gtx 970 vs. radeon r9 290 vs. r9 390

[AlexR19]

Thanks in advance for any help. Here's the deal: I have an XFX double dissipation radeon r9 290, and am looking to upgrade. Processor is an i5- 4690, and I have 16 gb of 1600mhz ram. Motherboard is an MSI z97 gaming 5. I want to know, purely performance wise, what is the best. Msi/Nvidia gtx 970, or r9 390. Also, if someone could compare that to my current r9 290 that would be wonderful. I don't care about price, power consumption, or noise, though comments about power consumption would be noted.Thanks guys!

 

[chedda87]

I honestly doubt you will see any difference in gaming, maybe 5-10 fps @1080p. I would suggest your upgrade path should be a 980/980ti or AMD Fury.... If these are out of budget maybe hold off until Pascal release

 

[TJ Hooker]

Doesn't make much sense to upgrade to a R9 390, it's essentially a factory-overclocked R9 290 with an extra 4 GB of VRAM (which you won't need unless you're crossfiring). Won't see that much of a performance boost going to the GTX 970 either. You have a pretty good card, might as well at least wait until Polaris/Pascal are out.

 

[marko55]

^^^ What he said ^^^

There's a ton of articles and comparisons out there with frame rates in different games. These two cards are direct competitors and you'll basically find that each will perform maybe just a touch better than the other in different games.

Since you brought up power consumption, which also correlates with heat generation, from the R9 290 and up in the AMD line you're talkin about a lot of both. The NVidia cards really start to separate themselves from the 970 and up especially with heat & power.

 

[AlexR19]

I honestly doubt you will see any difference in gaming, maybe 5-10 fps @1080p. I would suggest your upgrade path should be a 980/980ti or AMD Fury.... If these are out of budget maybe hold off until Pascal release

what is Pascal and Polaris?

 

[TJ Hooker]

Pascal is the next generation of GPUs from Nvidia, Polaris is the next generation from AMD. Both are due out this year.

 

[AlexR19]

Pascal is the next generation of GPUs from Nvidia, Polaris is the next generation from AMD. Both are due out this year.

Id like to stay below 400$, will that be possible with either? I realize all you can do is speculate, but you probably know a lot more than I.

 

[TJ Hooker]

I don't see why not. No one can say for sure at this point what they'll cost, but it's probably safe to assume they'll release a variety of cards at different price points, same as every other generation. Pretty much guaranteed both companies will have at least one or two cards for less than 400.