GTX 960 G1 Gaming VS R9 980 NITRO 4Gb

[Soulgix]

Hi, I'm about to buy a new Graphic Card to upgrade my old GTX 460.

Based on my budget my choice went on 2 cards

Gigabyte nVidia GeForce GTX 960 G1 Gaming 2GB Core 1241/1304MHz
Sapphire AMD Radeon R9 380 NITRO Core 985MHz 4GB

I checked videos, reviews and such, comparing the GTX 960 to the R9 380, and they show the latter to be slightly on top (mostly few fps on top on games), with the only problem being the higher power requirement and the higher noise; both facts shouldn't be an issue since i read that you'll hardly notice them. But since i have these 2 "different" versions (G1 Gaming, NITRO core), i rly don't know what to do with them.

So i got a couple of questions regarding this "issue":

1) The main reason i'm considering the R9 is the 4GB vram. Better to have it that not, since in theory i could need it for future games. Is it really relevant?

2) I haven't had a radeon in like....years. I've always had a Geforce card in these past years so this question may be kinda naive but.......is there any problem in having an AMD card instead of NVIDIA? Like drivers support, games support and what not?

My spec is as follows:
CPU: i5-2500 @ 3.30 Ghz
MOBO: Asus P8H61 R2.0
RAM 8GB DDR3
PSU: Corsair GS700

Thanks in advance for the help

 

[thelethalhorker]

If it's faster and has double the vram then it is really a no brainer. Only real driver difference is that more games are usually optimised for nvidia than amd. Saying that, with dx12 being released I would go for a 380 in your position. That's because it's being said that amd cards will benefit more from dx12 than nvidia will. Plus the new vulcan API is being released and games that use it will show much better performance on an AMD card. So yeah, between those two, the r9 380.

 

[vince232]

not to mention mantle looks promising! go with the 380 it is much better than the 960. and to answer your question regarding vram
yes it is already relevant as we now see games needing more than 2gb to max it out. get the 4gb for more future proofing and more power
for dual or tri monitor set up