GTX 970 vs r9 390. Performance/price?

[UnKeD]

So you already know what this is all about. The mighty battle between the r9 390 and the gtx 970. 

 

I am about to build a new pc and this choice is getting on my nerves. I see people who say the 970 is still superior and people who say the 390 easily beats the 970  . Even in the benchmarks they are trading blows and with the 970 sometimes on top. But mostly the 390 wins. Still its a hard choice.  So here are my doubts: 

 

1: AMD said that with dx12 there will be a huge perfomance boost in the amd card but won't that happen to the 970 too? And let's be honest you can't believe anything companies say ... What do you guys think? 

 

2: So the 390 is a 8gb while the 970 is 4gb (3,5 gb whatever ) which means the 390 is "future proof". What do you guys think about that? 

 

3: Yeah. The thing that doesn't worry me that much but it's still a thing to look out for: Power Consumption . Does that make that big of a difference? 

 

4: Temperature in amd is higher but not a big difference right? 

 

5: MGS 5 for free? Camon Nvidia...  Yeah not that big of a deal . But hey still a free game right? Always cool. 

 

This is the build I am thinking right now :

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/dnWQbv - with the gtx 970 

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/pyv9zy - With the r9 390

 

So yeah, this is it . If I forgot something important please do mention it. 

 

Which one would you guys pick and why? And which one is better Price/performance?  (Two different things ) 

 

Thanks

 

(Bare in mind I am not a native english speaker by any sort so mistakes done here I DO NOT TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY! ) 

[Chugle]

Go with the 390. 

[TheNeutraliser]

i own an msi r9 390 8gb , i can say its pretty well in an good price , it play witcher and skyrim and bioshock infinite  in ultra with 60~80 fps , i suggest you to take r9 390 8gb cause of the price , the MSI cool it pretty well and i really like it 

[DarkBlade2117]

390

[TheNeutraliser]

i was in the same position like u , i took msi r9 390 and i can say its A BEAST! pretty good choice 

[TheNeutraliser]

 

So you already know what this is all about. The mighty battle between the r9 390 and the gtx 970. 

 

I am about to build a new pc and this choice is getting on my nerves. I see people who say the 970 is still superior and people who say the 390 easily beats the 970  . Even in the benchmarks they are trading blows and with the 970 sometimes on top. But mostly the 390 wins. Still its a hard choice.  So here are my doubts: 

 

1: AMD said that with dx12 there will be a huge perfomance boost in the amd card but won't that happen to the 970 too? And let's be honest you can't believe anything companies say ... What do you guys think? 

 

2: So the 390 is a 8gb while the 970 is 4gb (3,5 gb whatever ) which means the 390 is "future proof". What do you guys think about that? 

 

3: Yeah. The thing that doesn't worry me that much but it's still a thing to look out for: Power Consumption . Does that make that big of a difference? 

 

4: Temperature in amd is higher but not a big difference right? 

 

5: MGS 5 for free? Camon Nvidia...  Yeah not that big of a deal . But hey still a free game right? Always cool. 

 

This is the build I am thinking right now :

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/dnWQbv - with the gtx 970 

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/pyv9zy - With the r9 390

 

So yeah, this is it . If I forgot something important please do mention it. 

 

Which one would you guys pick and why? And which one is better Price/performance?  (Two different things ) 

 

Thanks

 

(Bare in mind I am not a native english speaker by any sort so mistakes done here I DO NOT TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY! ) 

 

about tempetures , when u play something in ultra , msi has a software , that when u play something in ultra and videocard gets heat , it cool it down automaticly . as hard graphics more tempeture , more tempeture = more air fan spins , if u dont play anything tempeture is like 30 to 40 celcius 

[Senzelian]

1: AMD said that with dx12 there will be a huge perfomance boost in the amd card but won't that happen to the 970 too? And let's be honest you can't believe anything companies say ... What do you guys think? 

 

2: So the 390 is a 8gb while the 970 is 4gb (3,5 gb whatever ) which means the 390 is "future proof". What do you guys think about that? 

 

3: Yeah. The thing that doesn't worry me that much but it's still a thing to look out for: Power Consumption . Does that make that big of a difference? 

 

4: Temperature in amd is higher but not a big difference right? 

 

5: MGS 5 for free? Camon Nvidia...  Yeah not that big of a deal . But hey still a free game right? Always cool. 

1: It seems to be true. Ryan from PCPerspective did some benchmarks in Ashes of the Singularity (DX12 game) with the GTX 980 and the R9 390X on DX12 with different CPUs.

One thing we saw was, that there was quite a large gap between those two cards in DX11. The GTX 980 was mostly faster.

With DX12 the gap suddenly closed and the R9 390X was pretty much on par with the 980.

But those results were also very dependend on the CPU. On high end CPUs, aswell as low end CPUs it didn't make as much of a difference.

2: No. That doesn't make it future proof. Even in upcoming games the amount of VRAM won't be the bottleneck. That is simply because games are not only optimized for different APIs and drivers, but also optimized for different graphics cards. Also depending on your graphics card it will simply not load all the available textures in your VRAM. That doesn't mean you'll have a lower framerate, but it does mean that your image quality decreases.

3. It is obvious that the R9 390 will simply need more watts than a GTX 970. How much? Probably 60, 70, or 80 watts. That might cost you a few cents more per year.

4. Yes, the R9 390 will get hotter than a 970 - again simply because of its higher TDP. That doesn't mean that the core will run hotter, but there will be more heat leaving your case and heat up your room. The difference is pretty small tho. I wouldn't worry about that at all.

5. Those games are NOT for free. You'll have to pay more for these games. I got a free game with my first GTX 980. But since the promotion started the prices also went up. It might look like you get a 50$ game for free, but it is only a small amount you actually safe. Maybe 5-10$.

So overall, what does that mean?

Personally I would take a R9 390. Those cards are great and if the performance increases as much as we have seen in Ashes of the Singularity with DX12, then it is totally worth it! 

[Lord_Karango17]

1. Both cards should benefit from dx12

 

2. 8gb is very nice, but you likely wont need that much unless you go dual gpu (more vram is still always nice). Since a lot of people wont have 8gb of vram on their cards, games wont be using excessive amounts of it for a long time.

 

3. the extra power than the 390 uses will not show up in your monthly bills if thats what you are asking. assuming you dont play 24/7, and an extra 100W isnt much in the grand scheme of things

 

4.the higher tdp of the 390 will in most cases lead to higher temps, but it also depends on the cooler, and if you have a good cooler on the amd card, it wont be very warm. with a good cooler the core temps of the amd cards can be similar to that of the 970, however more heat will be dumped into your case/room

 

5. amd should also have free games with their never settle forever thing.

[Senzelian]

390

Go with the 390.

Could you please answer this guys questions instead of just pumping out useless answers. This is really f*cking annoying.

[Chugle]

-snip-

We did. He asked which one he should go for, and we gave him an answer. 

[Senzelian]

We did. He asked which one he should go for, and we gave him an answer.

If my cat would have walked over my keyboard, then there would be a high chance she would've wrote the same as you.

Absolutly anyone can simply say "R9 390" or "GTX 970". Who knows what kind of fanboy sits behind the keyboard. Do you want to look like a fanboy?

(I'm not saying you're a fanboy, just to make that clear).

[SteveGrabowski0]

 

So you already know what this is all about. The mighty battle between the r9 390 and the gtx 970. 

 

I am about to build a new pc and this choice is getting on my nerves. I see people who say the 970 is still superior and people who say the 390 easily beats the 970  . Even in the benchmarks they are trading blows and with the 970 sometimes on top. But mostly the 390 wins. Still its a hard choice.  So here are my doubts: 

 

1: AMD said that with dx12 there will be a huge perfomance boost in the amd card but won't that happen to the 970 too? And let's be honest you can't believe anything companies say ... What do you guys think? 

 

2: So the 390 is a 8gb while the 970 is 4gb (3,5 gb whatever ) which means the 390 is "future proof". What do you guys think about that? 

 

3: Yeah. The thing that doesn't worry me that much but it's still a thing to look out for: Power Consumption . Does that make that big of a difference? 

 

4: Temperature in amd is higher but not a big difference right? 

 

5: MGS 5 for free? Camon Nvidia...  Yeah not that big of a deal . But hey still a free game right? Always cool. 

 

This is the build I am thinking right now :

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/dnWQbv - with the gtx 970 

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/pyv9zy - With the r9 390

 

So yeah, this is it . If I forgot something important please do mention it. 

 

Which one would you guys pick and why? And which one is better Price/performance?  (Two different things ) 

 

Thanks

 

(Bare in mind I am not a native english speaker by any sort so mistakes done here I DO NOT TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY! ) 

 

 

1. AMD has lots of overhead in their DX11 drivers, so in DX12 games I would expect the R9 390 to get a really nice boost since the 970 and 390 are so close in DX11 games. Problem is DX11 will probably stick around for a long time. But if DX12 gets quick adoption by devs then I could see the 390 ending up a significantly better card.

 

2. 8GB is kind of useless for a GPU of that power. Hell, it's useless for a GPU of the Titan X's power.

 

3. Expect about 100W higher power consumption. It means you need a slightly more expensive power supply and you have to have good airflow in your case, but unless you have really high ambients to the point that extra 100W is going to heat up the room the system is in to a noticeable amount, I wouldn't worry about it.

 

4. The 390s seem to have crazy good coolers, so temperatures will be similar. But heat output will be more with the R9 390 thanks to 100W higher power consumption. 

 

If I was buying today I'd take a 390 and hope for strong DX12 adoption, knowing I'll still get 970 level performance (well, slightly better than 970 performance) in DX11 at the cost of some more heat and not getting the MGS game (I'm not really into racing games though, and Dirt Rally is the AMD bundled game).

[Chugle]

-snip-

You lost all of what little respect I had for you when you typed this: "If my cat would have walked over my keyboard, then there would be a high chance she would've wrote the same as you."

[Senzelian]

You lost all of what little respect I had for you when you typed this: "If my cat would have walked over my keyboard, then there would be a high chance she would've wrote the same as you."

That doesn't change anything.

[QueenObama]

You may want to consider which types of monitors you want , AMD freesyc , or G sync.

[UnKeD]

Thanks for all the time and effort you took to answer this topic. To everyone  , even the ones that had the "cat" to write for them 

 

The 390 it is 

[UnKeD]

You may want to consider which types of monitors you want , AMD freesyc , or G sync.

 

Believe me monitor is not a problem . Thanks anyway

[ThE_MarD]

Heyyo,

I mainly wanna discuss what @Senzelian wrote as I do like his answers but wanted to say a few things on them.

1: It seems to be true. Ryan from PCPerspective did some benchmarks in Ashes of the Singularity (DX12 game) with the GTX 980 and the R9 390X on DX12 with different CPUs.

One thing we saw was, that there was quite a large gap between those two cards in DX11. The GTX 980 was mostly faster.

With DX12 the gap suddenly closed and the R9 390X was pretty much on par with the 980.

But those results were also very dependend on the CPU. On high end CPUs, aswell as low end CPUs it didn't make as much of a difference.

It should be noted with the GTX 980 there is a driver bug due to MSAA. Of course, NVIDIA blamed the game devs and the game devs say it's NVIDIA's fault. Lots of that going around, blaming others these days... AMD blames people, NVIDIA blames people... blame blame blame... it's getting fucking lame lol. You can Google it and see for yourself.

So for DirectX 12 benchmarks? I'd still hold off... Ashes of Singularity is a pre-beta benchmark... this was just the first true taste as the leaked/hacked Unreal Engine 4.9 DirectX 12 Elemental Demo isn't optimized properly... My GTX 680 SLI benchmarks in DirectX 11 were fine even with single-GPU mode... but DirectX 12 is single-GPU only and was scoring about 15% slower than DirectX 11.

2: No. That doesn't make it future proof. Even in upcoming games the amount of VRAM won't be the bottleneck. That is simply because games are not only optimized for different APIs and drivers, but also optimized for different graphics cards. Also depending on your graphics card it will simply not load all the available textures in your VRAM. That doesn't mean you'll have a lower framerate, but it does mean that your image quality decreases.

Too true. It sucks that some games tend to prefer one GPU make over the other, but luckily for 2015? That trend is only in a handful of games where-as most others scale very nicely.

3. It is obvious that the R9 390 will simply need more watts than a GTX 970. How much? Probably 60, 70, or 80 watts. That might cost you a few cents more per year.

Exactly. I wouldn't worry about costs differences to run unless it was a dedicated server running 24/7 and planned on running it for a decade. JayzTwoCents on YouTube even did a thing about it for AMD Vs Intel CPUs... four hours a day, every day for a year worked out to about $9 but that $9 fluctuates depending on your provider's cost of kW/h... so at most if it was double his cost? $18 a year?

4. Yes, the R9 390 will get hotter than a 970 - again simply because of its higher TDP. That doesn't mean that the core will run hotter, but there will be more heat leaving your case and heat up your room. The difference is pretty small tho. I wouldn't worry about that at all.

The R9 390 is a very decently overclocked card on a refreshed Hawaii GPU. The cooling provided on the MSI DirectCU II is really damn good so I wouldn't worry so much about thermals as long as your case has great ventilation and airflow. I used to own two stock-cooler EVGA GTX 480's in SLI.... THAT... was some serious heat hahaha... so I wouldn't even worry about it on the AMD R9 390 unless you wanted to do Crossfire. Even then? A little thermal throttling is all that might happen if it's a crazy-hot summer day.

5. Those games are NOT for free. You'll have to pay more for these games. I got a free game with my first GTX 980. But since the promotion started the prices also went up. It might look like you get a 50$ game for free, but it is only a small amount you actually safe. Maybe 5-10$.

So overall, what does that mean?

Personally I would take a R9 390. Those cards are great and if the performance increases as much as we have seen in Ashes of the Singularity with DX12, then it is totally worth it! 

With all that in mind? I do agree for non-reference coolers? The AMD R9 390 is a better purchase, especially if you plan on doing a Multi-GPU upgrade in the future. 4GB of VRAM is a very healthy place to be on 2560x1440 and all that extra VRAM on the AMD R9 390 will help it out.

From what I've seen and read so far for DirectX 12? That whole VRAM stacking will depend on developers implementing it, same with Split-Frame Rendering... so... that could suck if you buy a game and find out it only does Alternate-Frame Rendering with no stacking VRAM. An SLI GTX 970 setup could feel the pain of that 3.5GB threshold before a potential performance drop. I say that's not worth the risk since both cards perform about the same and cost about the same.

[Senzelian]

It should be noted with the GTX 980 there is a driver bug due to MSAA. Of course, NVIDIA blamed the game devs and the game devs say it's NVIDIA's fault. Lots of that going around, blaming others these days... AMD blames people, NVIDIA blames people... blame blame blame... it's getting fucking lame lol. You can Google it and see for yourself.

So for DirectX 12 benchmarks? I'd still hold off... Ashes of Singularity is a pre-beta benchmark... this was just the first true taste as the leaked/hacked Unreal Engine 4.9 DirectX 12 Elemental Demo isn't optimized properly... My GTX 680 SLI benchmarks in DirectX 11 were fine even with single-GPU mode... but DirectX 12 is single-GPU only and was scoring about 15% slower than DirectX 11.

Okay, that is interesting and changes quite a lot if it's true. I'll do some research on that.

Thanks for pointing it out.

And nice rhyme btw....

 

The R9 390 is a very decently overclocked card on a refreshed Hawaii GPU. The cooling provided on the MSI DirectCU II is really damn good so I wouldn't worry so much about thermals as long as your case has great ventilation and airflow. I used to own two stock-cooler EVGA GTX 480's in SLI.... THAT... was some serious heat hahaha... so I wouldn't even worry about it on the AMD R9 390 unless you wanted to do Crossfire. Even then? A little thermal throttling is all that might happen if it's a crazy-hot summer day.

There are some really great cooling solutions for the R9 390 which makes them run even cooler than a 970.

But at the end the temperature of the core doesn't really matter. All that matters is how much heat will leave the case and enter the room.

If I start folding it's like I would turn on my heater. But I also use two 980s

[7850OC]

Nitro 380 (4GB) or Nitro 390 (8GB) 

 

 

So you already know what this is all about. The mighty battle between the r9 390 and the gtx 970. 

I am about to build a new pc and this choice is getting on my nerves. I see people who say the 970 is still superior and people who say the 390 easily beats the 970  . Even in the benchmarks they are trading blows and with the 970 sometimes on top. But mostly the 390 wins. Still its a hard choice.  So here are my doubts: 

 

 

1: AMD said that with dx12 there will be a huge perfomance boost in the amd card 

yes

 

 

but won't that happen to the 970 too? And let's be honest you can't believe anything companies say ... What do you guys think? 

nop

 

 

2: So the 390 is a 8gb while the 970 is 4gb (3,5 gb whatever ) which means the 390 is "future proof". What do you guys think about that? 

yes

 

 

3: Yeah. The thing that doesn't worry me that much but it's still a thing to look out for: Power Consumption . Does that make that big of a difference? 

nop

 

 

4: Temperature in amd is higher but not a big difference right? 

nop

 

 

5: MGS 5 for free? Camon Nvidia...  Yeah not that big of a deal . But hey still a free game right? Always cool. 

nop

 

 

This is the build I am thinking right now :

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/dnWQbv - with the gtx 970 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/pyv9zy - With the r9 390

So yeah, this is it . If I forgot something important please do mention it. 

Which one would you guys pick and why? And which one is better Price/performance?  (Two different things ) 

Thanks   (Bare in mind I am not a native english speaker by any sort so mistakes done here

I DO NOT TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY! ) 

 

 

and welcome to the forum 

[arronleeds]

i own an msi r9 390 8gb , i can say its pretty well in an good price , it play witcher and skyrim and bioshock infinite in ultra with 60~80 fps , i suggest you to take r9 390 8gb cause of the price , the MSI cool it pretty well and i really like it

That all you get with a 390? I get over 100fps easily on bioshock and skyrim with a 970 on ultra.

[TheNeutraliser]

That all you get with a 390? I get over 100fps easily on bioshock and skyrim with a 970 on ultra.

what cpu u have? what you payed for your gtx 970 ? what brand? and is your cpu overclocked? is your gpu overclocked?

[arronleeds]

what cpu u have? what you payed for your gtx 970 ? what brand? and is your cpu overclocked? is your gpu overclocked?

My specs are in my sig, gpu is stock and my cpu was also stock when I played both.

And it was £280 around 6 months ago .

[TheNeutraliser]

My specs are in my sig, gpu is stock and my cpu was also stock when I played both.

And it was £280 around 6 months ago .

well im playing this games in my stock cpu in my other pc the non gaming pc and having 60~80fps with my i3 540 

and i just put my msi r9 390 8gb and GG 

[UnKeD]

Nitro 380 (4GB) or Nitro 390 (8GB) 

 

 

 

 

 

and welcome to the forum 

 

Thanks