Time for a gpu upgrade insane prices on 290x and gtx 970

[qls]

this year im looking to upgrade my gpu.
cpu: i7 920 water cooled
mobo: asrock x58 extreamsocket
psu: 1000w

was looking at the gtx 970 or an off brand r9 290x like a msi TWIN FROZR or gigabyte wind force. $279 seems like an insane price. by insane i mean insanely awesome.
will i have any issues on my current setup? im new to pc gaming setups but have gained a bit of knowledge over the year .5 i have had my rig.

 

[jdcranke07]

As long as you have a PCIe 2.0/3.0 x16 slot you will be fine on compatibility. The 970 will run cooler and have more power than the 290x. Prices probably will not go down until new generations come out and being as the 970 and 980 was just released not too long ago, it will be a while for the newer gen to come out.

 

[qls]

As long as you have a PCIe 2.0/3.0 x16 slot you will be fine on compatibility. The 970 will run cooler and have more power than the 290x. Prices probably will not go down until new generations come out and being as the 970 and 980 was just released not too long ago, it will be a while for the newer gen to come out.

Thanks for the quick reply it looks like i have 3- 2.0 pci e slots to go with. If i were to go with the 290x i was planning on going with the NZXT Kraken G10 water cooling kit. I am planning on running 3 1080p monitors in the future sense i have 2 already.
really just wanted to make sure my system can handle a new gpu. I acquired my pc from craigslist used, it originally came with 2 gts 450s in sli but when i cleaned my pc 6 months ago one of the cards has stopped working. So running on one crappy gts450 is killing me. haha sorry for the life story.
i hear about cpus throttling the gpu, will this be a problem?

 

[cst1992]

MSI TF and Gigabyte Windforce are not off-brand.
Anyways, 970 is pretty good, 290x's are also pretty cheap right now, you could go for whichever one you feel is good, they're more or less equal in performance.

 

[jackfrost005]

gtx 970 can run every game on ultra with 1080p resulation but gtx 970 has 3.5gb video mem not 4gb

 

[qls]

MSI TF and Gigabyte Windforce are not off-brand.
Anyways, 970 is pretty good, 290x's are also pretty cheap right now, you could go for whichever one you feel is good, they're more or less equal in performance.

Im not sure what the correct branding term is.. non reference cards maybe? I think im understanding that the 4 gb on the 290x is better for multi display gaming..

 

[qls]

gtx 970 can run every game on ultra with 1080p resulation but gtx 970 has 3.5gb video mem not 4gb

"Memory Gate?" lol

 

[jdcranke07]

They will both perform similarly across multiple panels in regards to can they do it. If you plan to stay with a 1080p panel then you will notice really no difference. However, if you go to a 1440p or UHD or 4K panel then the frame rates of the 970 will trump the 290X hands down.

 

[xDarkxIdealsx]

One thing though, if you do decide to get an R9 290X get the MSI Lightning, it's the fastest R9 290X of them all and it's only $299 on newegg. Apparently AMD is going to start offering even further discounts on R9 290/290X gpu's to any customers who are unhappy with their GTX970's as well. Too bad Nvidia and Gigabyte are complete *****s and refuse to refund for blatant false advertising and an obvious cover up of their illegal business practices.

I've been a loyal nvidia user for years, 8800GT, GTX295 BFG, GTX480, GTX570 SLI, GTX660 and now 2 x GTX970 G1 gamings in SLI and this is how i get treated.... -___- refused a refund, they won't even offer a step up program to allow us to trade in for a 980 like EVGA offers ALL THE TIME *sigh* and of course nvidia has no plans to fix it, honestly if i hadn't already purchased EK waterblocks for both of my 970's that i likely won't be able to get refunds for i would take the AMD deal in a heartbeat if i would be able to get two 290X's for $250ish on the discount, or some sort of trade in for 980's.

 

[qls]

One thing though, if you do decide to get an R9 290X get the MSI Lightning, it's the fastest R9 290X of them all and it's only $299 on newegg. Apparently AMD is going to start offering even further discounts on R9 290/290X gpu's to any customers who are unhappy with their GTX970's as well. Too bad Nvidia and Gigabyte are complete *****s and refuse to refund for blatant false advertising and an obvious cover up of their illegal business practices.

I've been a loyal nvidia user for years, 8800GT, GTX295 BFG, GTX480, GTX570 SLI, GTX660 and now 2 x GTX970 G1 gamings in SLI and this is how i get treated.... -___- refused a refund, they won't even offer a step up program to allow us to trade in for a 980 like EVGA offers ALL THE TIME *sigh* and of course nvidia has no plans to fix it, honestly if i hadn't already purchased EK waterblocks for both of my 970's that i likely won't be able to get refunds for i would take the AMD deal in a heartbeat if i would be able to get two 290X's for $250ish on the discount, or some sort of trade in for 980's.

yeah it is crazy to me that they would falsely advertise 4gb.. and still do advertise it.. it was no accident either. They could have a huge lawsuit on their hands.. but maybe the fact that is does physically have 4 gb of ram (3.5 usable) protects them from lawsuits.
I would pick up a lightning but they are sold out on newegg and way more than its worth on any other site. and i am going to water cool it anyway so no need to spend the extra on an extra air cooled card.

 

[xDarkxIdealsx]

One thing though, if you do decide to get an R9 290X get the MSI Lightning, it's the fastest R9 290X of them all and it's only $299 on newegg. Apparently AMD is going to start offering even further discounts on R9 290/290X gpu's to any customers who are unhappy with their GTX970's as well. Too bad Nvidia and Gigabyte are complete *****s and refuse to refund for blatant false advertising and an obvious cover up of their illegal business practices.

I've been a loyal nvidia user for years, 8800GT, GTX295 BFG, GTX480, GTX570 SLI, GTX660 and now 2 x GTX970 G1 gamings in SLI and this is how i get treated.... -___- refused a refund, they won't even offer a step up program to allow us to trade in for a 980 like EVGA offers ALL THE TIME *sigh* and of course nvidia has no plans to fix it, honestly if i hadn't already purchased EK waterblocks for both of my 970's that i likely won't be able to get refunds for i would take the AMD deal in a heartbeat if i would be able to get two 290X's for $250ish on the discount, or some sort of trade in for 980's.

yeah it is crazy to me that they would falsely advertise 4gb.. and still do advertise it.. it was no accident either. They could have a huge lawsuit on their hands.. but maybe the fact that is does physically have 4 gb of ram (3.5 usable) protects them from lawsuits.
I would pick up a lightning but they are sold out on newegg and way more than its worth on any other site. and i am going to water cool it anyway so no need to spend the extra on an extra air cooled card.

Well it's not that they say it has 4gb that's illegal, it's the fact that it says in big bold lettering on the top of every gpu box "4gb GDDR5" the fact that 500mb of the memory is 1/8th the speed of the rest means that it doesn't qualify as GDDR5 memory, i mean if you found out that your corsair/g. skills etc.. ram only had 6gb of DDR3 and the other 2gb was DDR1 ram you would call that false advertising too right? That's basically what's going on here, benchmarks show that the first 3.5gb is being accessed at several hundred gb/second speeds but the final 500mb slows down to less than 50 gb/second which as i mentioned is literally ancient 1999 GDDR1 speed.

And that sucks about that lightning, honestly it's not the special 3 fan air cooling that makes the lightning special, it's the fact that it's the highest out of box overclock of any 290X and has better overclocking capabilities beyond that as well. But you can always get like a Sapphire Tri-x or something, sucks that you can't seem to find any of the 4gb versions of the Vapor-X though. THe 8gb versions are like $450 and for some odd reason they aren't making the 4gb Vapor-x anymore so it's going for over $400 used as well. I'm stuck with two gigabyte 970's myself, they work perfectly fine for 1080p and most of 1440 but i spent $3,000 for a 4k water cooled rig and a caselabs case etc.. so i'm trying to figure out some way to trade up to a GTX980 even if i have to sell my 970's to someone who isn't using 4k since they won't have a problem at that resolution.

 

[qls]

One thing though, if you do decide to get an R9 290X get the MSI Lightning, it's the fastest R9 290X of them all and it's only $299 on newegg. Apparently AMD is going to start offering even further discounts on R9 290/290X gpu's to any customers who are unhappy with their GTX970's as well. Too bad Nvidia and Gigabyte are complete *****s and refuse to refund for blatant false advertising and an obvious cover up of their illegal business practices.

I've been a loyal nvidia user for years, 8800GT, GTX295 BFG, GTX480, GTX570 SLI, GTX660 and now 2 x GTX970 G1 gamings in SLI and this is how i get treated.... -___- refused a refund, they won't even offer a step up program to allow us to trade in for a 980 like EVGA offers ALL THE TIME *sigh* and of course nvidia has no plans to fix it, honestly if i hadn't already purchased EK waterblocks for both of my 970's that i likely won't be able to get refunds for i would take the AMD deal in a heartbeat if i would be able to get two 290X's for $250ish on the discount, or some sort of trade in for 980's.

yeah it is crazy to me that they would falsely advertise 4gb.. and still do advertise it.. it was no accident either. They could have a huge lawsuit on their hands.. but maybe the fact that is does physically have 4 gb of ram (3.5 usable) protects them from lawsuits.
I would pick up a lightning but they are sold out on newegg and way more than its worth on any other site. and i am going to water cool it anyway so no need to spend the extra on an extra air cooled card.

Well it's not that they say it has 4gb that's illegal, it's the fact that it says in big bold lettering on the top of every gpu box "4gb GDDR5" the fact that 500mb of the memory is 1/8th the speed of the rest means that it doesn't qualify as GDDR5 memory, i mean if you found out that your corsair/g. skills etc.. ram only had 6gb of DDR3 and the other 2gb was DDR1 ram you would call that false advertising too right? That's basically what's going on here, benchmarks show that the first 3.5gb is being accessed at several hundred gb/second speeds but the final 500mb slows down to less than 50 gb/second which as i mentioned is literally ancient 1999 GDDR1 speed.

And that sucks about that lightning, honestly it's not the special 3 fan air cooling that makes the lightning special, it's the fact that it's the highest out of box overclock of any 290X and has better overclocking capabilities beyond that as well. But you can always get like a Sapphire Tri-x or something, sucks that you can't seem to find any of the 4gb versions of the Vapor-X though. THe 8gb versions are like $450 and for some odd reason they aren't making the 4gb Vapor-x anymore so it's going for over $400 used as well. I'm stuck with two gigabyte 970's myself, they work perfectly fine for 1080p and most of 1440 but i spent $3,000 for a 4k water cooled rig and a caselabs case etc.. so i'm trying to figure out some way to trade up to a GTX980 even if i have to sell my 970's to someone who isn't using 4k since they won't have a problem at that resolution.

well what is on the box and pretty much any advertisement is 4gb. its like how fast food chains can get busted if their burgers as ordered don't look like the menu picture. It is false advertisement in its purest form. 4gb of ram as advertised. and there is really only 3.XX. Maybe i don't fully understand the law on this but any judge should see this as fraudulent. If not then there should be some revision of laws.
as for the r9 290x i think a good option is to go water cooled with a closed sealed kit and the cheapest new 290x i can find weather that me a reference card it shouldn't matter. right? as long as the cooling is sufficient?

 

[cst1992]

Well it's not that they say it has 4gb that's illegal, it's the fact that it says in big bold lettering on the top of every gpu box "4gb GDDR5" the fact that 500mb of the memory is 1/8th the speed of the rest means that it doesn't qualify as GDDR5 memory, i mean if you found out that your corsair/g. skills etc.. ram only had 6gb of DDR3 and the other 2gb was DDR1 ram you would call that false advertising too right? That's basically what's going on here, benchmarks show that the first 3.5gb is being accessed at several hundred gb/second speeds but the final 500mb slows down to less than 50 gb/second which as i mentioned is literally ancient 1999 GDDR1 speed.

It is GDDR5 memory, just that because of lack of cache, the last 1/8th of the memory is slower than other 7/8th.
They haven't lied about the memory. It's just that it's not as simple as GPU =>Memory, it's something like GPU=>XXX=>Memory. The problem is in that XXX, not in the memory.

 

[jdcranke07]

@qls: In regards to the CPU throttling the GPU, no it will not. It would bottleneck if anything. The 970 is a really efficient card and very powerful. In comparison to the 290X, I would always recommend the 970. I believe that AMD has their place and if you want to cut as much off the price as possible then go with the 290X. However, the extra couple of bucks spent on the 970 will save you more. It uses less power overall and does not get near as hot as the 290X will. So, less power consumption, runs cooler, and performs better (especially at higher resolutions) for a small price.