r9 280 vs gtx 960

[Bobmahjingle]

title asks it all

 

[VedranMik]

Well, 280 comes at a lower price, gives similar performance, has 1 gb more of ram and much wider bus.
It has higher power consumption, heat is not a problem if you buy something like Saphhire's R9 280. (which I own)
While gaming, it runs at 50% fan speed which is barely noticeable (This is subjective tho) and at that fan speed it runs at 64C at factory OC, 68-70C at 1150/1500 OC

960 is ofcourse somewhat more expensive, runs similar to 280 except in some games which require a lot of VRAM for textures (Shadow of Mordor, I'm looking at you)
It has physx and shadowplay (AMD has GVR which works great, just tried it out today, works lovely, i forgot to turn it off for two hours, got me 10+ gb of video but I didn't see an impact on game performance in Metro: Last Light)

960 is just not that price to performance efficient as 280 and the differance in power draw shouldn't concern you unless your local rates are high.

Personal opinion: Sapphire R9 280
I was in your position two months ago and I wen't with R9 280 and I love it, no issues with drivers, I actually installed beta drivers and got 10FPS more in FC4 at ultra. from 40 to 50 average fps.

 

[VedranMik]

You'll need a 500W PSU for 280, while a 400W PSU should suffice for 960

 

[Pyre]

As I look at some people's FPS on youtube gameplays those two are actually like 50/50, they win and lose in some games. 960 and 280 are not a big difference like 960 and 970.

 

[Pyre]

I would get the GTx 960 as it FULLY supports DX12

I agree with him 960 is good for its price and low power

 

[17seconds]

The 280 is the same as the 7950 in this chart.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyte/GTX_960_G1_Gaming/28.html

 

[VedranMik]

280 is slightly better performing than 7950, most aftermarket 280 GPUs match that gigabyte 960 one.
In my country, 280 is cheaper by 15-20%, don't know about you.

 

[whoratesit]

If you are 1080p or higher go with the 280 otherwise it's pretty much a dead heat between those two cards so it really depends on how much you can find them for. The 280 is generally cheaper but it does draw a little more power.

UserBenchmark: Nvidia GTX 960 vs AMD R9 280
Effective 3D Gaming GPU Speed: 52.9 vs 53.5 %

Nvidia GTX 960 - 21st / 485
AMD R9 280 - 20th / 485

 

[17seconds]

Free copy of the Witcher 3 with the GTX 960. That's a PhysX game, a graphics setting you can't enable with the 280, just one of several. Add in the fact that the GTX 960 is hardware capable of DirectX 12.1, while the 280 is only software capable of DirectX 12.0, then I would think the 280 gets less attractive.

 

[Bobmahjingle]

960 is ofcourse somewhat more expensive, runs similar to 280 except in some games which require a lot of VRAM for textures (Shadow of Mordor, I'm looking at you)

i only want to play ps2, cs:go and space engineers

 

[VedranMik]

Aye, then it's totally the same, get the cheaper one