidia cards means a lot less than 1 MHz on AMD cards - you can get the 390 to 1200MHz stable easily (As proven by reviewers) which will put it ahead of an overclocked 970 by a bit. The 8 GB frame buffer will come in handy as a lot of games will and do even now use over 3.5 GB of VRAM. As for power, the 390 is more efficient than the 290 as it's a refresh, not a direct rebrand.

[Gaming-for-life]

Well, I feel I should point out 1 MHz on Nvidia cards means a lot less than 1 MHz on AMD cards - you can get the 390 to 1200MHz stable easily (As proven by reviewers) which will put it ahead of an overclocked 970 by a bit. The 8 GB frame buffer will come in handy as a lot of games will and do even now use over 3.5 GB of VRAM. As for power, the 390 is more efficient than the 290 as it's a refresh, not a direct rebrand.

Well when you put it like that...I guess I am eager to return it now. Only if it's possible

[ThE_MarD]

Heyyo,

 

( I got the card in december of 2014.)

That's... almost a year ago. There's no one year return policy anywhere. All you have now is manufacturer warranty to get it repaired if it breaks.

The AMD R9 390 is slightly better... but only slightly. If you're going to upgrade? You're better off selling your GTX 970 for a GTX 980 Ti or AMD Fury aircooled tbh. Selling your GPU to by an R9 390 would be a waste of cash tbh... The price difference wouldn't be worth the what? 5% performance difference? Odds are you'll be paying more than a 5% cost premium.

Are you in Canada? USA? Elsewhere? AMD's prices in Canada for example are broken. AMD Fury aircooled costs the same as a GTX 980 Ti which makes no sense... albeit, on Amazon Canada? I saw a Visiontek AMD R9 Fury X for cheaper than an AMD Fury aircooled which is hilarious lol.

http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/parts/video-card/#c=224,326,319&sort=a8&page=1

Go Canada Go!

[Gaming-for-life]

Heyyo,

 

That's... almost a year ago. There's no one year return policy anywhere. All you have now is manufacturer warranty to get it repaired if it breaks.

The AMD R9 390 is slightly better... but only slightly. If you're going to upgrade? You're better off selling your GTX 970 for a GTX 980 Ti or AMD Fury aircooled tbh. Selling your GPU to by an R9 390 would be a waste of cash tbh... The price difference wouldn't be worth the what? 5% performance difference? Odds are you'll be paying more than a 5% cost premium.

Are you in Canada? USA? Elsewhere? AMD's prices in Canada for example are broken. AMD Fury aircooled costs the same as a GTX 980 Ti which makes no sense... albeit, on Amazon Canada? I saw a Visiontek AMD R9 Fury X for cheaper than an AMD Fury aircooled which is hilarious lol.

http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/parts/video-card/#c=224,326,319&sort=a8&page=1

Go Canada Go!

Canada, and I really don't want to spend more than 450$

[N-CountryFace]

It's get better buy R9 390.

[Mew]

It's get better buy R9 390.

 

Yes, it's usually better to buy, but not upgrade to 390 from 970. 

[ThE_MarD]

Heyyo,

Canada, and I really don't want to spend more than 450$

It's up to you mang... but don't expect day-and-night performance difference between the GTX 970 and R9 390... The R9 390 is probably only 5% faster, but you'll probably lose a bunch of cash doing that trade-off.

You should really just wait for NVIDIA Pascal and AMD's HBM2 based GPUs to come out before thinking of upgrading since you're stuck with the GTX 970. It's not worth it for a minor side-grade than a proper upgrade. Save your $450 is what my brain says.