970? Or 390? Overclocking?

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

Yes yes, I know. By now half of you guys are sick of seeing a title where there is a "970" and "390" but Tech Yes City recently posted a new video answering a huge load of questions. 

 

 

(Note that the tested res is 1440p)

One thing I've seen get thrown around alot is overclocking. Now in the past Jayz released a video similar to this but with a

major "difference" the 970 was clocked at the 1400mhz range. Not very representative of what a typical 970 clocks at. It is observed that 

a 970 typically gets a stable overclock in the 1500mhz range for the average person. And while the 1200mhz overclock on Jayz's 390 was good.

Again it was not an accurate representation of what most 390s clock at. 

 

In Tech YES City's video however. The 970 was clocked at 1550mhz core and the 390 was clocked at 1140mhz core. Which are the "typical" overclocks on

an average person gets. 

 

There have been alot of claims that the 970 performs better when OC'd due to the sheer amount of overclocking headroom. Fortunately or unfortunately, from

the video we can see that it isn't really true. Be it out of box or OC'd, these 2 card will always perform similarly.

 

 

There are some other misconceptions about these cards that get thrown around, like...

 

970 3.5GB vram

Its 4. It just works differently.

 

390 8GB USELESS, PAYING FOR MORE VRAM, WASTE OF MONEHHHH

(This would vary alot base on your local pricing) If you're comparing from the 290 then yes you're paying for more vram. But what the 390's competitor is,

is the 970. The 970 only comes in 4GB flavors and is around the same pricing as the 390. You aren't really paying for more. It just happens to come in 8GB. 

 

390 8GB vram FUTURE PROOF

Naw... Not really... If anything, the architecture is what is gonna make it future proof. 

 

 

I'll now list out some reasons why(I think) you should go with one over the other: 

 

Why go 970? 

Your software benefits from CUDA

You cannot/don't want to afford the bill to power a 390

You want gameworks effects in your games(I'd advise a 980 Ti for the full gameworks "experience")

You play gameworks games like Project Cars(This is a special one) 

You don't want heat blown into your face(Your PC exhaust is facing you)

Your case has very poor airflow 

You have a lower end CPU

 

Why go 390?

Your software benefits from having an AMD card

You want Lara's hair to be beautiful

You play AMD sponsored titles

Mantle...?

You like fat and chunky cards

Your place is cold and you want to save on the heater bill

 

There are many reason why one would go with either, but my general advise is going with whichever is cheaper.

[TheRandomness]

I vote 390 all of the time because it's cheaper and performs just as well, if not better

[DXMember]

#RAMGate

[OSBK]

I vote 390 all of the time because it's cheaper and performs just as well, if not better

me either

[itsmyjobtoknow]

Shouldn't OpenCL be a reason why you should get the 390?

[Guest]

Wouldn't 8GB of vram become useful in crossfire rigs?

[DXMember]

is that guy on LSD?

[REX.exe]

390. Although 8GB is stupid and kinda useless, atleast you never have to worry about hitting a limit 

 

It also seems to perform a little bit better, but keep in mind lots of games have issues with AMD. I'm yet to experience any issues with mine.

 

 

You cannot/don't want to afford the bill to power a 390

Damn that hit hard.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

Shouldn't OpenCL be a reason why you should get the 390?

 

Not really widely used though... But if the software benefit from an AMD card then... yea...

 

 

Wouldn't 8GB of vram become useful in crossfire rigs?

 

I don't generally recommend dual card setup but that's  viable... 

 

 

is that guy on LSD?

 

maybe?

[NinjaJc01]

 

Why go 390?

Your software benefits from having an AMD card

You want Lara's hair to be beautiful

You play AMD sponsored titles

Mantle...?

You like fat and chunky cards

Your place is cold and you want to save on the heater bill

 

There are many reason why one would go with either, but my general advise is going with whichever is cheaper.

HAHAHA, heating argument again...

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

390. Although 8GB is stupid and kinda useless, atleast you never have to worry about hitting a limit 

 

It also seems to perform a little bit better, but keep in mind lots of games have issues with AMD. I'm yet to experience any issues with mine.

 

 

Damn that hit hard.

 

That's a driver issue, but generally it gets fixed within a month. I don't want to bring them up cause AMD and Nvidia's drivers are as bad as each other these days...  

[AresKrieger]

Shouldn't OpenCL be a reason why you should get the 390?

 

If you use certain open source drivers maybe, if you use AMD's drivers no.

[Guest Kloaked]

Great post. But, I just wanna say

 

There are some other misconceptions about these cards that get thrown around, like...

 

970 3.5GB vram

Its 4. It just works differently.

 

 

390 8GB vram FUTURE PROOF

Naw... Not really... If anything, the architecture is what is gonna make it future proof. 

 

[Arwanell]

"You cannot/don't want to afford the bill to power a 390

You don't want heat blown into your face

Your place is cold and you want to save on the heater bill"

 

 

this gave me cancer

retarded statements

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

"You cannot/don't want to afford the bill to power a 390

You don't want heat blown into your face"

 

Some peeps really don't want to spend more on power bills...

And if the PC exhaust is facing you then yea... You may not want that...

[Guest Kloaked]

 

"You cannot/don't want to afford the bill to power a 390

You don't want heat blown into your face

Your place is cold and you want to save on the heater bill"

 

 

this gave me cancer

retarded statements

 

 

joke

jōk/Submit

noun

1.

a thing that someone says to cause amusement or laughter, especially a story with a funny punchline.

"she was in a mood to tell jokes"

synonyms: funny story, jest, witticism, quip; More

verb

1.

make jokes; talk humorously or flippantly.

"she could laugh and joke with her colleagues"

synonyms: tell jokes, crack jokes; More

[NeatSquidYT]

 

 

Why go 970? 

Your software benefits from CUDA

You cannot/don't want to afford the bill to power a 390

You want gameworks effects in your games(I'd advise a 980 Ti for the full gameworks "experience")

You play gameworks games like Project Cars(This is a special one) 

You don't want heat blown into your face

Your case has very poor airflow 

You have a lower end CPU

 

Why go 390?

Your software benefits from having an AMD card

You want Lara's hair to be beautiful

You play AMD sponsored titles

Mantle...?

You like fat and chunky cards

Your place is cold and you want to save on the heater bill

1) CUDA is used pretty selectively afaik.

2) The power bill really will not be affected that much at all. Stop using this argument.

3) Why would you have heat blown into your face? I don't sit next to the fan on my graphics card.

4) Stop using the whole heat thing please. My 970 gets up to round 73 degrees under full load.

 

This whole thing seemed a bit biased to me.

[i_build_nanosuits]

Why go 970? 

Your software benefits from CUDA

You cannot/don't want to afford the bill to power a 390

You want gameworks effects in your games(I'd advise a 980 Ti for the full gameworks "experience")

You play gameworks games like Project Cars(This is a special one) 

You don't want heat blown into your face

Your case has very poor airflow 

You have a lower end CPU

 

Why go 390?

Your software benefits from having an AMD card

You want Lara's hair to be beautiful

You play AMD sponsored titles

Mantle...?

You like fat and chunky cards

Your place is cold and you want to save on the heater bill

 

There are many reason why one would go with either, but my general advise is going with whichever is cheaper.

For the 970 you forgot a huge feature that some people really enjoy and it's Gamestream...it will allow you to stream your games to your TV or your shield tablet.

It's cool that way you do not need another PC in the leaving room, which most of the time are cheaper and slower machines, you can have your powerful office/gaming PC everywhere you want. it's rather cool...AMD does not have anything like that.

 

Also, i would like to mention that no software really ''benefits from having an AMD card'' since OpenCl is also supported on nvidia cards, albeit a little slower but you have access to a wide field of softwares that are Cuda accelerated on the other hand so if you have ANY intention to use a card as a workstation card, the nvidia card is ALWAYS a better choice...

 

Good post though, not really needed, but good

[Arwanell]

Some peeps really don't want to spend more on power bills...

And if the PC exhaust is facing you then yea... You may not want that...

gaming 4hours/day

 

at the end of the year you would pay 4€ more having 390

but if you can't spare 2 beers...

[i_build_nanosuits]

1) CUDA is used pretty selectively afaik.

2) The power bill really will not be affected that much at all. Stop using this argument.

3) Why would you have heat blown into your face? I don't sit next to the fan on my graphics card.

4) Stop using the whole heat thing please. My 970 gets up to round 73 degrees under full load.

 

This whole thing seemed a bit biased to me.

yeah, but if your 970 is running 73c (which is pretty good for an air cooled card BTW) then the AMD with the same cooler in the same case at the same ambient temps will be running upward of 80c that's a given...it will also output more heat in your case, GPU core temps and amount of heat expelled by the card are too separate things.

 

and BTW, if i'm not mistaken this user is a fully fledged AMD fanboy (just kidding, i don't know but i think he usually root for AMD)

[Guest Kloaked]

1) CUDA is used pretty selectively afaik.

2) The power bill really will not be affected that much at all. Stop using this argument.

3) Why would you have heat blown into your face? I don't sit next to the fan on my graphics card.

4) Stop using the whole heat thing please. My 970 gets up to round 73 degrees under full load.

 

This whole thing seemed a bit biased to me.

 

OP isn't being biased, they're joking about the heat stuff. I'm coming in their defense because they've been defending AMD before in the tech news section. So I think they're allowed to make a joke (just like everyone else should be anyways).

 

Also, Cuda is used in many mainstream applications, so yes selective, but for people who do Cuda accelerated things on the side (which would be a very small minority because the people who are actually doing it seriously would just by a quadro card which could make more sense) it's a must have-ish.

 

EDIT: Would also like to add your 970, while it's getting to 73C, it can do that without running it's cooler fans at a high speed. You can't do something like with an AMD card unless you have a really good cooler.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

1) CUDA is used pretty selectively afaik.

2) The power bill really will not be affected that much at all. Stop using this argument.

3) Why would you have heat blown into your face? I don't sit next to the fan on my graphics card.

4) Stop using the whole heat thing please. My 970 gets up to round 73 degrees under full load.

 

This whole thing seemed a bit biased to me.

 

1) The software is still more widely used though

2) Yea but some people really don't to spend that amount of beer money

3)I've updated the OP to make that clearer

4)Really the only flaw to it is that it runs hotter than(comparing good cards to good cards) the 970

 

 

gaming 4hours/day

 

at the end of the year you would pay 4€ more having 390

but if you can't spare 2 beers...

 

Some peeps can't. I've said the exact same thing but still they can't.

[Arwanell]

1) The software is still more widely used though

2) Yea but some people really don't to spend that amount of beer money

3)I've updated the OP to make that clearer

4)Really the only flaw to it is that it runs hotter than(comparing good cards to good cards) the 970

 

 

 

Some peeps can't. I've said the exact same thing but still they can't.

Alcoholics...

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

For the 970 you forgot a huge feature that some people really enjoy and it's Gamestream...it will allow you to stream your games to your TV or your shield tablet.

It's cool that way you do not need another PC in the leaving room, which most of the time are cheaper and slower machines, you can have your powerful office/gaming PC everywhere you want. it's rather cool...AMD does not have anything like that.

 

Also, i would like to mention that no software really ''benefits from having an AMD card'' since OpenCl is also supported on nvidia cards, albeit a little slower but you have access to a wide field of softwares that are Cuda accelerated on the other hand so if you have ANY intention to use a card as a workstation card, the nvidia card is ALWAYS a better choice...

 

Good post though, not really needed, but good

 

That's an additional hardware one would have to buy but I think that if a person already owns a shield. It should be pretty clear what card they're gonna buy. 

 

yeah, but if your 970 is running 73c (which is pretty good for an air cooled card BTW) then the AMD with the same cooler in the same case at the same ambient temps will be running upward of 80c that's a given...it will also output more heat in your case, GPU core temps and amount of heat expelled by the card are too separate things.

 

and BTW, if i'm not mistaken this user is a fully fledged AMD fanboy (just kidding, i don't know but i think he usually root for AMD)

 

We get into heated debates sometimes. But I'll just state what is observed 

[i_build_nanosuits]

- That's an additional hardware one would have to buy but I think that if a person already owns a shield. It should be pretty clear what card they're gonna buy. 

 

- We get into heated debates sometimes. But I'll just state what is observed 

-Make sense

 

- Make sense, at the end of the day both have pros and cons and there is no definitive winner here, i've said this many times and i agree with going with the one that is cheaper and has a good cooling solution on it...if you can save 30 or 40$ and still have a card with a twinfrozrV cooler or something then why not...Both are amazing cards for 1080p gaming, and both can do 1440p relatively well if the user is willing to tweak his settings a little bit. They are both fantastic...especially for the price you get a lot of GPU horsepower. it's the sweet spot, both of them are.

 

BUT....but...about lara's hair to be beautiful and AMD sponsored games though...you know nvidia cards can render tressFX and they do it very well too (even better than the AMD cards if i'm not mistaken?!) and AMD sponsored titles...nvidia cards usually run them just as well too...battlefield 4 has performed better on nvidia cards for ages until mantle came out and amd kicked in on driver optimisation...and nowadays, well...amd do not have any sponsored titles as far as i know...so i would replace those two lines by: ''maybe better DX12 feature support...remains to be seen'' or something like that