2016

[DominicNikon]

yup...

 

this gives you a hint of how "scaling" works for AMD vs Nvidia....

 

AMDs GPUs is sort of like "Intel i5 vs AMD FX".... you can OC FX to 4.8 or 5GHZ really easily, but just get the i5 to 4GHz and it wrecks the FX again

but i never had a amd gpu before

[Prysin]

but i never had a amd gpu before

its nothing special or different from Nvidia... the control panels are a bit different, but short of that, nothing big..

 

that being said, most 390 will not OC much higher then 1150 at average.... ofc, some will go faster. So a balls to the walls 970 is USUALLY faster, but then again, you got to hit 1500+ MHz. You are not guaranteed to get 1MHz over stock speed.....

 

You also got to consider the fact that you will be owning the GPU for a long while, and the 8GB of VRAM and the "promise" of greatly increased DX12 performance is something you should not ignore.

[DominicNikon]

its nothing special or different from Nvidia... the control panels are a bit different, but short of that, nothing big..

 

that being said, most 390 will not OC much higher then 1150 at average.... ofc, some will go faster. So a balls to the walls 970 is USUALLY faster, but then again, you got to hit 1500+ MHz. You are not guaranteed to get 1MHz over stock speed.....

 

You also got to consider the fact that you will be owning the GPU for a long while, and the 8GB of VRAM and the "promise" of greatly increased DX12 performance is something you should not ignore.

isnt 8gb to much if i am still on 1080p?

[Prysin]

isnt 8gb to much if i am still on 1080p?

i know GTA 5 pushes the VRAM quite hard with all settings at max.

 

modded skyrim/fallout 4 will certainly hit over 4GB

 

ive had Skyrim hit 5GB with texture mods....

 

Just concider the 8GB as "4GB + bonus 4GB"..... its not that the extra 4GB gives you more FPS, but hey... if someone said "here, have another 4GB VRAM for the same price" why would you pass it up?

 

In case you decide to buy a new monitor later on, the R9 390 would do well even at 1440p

[DominicNikon]

i know GTA 5 pushes the VRAM quite hard with all settings at max.

 

modded skyrim/fallout 4 will certainly hit over 4GB

 

ive had Skyrim hit 5GB with texture mods....

 

Just concider the 8GB as "4GB + bonus 4GB"..... its not that the extra 4GB gives you more FPS, but hey... if someone said "here, have another 4GB VRAM for the same price" why would you pass it up?

 

In case you decide to buy a new monitor later on, the R9 390 would do well even at 1440p

i only play bf4 and gta V

[Prysin]

i only play bf4 and gta V

for now.... in a year, two years maybe even 3 years you'd have moved on to other games...

 

GTA 5 is moddable too, so if you decide to mod it you would do well having the extra VRAM....

 

Like i said, it doesnt detract any performance, but it also doesnt add any either....

[DominicNikon]

the only thing keeping me away from amd is just missing the Nvidia geforce experience 

[don_svetlio]

the only thing keeping me away from amd is just missing the Nvidia geforce experience 

AMD have their own version of everything really - sometimes even better than Nvidia's offering. Having a chance to look at both - one way or another - I can tell you that the default settings are actually better as Nvidia's settings are sometimes odd out of the box.

Anything you can do with GE you can aslo do with CCC - maybe a different tooltip but the same option.

You will also get the added benefit of going Free-Sync - that's cheap compared to G-sync or using True Audio.

The VRAM is actually more of a factor than you might think - GTA V will happily push 5GB of usage and Shadow of Mordor maxes out at 6.4GB of VRAM. Trust us when we tell you better have a larger buffer than a small 3.5GB one (the last is unaccesible to games now - drivers ).

Also - with DX12 - you will see the full 390 being utilized. Currently - GCN 1.1 and above has 64 compute + 1 graphics lane. Both can work simultaneously. Maxwell has 31 compute + 1 graphics - due to the way Maxwell was designed from the ground up - those cannot run together. For DX11 - that's no issue - it cannot do it. But DX12 can and will - remember the consoles? Half the games that are being developed are for the consoles primarily - they have GCN-based APUs. See where I'm getting at? Devs will use A-sync too squeeze as much as possible from them and then do a lousy copy pasta port and Nvidia will be in a world of pleasure.

[DominicNikon]

AMD have their own version of everything really - sometimes even better than Nvidia's offering. Having a chance to look at both - one way or another - I can tell you that the default settings are actually better as Nvidia's settings are sometimes odd out of the box.

Anything you can do with GE you can aslo do with CCC - maybe a different tooltip but the same option.

You will also get the added benefit of going Free-Sync - that's cheap compared to G-sync or using True Audio.

The VRAM is actually more of a factor than you might think - GTA V will happily push 5GB of usage and Shadow of Mordor maxes out at 6.4GB of VRAM. Trust us when we tell you better have a larger buffer than a small 3.5GB one (the last is unaccesible to games now - drivers ).

Also - with DX12 - you will see the full 390 being utilized. Currently - GCN 1.1 and above has 64 compute + 1 graphics lane. Both can work simultaneously. Maxwell has 31 compute + 1 graphics - due to the way Maxwell was designed from the ground up - those cannot run together. For DX11 - that's no issue - it cannot do it. But DX12 can and will - remember the consoles? Half the games that are being developed are for the consoles primarily - they have GCN-based APUs. See where I'm getting at? Devs will use A-sync too squeeze as much as possible from them and then do a lousy copy pasta port and Nvidia will be in a world of pleasure.

so amd is fine?

[don_svetlio]

so amd is fine?

Of course - AMD is a better long-term solution and has been for quite some time. People who bought the 7970 in 2012 can currenrly run Witcher 3 @ High settings with 50-55fps whereas the 680 guys can barely push 35-40 at the same settings. The reason is that AMD's cards have always had more hardware on them - but the drivers have been lousy - not unstable - lousy. That's why Nvidia got away with selling less for more. Thing is - DX12/Vulkan/Mantle changed it - evened the playing field. And now things are different.

A guy I know said ir very well - "Nvidia offer the best here and now for a premium - 1 year down the line - you're screwed and forced into an upgrade or lesser performance than the AMD card you could have gotten back then".

I'll give you an example. Each year so far AMD released a larger driver update with perfomance increases. Before that - I was using 15.5. Went to 15.7 and my 3Dmark score went up 500 points - ran the test about 5 times - not RNG - 500 just like that - overnight.

When my card released it use to be the same performance as the 670 - now it's a stone's throw away from the 680.

[DominicNikon]

Of course - AMD is a better long-term solution and has been for quite some time. People who bought the 7970 in 2012 can currenrly run Witcher 3 @ High settings with 50-55fps whereas the 680 guys can barely push 35-40 at the same settings. The reason is that AMD's cards have always had more hardware on them - but the drivers have been lousy - not unstable - lousy. That's why Nvidia got away with selling less for more. Thing is - DX12/Vulkan/Mantle changed it - evened the playing field. And now things are different.

A guy I know said ir very well - "Nvidia offer the best here and now for a premium - 1 year down the line - you're screwed and forced into an upgrade or lesser performance than the AMD card you could have gotten back then".

I'll give you an example. Each year so far AMD released a larger driver update with perfomance increases. Before that - I was using 15.5. Went to 15.7 and my 3Dmark score went up 500 points - ran the test about 5 times - not RNG - 500 just like that - overnight.

When my card released it use to be the same performance as the 670 - now it's a stone's throw away from the 680.

will a i5 4670k at 4.5ghzs run it fine?

[don_svetlio]

will a i5 4670k at 4.5ghzs run it fine?

an i5 4460 @ 3.2GHz is more than enough.

[DominicNikon]

an i5 4460 @ 3.2GHz is more than enough.

what broad partner should i look into? i only no nvidia lol

[don_svetlio]

what broad partner should i look into? i only no nvidia lol

Sapphire and MSI are my top picks - after that - XFX or Powercolor. Stay away from Gigabyte and Asus.

[DominicNikon]

Sapphire and MSI are my top picks - after that - XFX or Powercolor. Stay away from Gigabyte and Asus.

ok

[lovingGamer]

the 390 is cheaper

Get 390 and never look back.

[KarateHottie93]

Maybe that 7gb 970 and 8gb 980 rumored last year.

[SteveGrabowski0]

thats why i picked the 970 for the overclocking

 

The Gigabyte G1 Gaming or the MSI Gaming are the two 970s to get if you're willing to overclock, they seem to get the best results based on what people in this forum have reported. I have an EVGA 970 that doesn't overclock too well, but it's an SC with 4+2 power while the SSC has 6+2 phase power and does tend to overclock decently. Not as much as the two Gigabyte and MSI Gaming cards though on average.

[Navhkrin]

Well, if you will wait, pascal is going to be pretty big, HBM2 memory, 16nm processing, new architechture that probably and hopefully will be designed around DX12.

If you dont want to wait, 390 is pretty good choice, dont know details though.

[don_svetlio]

Well, if you will wait, pascal is going to be pretty big, HBM2 memory, 16nm processing, new architechture that probably and hopefully will be designed around DX12.

If you dont want to wait, 390 is pretty good choice, dont know details though.

Volta will be the process shrink. Currently, all we have is a WCCFtech article about Pascal being 16nm. Those are the same guys who were claiming Fury X is 20% faster than a 980 Ti.

[don_svetlio]

Maybe that 7gb 970 and 8gb 980 rumored last year.

You really think Nvidia will make a card that's not ram-starved?

The only such thing are the Titans