Price vs Value: R9 390 vs GTX 970 (assuming same price)

[Mr.Pie]

Bang for buck:
What am I going to see more usage out of?

I'm currently back home overseas so the opportunity to buy some *erm tax free cheap PC components to bring back to the UK and build up a new rig is awesome.

Looking around the R9 390 is roughly 10-15 quid cheaper than 970's.

Though for the exact model (MSI with the Twin Frozer V cooler) is exactly the same price +/- 5 quid.

Exact usage: Initially will be on a single 1080p but in the future will def want to either upgrade to double then triple monitors or a 1440p monitor

In the same vein I'd also likely be looking to X-Fire or SLI to add in more GPU power....what size PSU should I be looking to get for both X-fire and SLI setups?
I will be overclocking my i5 4690K and the GPU/s.

Thanks

[kalniel]

More usage.. I expect you'll get the same usage out of both. In the past I've found AMD cards to be slightly more robust but nVidias are usually good enough to last until replacement for performance reasons so unless you've got an extreme environment where you need a more robust card you'd be fine with either.

In terms of performance.. well you can see the charts yourself and you'll be the one who can best make the call for which games you play and your balance of min vs average frame rates etc.

In terms of future performance, the 970 is a newer architecture part, but AMD have a good history of eeking more performance out of their older parts over time through drivers and the GCN architecture has proven itself to be a very forward looking design. nVidia tend to make quite large architectural changes which can have negative consequences for older cards if they optimise drivers and/or pressure devs to design to their latest products at the expense of older ones.

So it's quite a close call. If you were single monitoring and weren't looking to x-fire/SLI then I'd probably say go for the 970, but as that's a possibility I think the greater bandwidth/real memory of the 390, as well as excellent xfire tech these days, would be worth a very serious look.

[Mr.Pie]

More usage.. I expect you'll get the same usage out of both. In the past I've found AMD cards to be slightly more robust but nVidias are usually good enough to last until replacement for performance reasons so unless you've got an extreme environment where you need a more robust card you'd be fine with either.

In terms of performance.. well you can see the charts yourself and you'll be the one who can best make the call for which games you play and your balance of min vs average frame rates etc.

In terms of future performance, the 970 is a newer architecture part, but AMD have a good history of eeking more performance out of their older parts over time through drivers and the GCN architecture has proven itself to be a very forward looking design. nVidia tend to make quite large architectural changes which can have negative consequences for older cards if they optimise drivers and/or pressure devs to design to their latest products at the expense of older ones.

So it's quite a close call. If you were single monitoring and weren't looking to x-fire/SLI then I'd probably say go for the 970, but as that's a possibility I think the greater bandwidth/real memory of the 390, as well as excellent xfire tech these days, would be worth a very serious look.

cheers thanks for the reply.
What about in terms of power usage? I know that Maxwell is very power efficient and that Hawaii is more of a power guzzler - I can't seem to really find a consensus on how much power I'd need if I went x-fire R9 390's. Any ideas please?

[kalniel]

cheers thanks for the reply.
What about in terms of power usage? I know that Maxwell is very power efficient and that Hawaii is more of a power guzzler - I can't seem to really find a consensus on how much power I'd need if I went x-fire R9 390's. Any ideas please?

Words like power guzzler were appropriate back in the days of the gtx 480 and Intel P4's, but modern chips are so much better so total power draw is much reduced.

Most reviews are testing xfire 290s in beefy overclocked systems and coming out around 700W total system load at the wall, so your system component power draw (ie PSU rating) is likely to be about 600W peak. To give room for overclocking you should be fine with a good quality 750W rated unit (ie will draw about 850W at the wall), maybe 850 if you want to significantly overvolt most of your parts.

[Mr.Pie]

Words like power guzzler were appropriate back in the days of the gtx 480 and Intel P4's, but modern chips are so much better so total power draw is much reduced.

Most reviews are testing xfire 290s in beefy overclocked systems and coming out around 700W total system load at the wall, so your system component power draw (ie PSU rating) is likely to be about 600W peak. To give room for overclocking you should be fine with a good quality 750W rated unit (ie will draw about 850W at the wall), maybe 850 if you want to significantly overvolt most of your parts.

Hah i remember those days. I used to run SLI 470's!

Well "power guzzler" when compared to the 970's. Cheers.

Was looking at the Evga 850w B2 - uses Seasonic internals unless I'm mistaken right? Seasonic still one of the top dogs for PSU's?

[Agrippa]

In the past I've found AMD cards to be slightly more robust...

Robust how? Build quality, drivers or something else? Just curious, as I have the opposite experience.

[kalniel]

Robust how? Build quality, drivers or something else? Just curious, as I have the opposite experience.

I've never had an AMD hardware failure, but have had several nVidia ones. Mostly they were quite old cards, but in one case it was an mATX which was a bit more demanding in terms of environment temperature and it killed a few nVidia cards but the AMD cards just soldiered through without missing a beat.

[badass]

I've never had an AMD hardware failure, but have had several nVidia ones. Mostly they were quite old cards, but in one case it was an mATX which was a bit more demanding in terms of environment temperature and it killed a few nVidia cards but the AMD cards just soldiered through without missing a beat.

Me too.

2 dead Nvidia cards after a just over a couple of years but no dead AMD cards. That's not enough to make me not buy an Nvidia card as they didn't just die - they just got steadily less usable with all kinds of display corruption.

[Agrippa]

I suppose this just illustrates that anecdotal evidence is utterly worthless, as my experience includes three dead ATI/AMD cards and so far none from Nvidia.

[Thorsson]

Indeed. I've had deaths from both.

[kalniel]

I suppose this just illustrates that anecdotal evidence is utterly worthless, as my experience includes three dead ATI/AMD cards and so far none from Nvidia.

Indeed, it should always be clearly qualified rather than a generic statement about all cards.

[shaithis]

All else being equal, I'd go with the 970 if only to cover yourself on the slew of GamesWork titles coming out.

As for future driver gains, I think the Hexus article recently showed that both camps roughly squeezed the same extra performance out over the same period. As the 970 architecture is newer, I would suspect potentially bigger gains over time though.

[Agrippa]

As the 970 architecture is newer, I would suspect potentially bigger gains over time though.

This is the crux of the matter as far as I'm concerned. Current AMD cards represent the tail end of a now pretty damn old technology (in video card terms), while in comparison Maxwell is brand new. On that point alone I'd opt for the GTX 970 out of the two.

[GuidoLS]

If you're going to be in the states for any period of time, let me suggest a short term subscription to both Newegg and Tiger Direct. They both run daily specials, and it's not rare that they'll throw a top end/high end GPU up for up to $100 (or more) off list. It may not drop the price below that of the 970 or 390, but it *might* bring it close enough to kick out an extra $50 or so if you can afford it.

[Mr.Pie]

All else being equal, I'd go with the 970 if only to cover yourself on the slew of GamesWork titles coming out.

As for future driver gains, I think the Hexus article recently showed that both camps roughly squeezed the same extra performance out over the same period. As the 970 architecture is newer, I would suspect potentially bigger gains over time though.

This is the crux of the matter as far as I'm concerned. Current AMD cards represent the tail end of a now pretty damn old technology (in video card terms), while in comparison Maxwell is brand new. On that point alone I'd opt for the GTX 970 out of the two.

If you're going to be in the states for any period of time, let me suggest a short term subscription to both Newegg and Tiger Direct. They both run daily specials, and it's not rare that they'll throw a top end/high end GPU up for up to $100 (or more) off list. It may not drop the price below that of the 970 or 390, but it *might* bring it close enough to kick out an extra $50 or so if you can afford it.

Cheers and thanks for the feedback everyone.

Unfortunately I don't think I'll be in the states for sometime as its a tad too expensive for me to hop across the Atlantic. I'm currently back in my parents home in Hong Kong and they have quite good prices on computer stuff vs the UK.

Guess it'll come down to the pricing of both cards which I'll check out next week.

Alternatively I could wait till next summer when I head back once again to HK to buy parts for a desktop rig.... (ala Skylake and new stuff from NV/AMD)

[Saraya]

I don't see any advantage with the 390 over the 290. A used 290 would be very cost effective right now and edges out the 970 in performance(especially at 1440p or higher).

If you must have new, then the 390 would be my choice.

Future proofing isn't necessary until the Pascal generation and beyond. Any thing up until that point isn't bringing any massive architecture changes that you need to worry about.