R9 Fury (non X) vs GTX 980 on multiple 1080p monitors @ 120hz

[rhodesgamer]

Hey there everyone. So I recently came into some money during the holidays that would allow me to cover about 70% of the cost of a high end GPU. Currently I have an R9 290, but I'm not confident in it's staying power in the coming years as far as consistent performance to supply my 120hz monitors (2 monitors currently, might go for three in the future if I win the lottery) the FPS that they crave. So basically I'm here to ask for your opinion on which card would best suit my needs, the Fury (non X) or the 980 (non Ti).

Before you suggest it, I'm not going to spend an extra $100+ for a 980Ti or Fury X, because I see no point. Also, I would like to add that I'm a college student, so I would like this card to last me for quite a while, considering that college students are not known for their excesses of money.

If you were curious, here are links to the two cards I was looking at in particular.

Fury: http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-Radeon-TRIPLE-PCI-Express-Graphics/dp/B011D7A526/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452234835&sr=8-1&keywords=amd+r9+fury

980: http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-Cooling-Graphics-04G-P4-2982-KR/dp/B00NI5DA2E/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1452234720&sr=1-3&keywords=evga+gtx+980

If you have any other models that you would like to suggest I would greatly appreciate it. I went with Sapphire because they are always my go to for AMD, and EVGA seems to have a great track record. Side note, is it just me are EVGA's cards always ugly as sin? I've never owned NVIDIA before, as I have always been batting for the red team. But I'm keeping an open mind about things.

Computer Specs:
Asus P8Z77-V Pro
Intel i5 3570k @3.4GHz
Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X
G.SKill Ripjaw X 16GB (2x8GB) @1600
Corsair AX860 80+ Platinum
Samsung 840 Evo 250GB SSD
Western Digital Black 1TB HDD
CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Evo
Rosewill Thor V2 Gaming Case

 

[okcnaline]

I would say that the GTX 980 would pull ahead in 1080P. Although the Fury and Fury X pulls far ahead in 1440P and 4K with their HBM memory, the cores are still an old design (the only things improved from non-Fiji is power efficiency, the core specification are still related to older cards dating to 2013), which doesn't help matters in performance.

 

[maxalge]

Hey there everyone. So I recently came into some money during the holidays that would allow me to cover about 70% of the cost of a high end GPU. Currently I have an R9 290, but I'm not confident in it's staying power in the coming years as far as consistent performance to supply my 120hz monitors (2 monitors currently, might go for three in the future if I win the lottery) the FPS that they crave. So basically I'm here to ask for your opinion on which card would best suit my needs, the Fury (non X) or the 980 (non Ti).

Before you suggest it, I'm not going to spend an extra $100+ for a 980Ti or Fury X, because I see no point based off of performance charts. Also, I would like to add that I'm a college student, so I would like this card to last me for quite a while, considering that college students are not known for their excesses of money.

If you were curious, here are links to the two cards I was looking at in particular.

Fury: http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-Radeon-TRIPLE-PCI-Express-Graphics/dp/B011D7A526/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452234835&sr=8-1&keywords=amd+r9+fury

980: http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-Cooling-Graphics-04G-P4-2982-KR/dp/B00NI5DA2E/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1452234720&sr=1-3&keywords=evga+gtx+980

If you have any other models that you would like to suggest I would greatly appreciate it. I went with Sapphire because they are always my go to for AMD, and EVGA seems to have a great track record. Side note, is it just me are EVGA's cards always ugly as sin? I've never owned NVIDIA before, as I have always been batting for the red team. But I'm keeping an open mind about things.

Computer Specs:
Asus P8Z77-V Pro
Intel i5 3570k @3.4GHz
Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X
G.SKill Ripjaw X 16GB (2x8GB) @1600
Corsair AX860 80+ Platinum
Samsung 840 Evo 250GB SSD
Western Digital Black 1TB HDD
CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Evo
Rosewill Thor V2 Gaming Case

"Before you suggest it, I'm not going to spend an extra $100+ for a 980Ti or Fury X, because I see no point based off of performance charts"

"so I would like this card to last me for quite a while"

which "charts" are you reading? LOL

980 ti is the answer, and even then you will need to compromise settings to run dual 120hz monitors

 

[Hawkshot]

for your setup there is very little difference between these 2 cards, they are both fantastic and will run any game on 1080p without any problems what so ever, it depends on what you prefer amd or Intel, both fit purpose, both are roughly the same price but I know if it were me ide get the GTX 980 because I like it more but that's personal opinion.

 

[rhodesgamer]

"Before you suggest it, I'm not going to spend an extra $100+ for a 980Ti or Fury X, because I see no point based off of performance charts"

"so I would like this card to last me for quite a while"

which "charts" are you reading? LOL

980 ti is the answer, and even then you will need to compromise settings to run dual 120hz monitors

It's very interesting that you say that, because from what I can tell AMD's HBM can handle the multiple resolutions I'm looking for a lot better than NVIDIA can, considering I would need a minimum of 3 monitors to even play games on a multi-monitor setup. Besides, this isn't a discussion about the 980ti is it?

 

[maxalge]

"Before you suggest it, I'm not going to spend an extra $100+ for a 980Ti or Fury X, because I see no point based off of performance charts"

"so I would like this card to last me for quite a while"

which "charts" are you reading? LOL

980 ti is the answer, and even then you will need to compromise settings to run dual 120hz monitors

It's very interesting that you say that, because from what I can tell AMD's HBM can handle the multiple resolutions I'm looking for a lot better than NVIDIA can, considering I would need a minimum of 3 monitors to even play games on a multi-monitor setup. Besides, this isn't a discussion about the 980ti is it?

that would be incorrect, the 980 ti is superior by a fair margin and the gap increases when overclocked


you were excluding the best alternative out of hand for no reason, because of faulty information

for what you want to do you need the best performance you can get that is the 980 ti



you really do need to rock two of these cards to fully utilize those 120hz monitors, especially if you want to add more

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

The Fury is the best option. 980 Ti/Fury X is overkill for this but the Fury will handle the higher effective resolution much better then the 980, the 980 is slightly better at 1080p but worse everywhere else.

 

[Hawkshot]

my only question is you have an R9 290 already which is a pretty decent card for 1080p gaming in its own rights why not save the money and wait for Pascal to come out then get one of those?

 

[NightAntilli]

Wait for the 14nm cards. Also, your current card will drive everything fine for a while, especially when developers jump ship to DX12, the card's performance will get a huge boost.

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

Yeah I can second holding. At the least there might be a lot of 1 year used Fury X/980 Ti cards on the market.

 

[rhodesgamer]

"Before you suggest it, I'm not going to spend an extra $100+ for a 980Ti or Fury X, because I see no point based off of performance charts"

"so I would like this card to last me for quite a while"

which "charts" are you reading? LOL

980 ti is the answer, and even then you will need to compromise settings to run dual 120hz monitors

It's very interesting that you say that, because from what I can tell AMD's HBM can handle the multiple resolutions I'm looking for a lot better than NVIDIA can, considering I would need a minimum of 3 monitors to even play games on a multi-monitor setup. Besides, this isn't a discussion about the 980ti is it?

that would be incorrect, the 980 ti is superior by a fair margin and the gap increases when overclocked


you were excluding the best alternative out of hand for no reason, because of faulty information

for what you want to do you need the best performance you can get that is the 980 ti



you really do need to rock two of these cards to fully utilize those 120hz monitors, especially if you want to add more

I think not wanting to spend more money, which I may or may not have, to be a valid reason.

 

[rhodesgamer]

my only question is you have an R9 290 already which is a pretty decent card for 1080p gaming in its own rights why not save the money and wait for Pascal to come out then get one of those?

The 290 is undoubtedly a great piece of a kit. I've just been noticing that with the newest releases it struggles to maintain constant 60+ FPS with everything cranked up. Considering I might be playing with a three monitor setup sometime in the near future I figured it might be a good time to upgrade. The 290 has lasted me a little over two years so it's been pretty good I think.

 

[NightAntilli]

That's likely due to driver overhead issues rather than the card being on its limit. When you get those drops, is your GPU at max load? Or does the GPU load drop?

 

[questgraves]

"Before you suggest it, I'm not going to spend an extra $100+ for a 980Ti or Fury X, because I see no point based off of performance charts"

"so I would like this card to last me for quite a while"

which "charts" are you reading? LOL

980 ti is the answer, and even then you will need to compromise settings to run dual 120hz monitors

It's very interesting that you say that, because from what I can tell AMD's HBM can handle the multiple resolutions I'm looking for a lot better than NVIDIA can, considering I would need a minimum of 3 monitors to even play games on a multi-monitor setup. Besides, this isn't a discussion about the 980ti is it?

that would be incorrect, the 980 ti is superior by a fair margin and the gap increases when overclocked


you were excluding the best alternative out of hand for no reason, because of faulty information

for what you want to do you need the best performance you can get that is the 980 ti



you really do need to rock two of these cards to fully utilize those 120hz monitors, especially if you want to add more

I think not wanting to spend more money, which I may or may not have, to be a valid reason.

my only question is you have an R9 290 already which is a pretty decent card for 1080p gaming in its own rights why not save the money and wait for Pascal to come out then get one of those?

The 290 is undoubtedly a great piece of a kit. I've just been noticing that with the newest releases it struggles to maintain constant 60+ FPS with everything cranked up. Considering I might be playing with a three monitor setup sometime in the near future I figured it might be a good time to upgrade. The 290 has lasted me a little over two years so it's been pretty good I think.

I have to agree. I currently own an R9 290 OC DirectCU II Asus card and have it overclocked on Asus heatsink, using 3 x Asus 2ms 1080 24-inch, 60-75hz monitors (Basically means 60). You are right 60FPS with everything cranked up not quite but very close and I can dial back some AA to a midrange level to achieve the high frame rates 60-75. I just updated my system however to a new MB and Processor (AMD 8350 to 6700K with an Asus ROG Extreme MB and 32Gigs of DDR4@3200Mhz) So I'm at that jumping off point, another 290 for CF or get more VRAM to accomodade the monitors better. I would wait just a bit for the 14nm parts and see what AMD pulls out of it's hat with HBM. Worst case you have some time to spend on slightly lower settings with 3 monitors. and yes I saw the refresh rates you bastard 😉

 

[AdmiralDonut]

You have 3 months, tops, before the new NVIDIA and AMD cards are announced. Buying something now would be utterly pointless. Have some patience and you may even find the price of a 980Ti dropping down to an affordable level.