Confirming my decision

[Storx]

Ok, so on the system side of this forum i asked for help because recent updates to a current game i play heavily has reduced my fps to the point i had to drop down from medium settings to low to get decent fps, well after installing afterburn someone mentioned i found out that the game is using 91% of my Vram on low settings and 100% on Medium settings, thus leading me to believe that it needs much much more for quality settings, found one forum post about the game where a "developer" recommended minimal 4.5gb for epic settings in 1080p resolution.

Well i have been shopping for the cards people recommended but i wanted to hear from the video card guys since most of the forum post told me to go with an R9 290 upgrade from my current GTX 660ti since my motherboard only supports crossfire and not SLI (didn't know this tell recently).

the 3 cards people recommended to me was:
R9 290 with 9 votes seem to go for $229 for best deal
GTX 970 with 4 votes seem to go for $299 for best deal
R9 390 with 3 votes seem to go for $329 for best deal
and.. one guy stressing i could go R9 380 for better performance than the 290 for less than $200

I am no GPU guru so i wanted to confirm all of this with you guys before i make my order..
Future plans is to add a 2nd card when i need it if they are AMD based to keep up with upcoming games, also toying around the idea of getting a new main monitor since one of my 2 monitors has been giving me random dead pixels in the middle of the screen that sometimes dont go away right away after calibration program being ran. was seeing some 4k monitors for under $400 bucks

 

[Gam3r01]

What resolution, system specs, budget, and what game(s)?
Just because your board "supports Xfire" does not mean you can benefit from it. Since it dosent support SLI, the second card runs in x4 mode, meaning the second card will be HEAVILY bottlenecked.

 

[Storx]

What resolution, system specs, budget, and what game(s)?
Just because your board "supports Xfire" does not mean you can benefit from it. Since it dosent support SLI, the second card runs in x4 mode, meaning the second card will be HEAVILY bottlenecked.

Cooler Master HAF X - High Air Flow Full Tower
CORSAIR Hydro Series H50 120mm Quiet Edition Liquid CPU Cooler
Z77-DS3H
Intel Core i5-3570K
Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 4 x 4GB (16GB Total)
Nvidia - Geforce GTX 660 Ti 2gb Gddr5 PCI Express 3.0
OCZ-VERTEX3 128GB SSD (OS)
ST1000DM003-1CH162 2TB (storage drive)
EVGA 220-G2-0850-RX 850W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Full Modular Power Supply
Windows 10 Pro
LG 27EA33 x 2

 

[Gam3r01]

Budget?

 

[Storx]

Budget?

It really depends, i am not going to get a new monitor NOW, but in the near future.. waiting for black friday probably for those deals.. cause i got my current 2nd matching monitor for half what i paid for the first one because of cyber monday sale during black friday stuff..

If i was to say what i am willing to spend now.. probably be $400 and less on a single card at most.. why did you ask for budget.. what did you have in mind?

I had one guy tell me on other post under systems, i should ditch my MB and get a ASRock Z77 Extreme4 LGA and add a 2nd gently used 660Ti to the mix, but i dont see the benefits of that over just using my current MB... unless i am overlooking the benefits of that switch... playing my current games.. the Vram seems to be more of an issue than the actual GPU power itself on this current card

 

[Gam3r01]

For that price look into a 390X and 970.
At 1080p they trade blows nearly identically (at stock speeds, the 970 OCs better). At higher resolutions the 390x pulls slightly ahead.

 

[Storx]

For that price look into a 390X and 970.
At 1080p they trade blows nearly identically (at stock speeds, the 970 OCs better). At higher resolutions the 390x pulls slightly ahead.

Why do you say the 390x instead of the 390 itself. After some reading i have read that the 390x is nothing different than a 390 slightly overclocked on average 30-40mhz over base 390. The one reading i found took an MSI 390 and an MSI 390x, they overclocked the 390 to the same Mhz that the 390x and score was within 3 pts of the 390x... just trying to understand more if there is an actual difference other than the clock speed.

 

[Gam3r01]

There are a few other differences, such as shader counts, but they are relatively the same (I mean to put parenthesis around the x, as you can go either way)