GTX 970 for 1440p gaming, or go for Radeon series?

[Lioth]

I'm worried if a Gigabyte GTX 970 won't be able to handle 1440p better than R9 290, or even R9 280X. I'm actually thinking of buying a 1080p beast because I've already bought a 1080p monitor. I'm just hoping downscaling the resolution works neatly. Running GTA V in 4K with 30-40fps is not bad considering consoles can ONLY run the game in 720/1080p with locked 30fps.

Asus 24X DVDwriter SATA DRW-24B5ST
Corsair CX500 500W 80Plus Bronze Power Supply
Corsair Carbide Series 200R Compact ATX
Gigabyte GTX 970 4GB 256bit DDR5 (GV-N970G1 GAMING-4GD)
Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB
Corsair Vengeance 8GB Dual 1866 CL9
Gigabyte GA-B85M-Gaming 3
Intel Core i5-4690K up to 3.90GHz (Quad Core) Haswell Refresh Processor
Cooler Master Hyper 212X CPU Cooler
Samsung 840 Evo Series 120GB Sata

I might get an AMD CPU instead because my budget is pretty tight. I'm just worried that it won't squeeze out everything my card can handle and I'm not experienced in OCing either. Overall the total could be around $1200 or less. The motherboard is a cheapo btw. Let me know your experience if you've tried it before.

 

[Sergeant_Sneaky]

A GTX 970 will run very similarly to a 290x at 1440p.
It would run better than the 290 and 280x despite the memory issue.
Getting an AMD CPU will bottleneck the cards while gaming.

 

[Lioth]

Is the memory issue a big disadvantage? Dunno much about it

 

[iam2thecrowe]

gtx970 or 290x are pretty similar even at that resolution. An AMD cpu will create a bottleneck in quite a few games (games that arent able to utillize more than 2-4 cores or dont run well on AMD's cpu core/module architecture) and there are still quite a few of those games. Not to mention the cost of the cpu may be offset by the fact that you need to spend more money on a motherboard to run 8 core cpu's reliably. Better off to just go with a lower end i5 (non K version), to save a few bucks. Oh also, the psu you have, if you went with amd graphics and/or amd cpu, you need a beefier psu to support amd's less efficient designs (like 600-650w). And I would recommend a better quality psu, instead of corsair's mediocore CX series.

 

[4745454b]

If you are going to stay with the CX500 that rules out 290 anyways. Toms didn't test the 970 at 1440, but even at 3640x2160 the 970 did as well as the 290. Could even beat the 290x in games. Even with the memory issue. I'd stay with the 970, more so with your PSU.

 

[Sergeant_Sneaky]

Is the memory issue a big disadvantage? Dunno much about it

Running certain games like GTA 5 or Call of Duty: Ghosts on the highest settings caused stutter for me and I'm only at 1600x900 resolution. The stuttering only occurs once you reach 3.5GB VRAM usage, which you would be closer to at 1440p. For most games there is no issues, it's only a select few, just keep that in mind when deciding.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

Is the memory issue a big disadvantage? Dunno much about it

the memory issue is, the card is marketed as 4gb. While this is true, it has 3.5gb memory running at full speed, and 0.5gb attached to a lower bus width connection. So in some situations, where vram usage goes over 3.5gb, it is possible that performance may take a dip. I have heard some people say this may cause slight stuttering also, but benchmark results that i have seen dont show this is a significant issue. Also, even at 1440p, its still rare occasions where a game would be using more than 3.5gb vram. You can always back off of ultra, reduce some AA or something to lower the vram load. Chances are if a game is using that much vram, that it could also use more than 4gb, in which case any 4gb card is in the same boat as vram data spills into even slower system memory.