GTX 970 vs R9 390 for 1080p.

[Rivelldy]

Hey guys, I know this has already been asked but I still don't know which one I should buy AMD I really need help. Im gaming at 1080p. I know the GTX 970 is a better card in terms of power consumption, better driver support, a bit cooler, etc... But the R9 390 has 8gb of VRAM vs 3.5/0.5 on the 970. I know i won't use the 8gb in 1080p but I may use more than 3.5 or 4gb. What do you guys think?
Thank you

 

[NubUser]

buy the one you like more by the look

 

[TheMysteriousStranger]

For 1080p
Gtx 970: pros
1. Faster generally when you overclock it
2. Quieter and cooler if you don't overclock it.
3. Nividia exclusive features and games that are optimized for nividia
4. Low power requirements
Cons:
1. Only 3.5 gigs of vram, not very future proof, more so if you ever go up in resolution.

R9 390
Pros:
1. Faster stock, or with a cooler overclock.
2 . very vram future proof.
3. Way less mainstream.
4. A couple amd optimized games
Cons;
Louder than gtx 970 and requires more power

I'd say
1080p=gtx 970
1440p+=r9 390

 

[maximus_841]

Better to buy a Sapphire R9 290x Tri-x. It performs better than the 970. Buying a 390x makes no sense as it is basically the same 290x with a tiny changes. Use the rest of your money to buy games.

 

[FreshPineApples]

I would get a 390 due to the more vram which most of it will not be used however it may come in handy in the future along with the maxwell architecture found on the gtx 970 not going to be able to fully benefit from dx12.

 

[renz496]

^that still is an assumption right now. Just because 900 series did not do well in one game then it will be like that for all DX12 games. Let me give you something interesting. In WCCFTECH test GTX 770 (Kepler) able to increase FPS from 19 to 55 by going from DX11 to DX12 in AoS. Hardware wise the card are much less compliant than 900 series when it comes to DX12. So why there is massive increase performamce on Kepler and not Maxwell?

 

[FreshPineApples]

What do you mean by less compliant than the 900 series I haven't really looked into the 700s and dx12. But from what I understand the Async Shaders in Maxwell really don't seem to work as good as they should in dx 12 while they are fine with Amd it could be possible that for some reason the Kepler shaders are more compatible with dx 12 over Maxwell explaining the fps increase and although we can't be sure what if this problem occurs in many dx 12 titles? Which is why I think this time amd is the safer bet.

 

[renz496]

To be honest DX12 is very confusing. But in general Kepler and Maxwell version 1 only compliant up to FL 11_1 (through cap bit). They don't have the hardware for FL 11_3 (or FL12_1 for DX12 version). Heck Maxwell v2 even have complete compliance with FL11_1 which is not the case with Kepler and Maxwell v1.

So going back to the issue of Async compute which is perform bad with Maxwell. Async compute is only one of features in DX12. Now let's look the matter in this angle: right now only nvidia Maxwell v2 have the hardware for FL12_1. when games using this feature it will definitely going to run faster on maxwell v2 since nvidia have dedicated hardware for it while AMD have to rely on software emulation. So right now does nvidia are much better choice when it comes to DX12?