Just bought a 970, bit of buyer's remorse...

[GrphxGtr]

Sorry if the title seems a bit misleading, but I just bought an MSI GTX 970 after searching for a card for some time, and I've yet to open it but I'm considering taking it back tomorrow morning. Basically what happened is that my old graphics card died and I asked what people recommended, and it seemed to be the r9 390 due to 8GB of VRAM. After asking a bunch of store people their opinions, and being pressured by my dad to hurry up, I sort of knee jerkly went with an MSI GeForce 970 GTX, instead of comparing it to the MSI R9 390.

Now, I've yet to open it, but I paid roughly $40 more for this card, but I'm at a loss for why I should open and keep it given that the 390 seems to be not only a better value, but better in the long run. Yes games like Witcher 3 seem to run better on a 970, but I don't upgrade very often, play lots of different games, care more about if it most run well rather than just a handful optimized because Nvidia paid them.

Am I being paranoid, or did I really make a bad decision by buying this card instead of the 390? I know its not an easy thing to choose either one, but given that I play most of the big named games (witcher, fallout, battlefield, battlefront, etc) I'd just like to own the card that will support those currently, and future games similar to those.

Here are my current specs:

Motherboard: https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8Z68_DELUXE/
Power Supply: http://www.coolermaster.com/powersupply/gx-series/gx-65...
CPU: http://ark.intel.com/products/65647/Intel-Core-i5-2550K...
RAM: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1682...

 

[CTurbo]

What are the rest of your parts? The 970 and 390 are relatively equal at 1080p and the 390 is better at higher resolutions.

 

[GrphxGtr]

What are the rest of your parts? The 970 and 390 are relatively equal at 1080p and the 390 is better at higher resolutions.

I just edited my original post to have my specs. Currently I have a single 1080p 85Hz display, but I was considering upping that to 1440p at 144Hz. At the very least, I'll be getting a 144Hz monitor, but I may stick with 1080p for the time being. That being said, if they're equal at 1080p, why even bother with the 970?

 

[emdea22]

970 will have problems when going past 3.5vram usage (sooner than you think). Also nvidia tends to nerf cards with drivers when new series comes out. The only 2 cards i'd buy from nvidia right now are the 980 and 980ti. If your budget doesn;t allow that then i'd suggest you go the AMD route as the price to performance and long term support is way better (IMO). Still using a 7970 Ghz edition in my gaming rig and i have no problems maxing out games at 1080p

 

[CTurbo]

The 970 is far more efficient. Usually I would recommend whichever is cheaper and choose the 970 if they're the same price. The psu also comes into play. You should keep the 970 since your psu is not very good.

 

[DustyDanglerX]

You did not make a bad decision im in the same boat as you deciding between 390 and 970. Im kinda leaning away from the 970 since my friends 970 on akham khight surpases the 4gb limit and starts to get fps drop i told him to disable gameworks but the doesn't want to. Also shadows of mordor ultra textures and lords of the fallen, maxpayne 3 and many other games even though at 1080p use a lot of vram since i play star citizen im safer with the 390. With amd cards what ive learned is you need to tweak a lot to get best performance you need to go into ini files and change a lot of values to optimize for your card but once that done the performance is amazing.On nvidia antialiasing in control panel is broken unless u use nv inspector and use a compatibility flag to enable it so which requires lots of reading guides which im not fond of. On my 670 the only game i can currently max out with physx enabled is akham asylum and for me the purpose i chose nvidia in first place was for better power consumption and physx at first i know i let marketing get to my head because i did not know much about pc's back when gtx 460 was released that was my first nvcard.But buying nvcard for physx enabled games is a waste of time currently even 980 and titans get framedrops with physx games.In my opinion triple A nvtitles are badly optimized.But all that aside both cards are equally matched if u like lower power consumpition and you only game on 1080p stay on nvidia if your going 2k or 4k go amd since they have better value per dollar as of now.

 

[GrphxGtr]

The 970 is far more efficient. Usually I would recommend whichever is cheaper and choose the 970 if they're the same price. The psu also comes into play. You should keep the 970 since your psu is not very good.

Well, like I said in the original post, the 970 was $40 more than the 390. It was more expensive, and power consumption and heat were issues that did bother me since my old card overheated.

 

[CTurbo]

It's up to you. If your 970 is $40 more than a 390, it's probably $40 more than a comparable 970 too.

You need to think about getting a better psu sooner than later.