GTX980 or R9 390X

[NuclearPeace]

The 390x is a good chip, but it has two main flaws. The first one is the energy consumption. The 275w TDP of the GPU means that its going to create a ton of heat that a more compact case will not be able to handle. If you are going to get the 390x ensure your case has great airflow. If you plan on overclocking than you really are going to be stressing your PSU and your case's cooling system.

 

The other one is DX11 performance. I know that DX12 seems like its right around the corner, but DX11 is what's here already. Its wiser to buy based on what games are out now rather than the future that is mostly unpredictable. AMD cards have a lot of DX11 overhead that is going to hurt performance with your CPU. In some games it doesn't matter too much but in others you are going to noitce how the 390x is performing below par.

 

The 980 has a much lower TDP of 165w that will balloon to around 220w when heavily overclocked. That's the TDP of my GPU and its not really that tough to deal with. The 980's main flaw is the lack of hardware support for Asynchronous computing which may have the 980 perform worse than equivalent AMD cards in DX12 and the fact that it's more expensive than the 390x.