r9 290 vs gtx 970

[JKM1001]

im looking into buying a graphics card in a month or two, and i was wondering with the 3.5gb memory on the gtx 970 restricting performance a little, would the r9 290 be a better buy(bear in mind that it is also cheaper in the UK)
the r9 290 has mantle, too, which seems interesting, but it doesn't get the same frames that the 970 does, even with it's 'extra' 512mb of vram.
the gtx 970 is nice and quiet, and very cool too, so i could get nice OC's out of that. i've seen 970s reach 1500mhz but r9 290s never past 1300ish maximum.
would the 'missing' 512mb of vram on the 970 REALLY restrict me too much? I mean at 4x MSAA (most of the time, depends on the game(, at 1360x768 (soon to be 1080p)
is the slow 512mb really that bad? i've heard mixed things about it, some people say it's only a little different in the real world the others say there's incredible stuttering and fps drops when it's used
i will be SLIng but that will be after Christmas this year, and i've seen benchmarks which say that the 970 performs quite a bit worse in SLI because of the missing 512mb memory
is there a way to disable the 512mb of vram?
does OCing the memory on a 970 affect the slower portion?
how long will it last considering that games have shot up in vram use in the past 3 years? i wont buy a new card for at a bare minimum of a year and a half.
will dx12 stack up to mantle?
basically is the 970 worth it and will it last? it does have higher average and min fps over the 290, up until past 3.5gb vram
also the gtx 970 is much much quieter (10-15db depending on cooler) than the r9 290s.
the gtx 970 is cooler (by a mile!) than the r9's.
would the 290x be a better purchase, even though they're more expensive?
so with the sli problems in dual 970s, do I go 290/x CF? apparently crossfire has been much improved since all the nvidia fanboys complained about it a million years ago.
i'm pulling my hair out deciding on the two. which shold i go?
since i have a few months before i can buy any graphics card, would it be wise to wait for the r9 3xx cards from AMD? considering AMD's history, i wouldn't expect quiet nor cool cards, both of which are important to me.

i tried to get al the answers in one post rather than people having to look over a million threads to find it. i'll add more points if i can think of any

pc specs
i5 4690k
ga-z97x sli motherboard
8gb 1866 cl9 ram
evga 750g1
samsung 850 evo 120gb

 

[popatim]

New AMD GPU's have a 'leaked' release date of summer 2015; you may want to hold off at least until a more firm release date or leaked benchmarks hit the net.

 

[azzazel_99]

the 970 DESTROYS the 290 first off. The better comparison to the 970 would be the 290x. The 290x has a full 4gb that all runs the same speed where the 970 doesnt. If you are only gonna be playing at 1080p or 1440p then i say the 970 would be a good buy for the price. If you may be doing higher i guess maybe the 290x for the price but getting a 970 then maybe sli'ing it might be a better option. All in all regardless of the bs going on right now with the memory issues on the 970 its still a good card. Performs better than any single gpu amd card on the market.

 

[azzazel_99]

Another thing the whole "new cards are right around the corner" stuff is dumb. There is ALWAYS something right around the corner and if you always waited to see what was around the corner then you would NEVER buy a gpu. If you need a gpu then the 970 would be a fine choice of card.

 

[17seconds]

The GTX 970 is fully DirectX 12 capable. The 290 can not do all of the effects found in DirectX 12.

 

[JUICEhunter]

VRAM isn't everything, look at 780ti with 3gb still beating 290x/970 @ 1080p/2k. 970 is a faster GPU than 290.

 

[bishopi5]

970 rapes 290, nuff said

 

[msattam]

Compared with the r9 290x instead of the r9 290, I don't think you can go wrong between the r9 290x and the gtx 970. I'm not sure if the r9 290 is a good comparison with the gtx 970. I'm not planning on upgrading my CPU until a new tier comes in, I have the A10 5700 APU and mantle should help it out (I'm not sure when DX12 is coming but the r9 290x supports it). If you go with the r9 290x, pick up the Sapphire version which is really good with heat and noise. I will say this, if you plan on playing BF Hardline the r9 290x might be your choice over the GTX 970:

http://www.techspot.com/review/958-battlefield-hardline-beta-benchmarks/page2.html

 

[17seconds]

Compared with the r9 290x instead of the r9 290, I don't think you can go wrong between the r9 290x and the gtx 970. I'm not sure if the r9 290 is a good comparison with the gtx 970. I'm not planning on upgrading my CPU until a new tier comes in, I have the A10 5700 APU and mantle should help it out (I'm not sure when DX12 is coming but the r9 290x supports it). If you go with the r9 290x, pick up the Sapphire version which is really good with heat and noise. I will say this, if you plan on playing BF Hardline the r9 290x might be your choice over the GTX 970:

Quote:
"...only GM2xx GPUs will fully support the newer rendering features like Conservative Rasters and Raster Ordered Views. Developers can access such features through the DirectX 11 API, hence the support for DX12 in Fermi and above, but as we understand it native support for them and therefore, presumably, better performance when using them will only be available in the latest GPUs, such as GM204."
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2014/09/19/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-review/1

 

[JKM1001]

VRAM isn't everything, look at 780ti with 3gb still beating 290x/970 @ 1080p/2k. 970 is a faster GPU than 290.

that's not the point though. the 780ti won't attempt to use an extremely slow 512mb of vram, so what is has works better. since the game will detect that the 970 does have 4gb vram it will use all 4gb if you have the settings high enough no? and that will encompass massive drops

 

[mrhippo900]

VRAM isn't everything, look at 780ti with 3gb still beating 290x/970 @ 1080p/2k. 970 is a faster GPU than 290.

that's not the point though. the 780ti won't attempt to use an extremely slow 512mb of vram, so what is has works better. since the game will detect that the 970 does have 4gb vram it will use all 4gb if you have the settings high enough no? and that will encompass massive drops

Hes right you know, VRAM isn't everything. Doesnt matter that its missing 512mb, that will not create massive drops at all. 3.5GB is more then enough VRAM needed for most games today. Anymore is just unneeded unless its something either then games. People like you keep treating this problem likes a big deal, then excluding the rest of the cards power out.

 

[msattam]

Compared with the r9 290x instead of the r9 290, I don't think you can go wrong between the r9 290x and the gtx 970. I'm not sure if the r9 290 is a good comparison with the gtx 970. I'm not planning on upgrading my CPU until a new tier comes in, I have the A10 5700 APU and mantle should help it out (I'm not sure when DX12 is coming but the r9 290x supports it). If you go with the r9 290x, pick up the Sapphire version which is really good with heat and noise. I will say this, if you plan on playing BF Hardline the r9 290x might be your choice over the GTX 970:

Quote:
"...only GM2xx GPUs will fully support the newer rendering features like Conservative Rasters and Raster Ordered Views. Developers can access such features through the DirectX 11 API, hence the support for DX12 in Fermi and above, but as we understand it native support for them and therefore, presumably, better performance when using them will only be available in the latest GPUs, such as GM204."
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2014/09/19/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-review/1

Can you elaborate, anyway? I was talking about the r9 290x not the r9 290, by the way.

 

[17seconds]

Quote:
"...only GM2xx GPUs will fully support the newer rendering features like Conservative Rasters and Raster Ordered Views. Developers can access such features through the DirectX 11 API, hence the support for DX12 in Fermi and above, but as we understand it native support for them and therefore, presumably, better performance when using them will only be available in the latest GPUs, such as GM204."
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2014/09/19/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-review/1

Can you elaborate, anyway? I was talking about the r9 290x not the r9 290, by the way.

290, 290X, 295x2, 285, it makes no difference. Only the new Maxwell cards, at this point, are able to deliver on the main benefit of DirectX 12... the massive gains in performance. The reason is that they are hardware-capable of rendering key DirectX 12 elements. All other cards on the market right now are software-capable of running DirectX 12, and won't be able to show those performance gains the way a true DirectX 12 card will.

Quote:
"Conservative rasterization is being added to Direct3D in order to allow new algorithms to be used which would fail under the imprecise nature of point sampling. Like VTR, voxels play a big part here as conservative rasterization can be used to build a voxel. However it also has use cases in more accurate tiling and even collision detection. This feature is technically possible in existing hardware, but the performance of such an implementation would be very low as it’s essentially a workaround for the lack of necessary support in the rasterizers. By implementing conservative rasterization directly in hardware, Maxwell 2 will be able to perform the task far more quickly, which is necessary to make the resulting algorithms built on top of this functionality fast enough to be usable."
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8526/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-review/4

 

[msattam]

Quote:
"...only GM2xx GPUs will fully support the newer rendering features like Conservative Rasters and Raster Ordered Views. Developers can access such features through the DirectX 11 API, hence the support for DX12 in Fermi and above, but as we understand it native support for them and therefore, presumably, better performance when using them will only be available in the latest GPUs, such as GM204."
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2014/09/19/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-review/1

Can you elaborate, anyway? I was talking about the r9 290x not the r9 290, by the way.

290, 290X, 295x2, 285, it makes no difference. Only the new Maxwell cards, at this point, are able to deliver on the main benefit of DirectX 12... the massive gains in performance. The reason is that they are hardware-capable of rendering key DirectX 12 elements. All other cards on the market right now are software-capable of running DirectX 12, and won't be able to show those performance gains the way a true DirectX 12 card will.

Quote:
"Conservative rasterization is being added to Direct3D in order to allow new algorithms to be used which would fail under the imprecise nature of point sampling. Like VTR, voxels play a big part here as conservative rasterization can be used to build a voxel. However it also has use cases in more accurate tiling and even collision detection. This feature is technically possible in existing hardware, but the performance of such an implementation would be very low as it’s essentially a workaround for the lack of necessary support in the rasterizers. By implementing conservative rasterization directly in hardware, Maxwell 2 will be able to perform the task far more quickly, which is necessary to make the resulting algorithms built on top of this functionality fast enough to be usable."
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8526/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-review/4

Check this out, bud
http://community.amd.com/community/amd-blogs/amd-gaming/blog/2015/03/02/amd-accelerated-processing-units-the-world-s-best-socs-for-directx-12

 

[17seconds]

Quote:
"Mike Ybarra, partner director of program management who leads engineering efforts for console and PC, responded to the following question about DirectX 12 support of graphics cards.

"To get the full support of DX12 will users need to get a new graphics card?"

To get the "full benefits of DX12," Ybarra replied, "the answer is yes."

"There will be DX 11.1 cards that take advantage of a lot of the driver and software tech that we're bringing in Windows 10, but if you want the full benefits of DX12, you're going to need a DX12 card."
http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/22/7874793/directx-12-wont-require-a-new-graphics-card-after-all
http://www.nextpowerup.com/news/17536/complete-directx-12-features-would-require-new-gpus-but-your-existing-gpu-isnt-obsolete-yet.html

 

[msattam]

Full benefits is pretty vague

 

[Snookslayer]

Another thing the whole "new cards are right around the corner" stuff is dumb. There is ALWAYS something right around the corner and if you always waited to see what was around the corner then you would NEVER buy a gpu.

Funny and true. I'm just hoping those "new cards right around the corner" will reduce the price of the current card I want down by 25% to 50%.

Hard to justify a $350+ graphic card while the old one still works. Especially when prices could plummet in a few months. Heck, the R9 290X cost about $600 this time last year.

We shall see...