290x or GTX 970

Good evening fellow gamers. I am caught between two graphic cards. I currently have an AMD setup with a FX 8350. I've looked at a ton of benchmarks with both of the cards and they're pretty much neck and neck. However, I did notice some benchmark scores where one card out did the other in vice versa.

I know the GTX 970 has a lot of bang for your buck and works efficiently. Although the 290x has a higher power consumption, it also performs better at higher resolutions above 1080p(but I use a single GPU setup). Plus I do like the idea Mantle regardless of it's staying power considering that I've been able to get a better framerate out of games like Battlefield 4, and Titanfall.

I just need advice right now since I'm so torn!

@NeoGen85: 970 without a doubt, not only is 290x a power hog (your poor light bill) but it's an oven too. Unless you're planning 4K gaming (in which case you should go for a 980) the 970 will destroy anything you throw at it at 1080p.

@NeoGen85:

I'm happy with 970 here.

970 uses like half the power and is generally the better deal

290x not only runs burning hot but loud as hell too. I went with the 970 from Asus and it is awesome.

Thanks! I am going with the 970!

290X if you play a lot of BF4 IMO. I have 970 SLI and BF4 runs pretty crap compared to my old 290s

I'm late to the party, but yeah the 970 of course, it performs better and uses less power, and its quieter.

Hello.

My vote for GTX970 as well.

For many reasons that people already said. :)

ps: I would thought of R9 290X if it had full DX12... Although DX12 will not be available for Windows 7 :(.

@Coseniath: I was so close to buying a 290x at one point tonight but I was reminded in a article today about DirectX 12 so the purchase of a 970 was easy. :)

Let me break your decision, R9 290 for 250$ by Gigabyte and OC it - saved you about 70$

Everyone says the R9 290 runs so hot and is so loud but that's not true of all 290 and 290x.

I have Sapphire 290 and it runs cooler than my gtx 670 and is just as quite. So it does depend on the model you buy.

But no matter what the 970 will use less power for sure.

Personally I will had go for the R9 290, because you can get a R9 290 with triple fan cooler and factory OC that cost $250 compere to the cheapest GTX970 than cost $330.

290x right now is rather a bad buy. Either a 970 or if you want to save a bit money and are willing to give a bit performance ( not much though ) an r9 290 will be perfect ( and those with aftermarket coolers run cool and quiet ) and unlike what most think is not that far off gtx 970 when comes to power consumption

Like the past 2 post say, you can't beat the price / performance of the r9 290 but I would not buy a 290x. The 290 and 970 are crazy close in performance at 1440p in most games.

There should be around 80 watt difference between both on average. What most don't realize is that while Nvidia and even some manufacturers advertise it as a 145watt TDP card there are actually no reference cards on the market yet. Everyone is making their on designs and they seem to range around 200-250watt TDP. While r9 290 seem to range around 275-325 watt TDP. So while gaming most 970's will stand at around the 180 watt mark while most r9 290's will stand at around the 260 watt mark.

http://www.techspot.com/guides/912-best-graphics-cards-2014/page6.html

Power consumption on 290 is only 10-30W more so that shouldnt be a deciding factor . Hardly the power hog people think unlike its bigger sibling 290x which power consumption is through the roof

Those numbers seem off. Just look at the 285 on that chart, it should be below the 280.

You should check out TechpowerUp's review database and check different reviews.

Calculating watts is a very complex thing, and every site will most likely have different numbers but you will see patterns.

Some reviews:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_970_SC_ACX_Cooler/23.html

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/gigabyte_geforce_gtx_970_g1_gaming_review,7.html

http://www.bjorn3d.com/2014/10/msi-gtx-970-gaming-4g-new-maxwell-priceperformance-beast/4/

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-970-maxwell,3941-13.html

and check the rest of reviews for even more numbers.

There is no f*cking way that the average difference between a 970 and 290 is only 30 watts.

What?

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-Superclocked-256bit-Graphics-04G-P4-1972-KR/dp/B00NI45AUU/ref=sr_1_10?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1416095795&sr=1-10&keywords=gtx+970

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GDDR5-256bit-Graphics-04G-P4-1970-KR/dp/B00NI45AMS/ref=sr_1_13?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1416095889&sr=1-13&keywords=gtx+970

http://www.amazon.com/PNY-GeForce-GDDR5-Graphics-VCGGTX9704XPB/dp/B00NH5ZNWA/ref=sr_1_14?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1416095889&sr=1-14&keywords=gtx+970

Those seem like reference models to me.

These are just crap coolers xD.

Product Images - GeForce GTX 970

@Coseniath said:

These are just crap coolers xD.

Product Images - GeForce GTX 970

Well he did just say that reference GTX 970's never existed and I just got those 3 links showing that they do exist and are available for purchase, I wasn't going after "looks" exactly :)

Those are reference coolers. Reference 970 cards should only have one pcie 6 pin connector and thus their 145 watt TDP.

Actually EVGA is one of the companies that advertises their cards as 145 watt TDP on the details spec info on their page but none of them actually are.

http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=04G-P4-0974-KR

and that card measured on a review:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_970_SC_ACX_Cooler/23.html

there absolutly no reason to get a r9 290x over a gtx 970, get the gtx 970

970 uses less power its a simple choice. Plus its nvidia and the drivers are a lot better. The flexibility of using apps like nvidia inspector is enough to stick with nvidia, DSR is a really nice option also, and g-sync for down the road if you get a monitor that has that.

And the new MFAA antialiasing optimization they are coming out with might be really good.... but then again they could be overhyping it like they did with fxaa and txaa, have to see how it goes.

I have a zotac 970gtx, i can't even hear the card when i'm playing a game... its even more quiet then my 680gtx and it wasn't that loud either. I've heard the amd cards are awfuly loud and run hot.

Loud as hell? Really? Actually third party coolers are not loud at all. Go with 290X if you care about mantle. If not go with 970.

So your making your own specifications out of thin air?

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-970/specifications

Very last line if your too lazy to click the link;

"Supplementary Power Connectors 2x 6-pins"

That's Nvidia talking about their own cards.

I had the same question but I bought the GTX 970 and it runs everything on ultra!!! without heat issues

I explained why I thought the 290x(some of you also referenced the 290) was a valid choice. Plus I've always been an AMD fan. But I should be getting my 970 on Monday or Tuesday. Hopefully I'll see some major improvements over my 270x. Not to mention that both Dragon Age Inquisition and Far Cry 4 come out. I saw some earlyGPU benchmarks of Inquisition at ultra with an i7 4970K(I can't wait to get my own). Since it's an AMD sponsored game it looks like Mantle gives the 290x an edge.

The noise issue is blown out of proportion. I can't hear mine at all no matter what I play.

My point exactly. Even Windforce edition is pretty quiet.

The heat thing is also blown out of proportion with some of these cards. Mine never goes over 70C.

EDIT: here is an interesting review... http://www.anandtech.com/show/7601/sapphire-radeon-r9-290-review-our-first-custom-cooled-290/4

@BSC14 said:

@insane_metalist said:

@BSC14 said:

@insane_metalist said:

@Legend002 said:

290x not only runs burning hot but loud as hell too. I went with the 970 from Asus and it is awesome.

Loud as hell? Really? Actually third party coolers are not loud at all. Go with 290X if you care about mantle. If not go with 970.

The noise issue is blown out of proportion. I can't hear mine at all no matter what I play.

My point exactly. Even Windforce edition is pretty quiet.

The heat thing is also blown out of proportion with some of these cards. Mine never goes over 70C.

EDIT: here is an interesting review... http://www.anandtech.com/show/7601/sapphire-radeon-r9-290-review-our-first-custom-cooled-290/4

Yeah :) third party coolers get the job done. My card doesn't go past 76C which is pretty cool for AMD. R9 290 is just unbeatable right now (price/performance). Newegg just keeps throwing those good deals.

Then please show me a 970 card on the market that has a TDP of 145 watt.

This problem has even been mentioned by tech sites:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-970-maxwell,3941-13.html

"This does not represent Nvidia's reference GeForce GTX 970 board because our data point was simulated with a Gigabyte GTX 970 card that has a non-reference ~250 Watt power target, unlike the reference board's ~150 W power target...None of the manufacturers we have talked to have released a GeForce GTX 970 card with a ~150 Watt power target as of this time, opting instead to give this product more performance headroom."

@glez13:

Well the PNY 970 has a TDP of 160watt, that's the closest, we wont ever see 145TDP cards, except those tiny editions.

Thanks to DSR i would go with the 970 over the 290x. Get 4k gaming without an expensive monitor. And its cheaper

Downsampling isn't anything new or exclusive to maxwell cards. It can be done on AMD cards. Also, not sure where you are getting that the gtx 970 is cheaper than a 290x. They both hover between $320-350, with the 290x usually being cheaper. Right now on newegg you can get a MSI 290x Lightining for $321 after rebate, which is $10 cheaper than the cheapest Zotac 970. The 290x also comes with 4 games instead of the 1 game you get with 970s

Either one won't run ac unity with decent settings :D Game went the way of watchdogs, beautiful upfront, pile of turd from a distance. Jokes aside I'll lean for the 970. I'm assuming it has full dx12, lower power consumption for sli and oc'ing.

290 is probably a cheap buy now if you want to save a few bucks. If you like amd 290/x is still good and heat isn't an issue with aftermarket coolers. Ref blowers really gave those cards a bad rep.

Mantle doesn't really help too much with higher end cards.

With a single GTX 970 a person should be able to run Assassin's Creed Unity at ultra high with around 70fps at 1080p if they use fxaa.

With two GTX 970s in SLI I get around 70fps at ultra high settings at 1440p as shown in this video I uploaded.

Really? Then how come with X2 R9 290's I get 43 more frames per second in BF4..?

Post a video showing the before and after along with the frame rate counter.

Because benchmarks show only a small boost in performance at maxed settings with high end cards like the 290x.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-mantle-performance-benchmark,3860-8.html

@RyviusARC:

@insane_metalist said:

@RyviusARC:

Show what it gets on a single 290x first I want to see if it scales well with crossfire with and without mantle.

Also show what it gets at 1440p.

Although if you use a different source then that is not as accurate.

This seems more of a case of a game not being demanding enough on the GPU.

@RyviusARC:When I'll have time, I'll make a video with FPS counter.

If you crank up to 1440p and 4xMSAA I think the results between mantle and DX11 will be a lot smaller.

So if the game is already easy to run then mantle could show a difference but it won't really matter because the game is already running smoothly.

Once you play a demanding game that is hammering your GPUs then mantle makes a much smaller difference.

For example here were see Mantle makes a big difference on Thief at 1280x720.

But here we see it makes a small difference at 2560x1600.

@RyviusARC said:

@insane_metalist said:

@RyviusARC:When I'll have time, I'll make a video with FPS counter.

If you crank up to 1440p and 4xMSAA I think the results between mantle and DX11 will be a lot smaller.

So if the game is already easy to run then mantle could show a difference but it won't really matter because the game is already running smoothly.

Once you play a demanding game that is hammering your GPUs then mantle makes a much smaller difference.

For example here were see Mantle makes a big difference on Thief at 1280x720.

But here we see it makes a small difference at 2560x1600.

Mantle's main performance increases are on the CPU. If you are doing something GPU limited it won't have too massive of an increase. That is why you saw it not do much on 1600p, because it was much more limiting on the GPU.

Those benchmarks were done with an 4770k @ 4.4ghz. If you have a high end CPU and high end GPU, sure Mantle may not make a world of difference for most games, but for people with non high end CPUs, the performance increase from Mantle can be massive. The same site as your benchmarks says that a 4770k at 2.5ghz on Mantle as it does at 4.4ghz on Directx.

pcgameshardware.de says that their i7 920 has a 45% performance increase on Dragon Age Inquisition with Mantle.

Personally I would take a 970 over a R9 290x because they are priced about the same.

I would take a R9 290 over both because it's around $50+ less and at 1440p (which is what I play at) the 290 is very close to the 970 and the 290x.

By the way. Loving my GTX 970. Just thought I follow up. :D

I hope I can afford to order my GTX 970 before the end of the year. New computer was kind of a christmas present to myself :) Still waiting on being able to order my i5-4790K & memory for it. Got all the other parts.