Upgrade pickle (290, 970, or wait for 300 series?)

[Aaron Robbins]

I've been thinking a lot lately about what GPU to upgrade to lately. Right now I have an AMD FX 6300 and an R7 260X. I won't mind the 6300's bottleneck too much because I will be upgrading to an i5 4690k, a Xeon E3-1231v3, or an i7 4790k after I upgrade my GPU.

I want to be able to stream, render videos, maybe some photoshop, and play games at 60 FPS easily at UItra. So I figure my options I have are fair for what I want to do.

I figure that the cheapest upgrade right now would be to do GPU first then motherboard/CPU after that. That brings the question though: which GPU should I get?

In the NVidia camp there's the Gigabyte G1 Gaming 970. I would love to switch over to NVidia because I know their drivers to be a bit more reliable and that the 970 power consumption is drastically lower than AMD's offerings. A couple small gripes though are the small memory bus on the card (126?) compared to the 512 of the 290. Though not all games use the 3.5 GB of memory that the card is capable of at full speed, part of me is still uncertain about its capability in that area. I like the aesthetics (blue lights and a backplate) and cooling of the card, I just like the 290's looks a bit better.

In the AMD camp, there's the Sapphire Vapor-X R9 290. I wouldn't mind staying with AMD as long as the 290 is relatively future proof. My only concern is that my 260X and the AMD drivers for that matter have been contributing to BSOD's for as long as I've had the 260X. One minor concern is that the power consumed by an overclocked 290 might be too much for my power supply (gold rated EVGA NEX650G). The 290 is currently anywhere between 300 and 320 bucks on Amazon. I like the card because of it's aesthetic (blue and a backplate 😀) and its cooling capabilities. I also know the 290 performs very close to the 970.

And then there are the expectations of the 300 series of AMD cards. Will the drivers be better? Will the price of the 200 series come down enough to warrant a 290 purchase? Will the 300 series be worth the price depending on how they perform against the 900 series? I mean I guess waiting would be the best option just to see what the 300 series has to offer, but I'm so sick of the performance of the 260X and I really want to upgrade ASAP.

Any advice I could get RELEVANT to this would be appreciated! If you have any other suggestions as to what I should get here's some criteria: Don't want to spend more than $375, it has to have blue on the card, backplate is preferable, cool and quiet card.

Thanks in advance!

P.S. no AMD vs Nvidia wars plz? Just some unbiased feedback.

 

[JP7PlaysMC]

The AMD card competing with the GTX 970 is the R9 290X, not the R9 290...... that said the Nvidia card is a superior bet, in terms of both performance, power consumption and heat output. Waiting for the 300 series might be a good idea, as it'll lower pre-existing cards' prices as well as..... well, new cards 😀!

I've heard some rumours of the 300 series being made up of rebranded cards, with only the top tier one(s) being new ones.....


Edit: Maybe take a look at this one? http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-256bit-Graphics-04G-P4-3975-KR/dp/B00R3NK2LE/ref=sr_1_9?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1431817040&sr=1-9&keywords=gtx+970

On the CPU side of things go with the I5 4690k, unless you'll be streaming/rendering quite a bit..... or not quite a bit but want the absolute best performance, as there are some people like that (me ahah).

 

[esco_sid]

i woulkd definetly wait because they shoudl announce amd cards in the next month and it will definetly give you more options and will drop Nvidia prices.

 

[Aaron Robbins]

The AMD card competing with the GTX 970 is the R9 290X, not the R9 290...... that said the Nvidia card is a superior bet, in terms of both performance, power consumption and heat output. Waiting for the 300 series might be a good idea, as it'll lower pre-existing cards' prices as well as..... well, new cards 😀!

I've heard some rumours of the 300 series being made up of rebranded cards, with only the top tier one(s) being new ones.....


Edit: Maybe take a look at this one? http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-256bit-Graphics-04G-P4-3975-KR/dp/B00R3NK2LE/ref=sr_1_9?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1431817040&sr=1-9&keywords=gtx+970

On the CPU side of things go with the I5 4690k, unless you'll be streaming/rendering quite a bit..... or not quite a bit but want the absolute best performance, as there are some people like that (me ahah).

I looked at benchmarks from multiple sources comparing the 970 and the 290 and the 970 is only about 5-10% better than the 290, which is why I was thinking the 290; it isn't exactly like the 970, but it can hold it's own in some games. I mean, if the vapor x 290x 8gb version comes down in price, that might be an attractive option too, but we will see. As for that EVGA 970, its actually louder and hotter than the g1 gaming edition. The best option for the 970's right now is the MSI version, but they only have red and green for colors 🙁, and MSI's low end offering performs just that: low.

As for CPU, I really want to be able to stream and do some rendering, so I'd lean more toward the Xeon or the i7. If the 5930k wasn't a 2011 v3 chip i'd consider it, but an upgrade for the X99 platform is just too expensive for what I want to do.

It probably is a good idea to wait since the release of the 300 series is right around the corner. I didn't even consider the NVidia cards coming down in price after the 300 series launch! That's a good thought!

 

[drtoast]

Just the two cents of a g1 970 owner ---> If you are willing to spend a few hours OC'ing, it pushed to a 1544mhz clock,2000.7mhz mem. If you are sticking with gaming at 1080p. It performs closer to a 980 (would say it outperforms but i dont have a 980 to bench), just had my firestrike benchmark exceed the testbench of a titan tho.

Its a fantastic card, however it already has titles that prove to be too much for it, SoM in its HD content makes it start to struggle. If thats your goal game? You might be better with a 300 series, no harm in waiting unless you just can't take it any more 😛

If the 300 series dissapoint. well hopefully the 970 will be even cheaper with the time.

 

[Aaron Robbins]

Just the two cents of a g1 970 owner ---> If you are willing to spend a few hours OC'ing, it pushed to a 1544mhz clock,2000.7mhz mem. If you are sticking with gaming at 1080p. It performs closer to a 980 (would say it outperforms but i dont have a 980 to bench), just had my firestrike benchmark exceed the testbench of a titan tho.

Its a fantastic card, however it already has titles that prove to be too much for it, SoM in its HD content makes it start to struggle. If thats your goal game? You might be better with a 300 series, no harm in waiting unless you just can't take it any more 😛

If the 300 series dissapoint. well hopefully the 970 will be even cheaper with the time.

The goal is to game, render, and stream. That's a pretty insane OC for that card! I think the consensus here is to wait and see what the 300 series does to the market. Thanks all!