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[LilJoka]

Ehh, the 4GB 290X is ~$400, the 970 at ~$440 and the 8GB 290X at ~$500. Honestly, one could go either way. Depends on he users needs and preferences.

Sure, but throw TDP in the mix? Heat output? Partially passive designs? Average OC headroom? Noise? Anyone into the hobby would consider all factors, not just paper specs, especially when there is $40 in it.

I dont really consider the 8GB card as a smart purchase since using that much VRAM on these cards is going to end up in non playable situations, unless you are running XFire, but again i dont recommend dual GPU setups. And if you are to run dual GPU setups, then AMD is in a good position. Pretty sure recent frame time analysis on dual GPU setups had AMD in front of NVIDIA.

970 OC results
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2014/09/19/nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-review/12

290X OC results
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2014/03/11/sapphire-radeon-r9-290x-tri-x-oc-review/9

They are pretty much neck and neck, but i wonder what the thermals are like and noise at those clocks on the 290X. I know my 970 peaks at about 68c in Far Cry 4 99% usage over a long period of time at 1545Mhz Core 8000Mhz Memory @ 1.23v. So i would assume the overclock bit-tech used would actually be around 65c. Thats assuming a 20c ambient temp.

In fact you can see the Sapphire Tri X 290X is already 10c hotter at stock speeds over a MSI Gamer 970 running Heaven bench.

 

[diaspora]

Sure, but throw TDP in the mix? Heat output? Partially passive designs? Average OC headroom? Noise? Anyone into the hobby would consider all factors, not just paper specs, especially when there is $40 in it.

I dont really consider the 8GB card as a smart purchase since using that much VRAM on these cards is going to end up in non playable situations, unless you are running XFire, but again i dont recommend dual GPU setups. And if you are to run dual GPU setups, then AMD is in a good position. Pretty sure recent frame time analysis on dual GPU setups had AMD in front of NVIDIA.

Depends on the user's needs and preferences. If they want to game at 4k or high resolutions in general, then the TDP isn't really important. Incidentally, Sapphire's 290X is as cool and quiet as a 970. Again, it's down to what the user wants out of the GPU but the 970 is not a straight up better buy than the 290X in most/all scenarios.

 

[ruddiger7]

AMD have stuffed themselves releasing only a 4GB HBM card with 3 displayports.
Realistically it will be great for 1440p users but 4k or Triple 4k users like myself needed an 8GB model.

 

[Sir Abacus]

Triple 4K you're going to be using triple SLI anyway.

 

[ruddiger7]

I don't see anyone backing down from the 970 v 290x argument. As for the main topic, AMD rolled with Hawaii XT and Hawaii Pro cards last time for the 290X and 290 respectively, we could see a 390 Fiji pro too, maybe one with 8GB and another with 4GB? Though given how fast HBM is I'm not sure how much it really matters.

No 8GB anytime soon. AMD have confirmed to limiting themselves to just 4GB per card. The 8GB model will be out next year or late this year and will be a dual gpu to be a "titan-killer". Sucks though I was hoping for a single 8gb HBM GPU now i will probably go 980 ti sli till pascal.

 

[ruddiger7]

Triple 4K you're going to be using triple SLI anyway.

Yeah but Vram doesn't stack. You supposedly only use the one cards vram when you have two cards setup. I may not have said that accurately but I am pretty sure its right.

 

[Nostremitus]

AMD have stuffed themselves releasing only a 4GB HBM card with 3 displayports.
Realistically it will be great for 1440p users but 4k or Triple 4k users like myself needed an 8GB model.

Triple Crossfire 390X using DX12 would have 12GB HBM VRAM. VRAM capacity is supposed to be cumulative now instead of redundant.

Yeah but Vram doesn't stack. You supposedly only use the one cards vram when you have two cards setup. I may not have said that accurately but I am pretty sure its right.

Not yet.

 

[ruddiger7]

Triple Crossfire 390X using DX12 would have 12GB HBM VRAM. VRAM capacity is supposed to be cumulative now instead of redundant.


Not yet.

Still, the 390 will be extremely overpriced if it is $850US. Basically confirms a price of $1200AU or $3600 for tri-cf. I will see how it scales. As for VRAM stacking I guess we will just have to wait till DX12

 

[Boombox On]

Triple Crossfire 390X using DX12 would have 12GB HBM VRAM. VRAM capacity is supposed to be cumulative now instead of redundant

Isn't that only when developers go out of their way to support that? If so, that's just a subset of a subset of PC games.

 

[ZOONAMI]

No 8GB anytime soon. AMD have confirmed to limiting themselves to just 4GB per card. The 8GB model will be out next year or late this year and will be a dual gpu to be a "titan-killer". Sucks though I was hoping for a single 8gb HBM GPU now i will probably go 980 ti sli till pascal.

Dammit no they haven't. The source on this was a phone call with AMDs CTO talking more about HBM in general. In no way did he confirm only 4gb for their next gen card. It seems like ars technica made that assumption, but Macri never said their next gen top of the line GPU will definitely only have 4gb.

 

[Nostremitus]

Isn't that only when developers go out of their way to support that? If so, that's just a subset of a subset of PC games.

I don't know if it'll be handled on the developer or the driver side. Apparently Mantle is supposed to already be able to stack VRAM, though.

 

[ZOONAMI]

Without sounding harsh, this was what i was getting at earlier. 970 is still the better buy.

Not if you're running 1440p or 4k, or if you start using more than 3.5gb of vram and your game starts stuttering. The 290x is a cheaper, better performing, and more future-proofed card. The 970 is only a better buy if you are stuck at 1080p and care about using a little less power.

 

[LilJoka]

Not if you're running 1440p or 4k, or if you start using more than 3.5gb of vram and your game starts stuttering. The 290x is a cheaper, better performing, and more future-proofed card. The 970 is only a better buy if you are stuck at 1080p and care about using a little less power.

That is fair, but imo a corner case. The vast majority are not going to be running 4k on a 290X, not even 1600p. At 1440p the gap narrows to almost nothing, and at 1080p the 970 is on average faster. Power is not really an issue, its heat and noise albeit a by-product.

You can buy a 290X for £230 and a 970 for £270 in the UK currently.

 

[Captain1ndustry]

When we will see this stuff? I'm on the fence for either a GTX 970 or 960 atm. I'm currently running a r9 280 and a 9590 off a 600w psu, I'm wanting to get a geforce to cut down power draw. Pretty sure I'm close to or at the psu ceiling with my set up.

 

[LilJoka]

When we will see this stuff? I'm on the fence for either a GTX 970 or 960 atm. I'm currently running a r9 280 and a 9590 off a 600w psu, I'm wanting to get a geforce to cut down power draw. Pretty sure I'm close to or at the psu ceiling with my set up.

You have about 200W in headroom, that is if your PSU actually can deliver 600W on the 12v Rail.

Edit oh wow that is a 220W CPU!
So more like 100W in headroom.

 

[ZOONAMI]

That is fair, but imo a corner case. The vast majority are not going to be running 4k on a 290X, not even 1600p. At 1440p the gap narrows to almost nothing, and at 1080p the 970 is on average faster. Power is not really an issue, its heat and noise.

You can buy a 290X for £230 and a 970 for £270 in the UK currently.

Ugh, read the posts on the last page. They are virtually equal at 1080p, 290x is 8% faster at 1440p and 10% at 4k. I am running 4k with my 290x, I just can't max everything out. A mixture of settings at 4k looks ridiculously good on my 4k 65" Panasonic.

Non-reference 290x is just as cool and quiet as a 970, in some cases cooler and quieter (sapphire tri-x vs a 970 coil whining all the time). My 290x is in an evga hadron air which is pretty much one of the smallest itx cases you can get a full-sized GPU into and heat is not an issue.

So yeah, again, the 290x is the better buy. It would be the better buy if they were the same price. More and more games are going to start hitting that slow .5gb of ram, even at 1080p.

 

[Captain1ndustry]

You have about 200W in headroom, that is if your PSU actually can deliver 600W on the 12v Rail.

Edit oh wow that is a 220W CPU!
So more like 100W in headroom.

Yea I'm pushing it, I'm running an EVGA 600B so its capable but I don't like being that close. I should've done my research before building this one up, last PC I built was in the core 2 quad era. 8 cores at nearly 5ghz sounded too good to pass up though.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I love how people still don't know that WCCFTech runs with straight up rumors and gossip. Nothing you read in WCCFTech can be regarded as remotely factual.

 

[Devildoll]

When we will see this stuff? I'm on the fence for either a GTX 970 or 960 atm. I'm currently running a r9 280 and a 9590 off a 600w psu, I'm wanting to get a geforce to cut down power draw. Pretty sure I'm close to or at the psu ceiling with my set up.

hardocp's 280 systems drew about 300-360 watts depending on overclock,
they're running a machine with a 3770k @ 4,6 GHz to boot.
Since you have a cpu rated at 220 watt, you could probably add 100 watt onto their readings to get where you are at.

The 600b seems to be specced to deliver 588 watts on the 12 volt rail by the way.
Switching to a 970 would save you like 50 watts perhaps.

The big culprit is that 9590, what you could do is dump it down to 8350 speed, and then turn down the voltage as low as you can, which would probably get you down under regular 8350 consumption.

The safest bets for when we'll know more about both the 390x and the 980 ti is Computex and E3.

 

[dgrdsv]

Isnt it irrelevant when neither card is really pushing anywhere close to 60fps at such resolutions, even using console type settings? For me i can say its not really a playable range. Better off waiting for atleast a year before these games can be played with High settings (or atleast presets above consoles) at 4K or even 1600p. These cards are still 1080p60 GPUs to me, and the 970 does fine here.

This is what I've said.
Neither 290X nor 970 are capable of showing playable framerates above 2560x1600. The only card which is somewhat able to deal with 4K workloads at the moment is TitanX.

290X and GTX 970 are essentially the same in terms of performance.

This is what I've said as well.
ZOONAMI's crusade against 970 has become tiresome. I think that 290X is a good card - not great but good enough to provide an alternative to 970. But in no way or form is it a better option - just an alternative which has its own issues.

Ok.... does what you're saying invalidate what WCCFtech is saying about AMD possibly making an 8gb card?

You can't simply put more stacks on the interposer - the chip must have the channels to which the new stacks will connect to.
The only way AMD will be able to make an 8GB card with HBM1 and Fiji is if they'll build an interposer which will allow to interleave between two stacks of memory on one channel. Thus they'll be able to put eight stacks on the interposer and connect them in pairs to the GPU memory channels.
The main reason why I don't think that this will happen is because it looks like it's not happening at launch, as a standard. 4GB is such a glaring issue for a top end card that if there was a good way of adding more RAM - I'm sure that they'd add another 4 right from the start. Since it looks like they don't - it is probably too expensive / not worth it with HBM1.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

This is what I've said.
Neither 290X nor 970 are capable of showing playable framerates above 2560x1600. The only card which is somewhat able to deal with 4K workloads at the moment is TitanX.

Sheer quantity of VRAM is basically what carries the Titan X at 4K, the other cards choke when they fill up their VRAM and past 1080p, 4 GB of VRAM simply doesn't cut it.

I have a 970 now and watching it try to cope with 4K on my machine is like watching Abraham Simpson trying to run a marathon. If the 980 Ti is reasonably priced, offers 6 GB of non-split memory, and is available next month, I'll probably have to jump in because I won't realistically have anything better besides a Titan X until late 2016. It sucks but I've had SLI before and I'm not going down that road again, it's single GPU for me or bust.

 

[ZOONAMI]

This is what I've said.
Neither 290X nor 970 are capable of showing playable framerates above 2560x1600. The only card which is somewhat able to deal with 4K workloads at the moment is TitanX.



This is what I've said as well.
ZOONAMI's crusade against 970 has become tiresome. I think that 290X is a good card - not great but good enough to provide an alternative to 970. But in no way or form is it a better option - just an alternative which has its own issues.



You can't simply put more stacks on the interposer - the chip must have the channels to which the new stacks will connect to.
The only way AMD will be able to make an 8GB card with HBM1 and Fiji is if they'll build an interposer which will allow to interleave between two stacks of memory on one channel. Thus they'll be able to put eight stacks on the interposer and connect them in pairs to the GPU memory channels.
The main reason why I don't think that this will happen is because it looks like it's not happening at launch, as a standard. 4GB is such a glaring issue for a top end card that if there was a good way of adding more RAM - I'm sure that they'd add another 4 right from the start. Since it looks like they don't - it is probably too expensive / not worth it with HBM1.

The 970 is a great card, for 1080p. I think what myself and others have posted should make it fairly clear that the 290x is overall superior - when you factor in the 970s 3.5gb, higher price, and poorer performance at higher resolutions. The best reason to get a 970 would be if your are constricted by your PSU.

There is no reason to run everything at ultra if you can tweak some settings to have a great experience at your monitors native 1600p, or 4k resolution. Both the 290x and 980 are perfectly capable of 4k.

It seems to me there is a lot of nvidia brand loyalty that seems to rule out AMD even though they have the clear performance to dollar winner GPU on the market. This is not good for the industry, AMDs market share continues to shrink, and then we have a nvidia monopoly.

 

[ZOONAMI]

Sheer quantity of VRAM is basically what carries the Titan X at 4K, the other cards choke when they fill up their VRAM and past 1080p, 4 GB of VRAM simply doesn't cut it.

I have a 970 now and watching it try to cope with 4K on my machine is like watching Abraham Simpson trying to run a marathon. If the 980 Ti is reasonably priced, offers 6 GB of non-split memory, and is available next month, I'll probably have to jump in because I won't realistically have anything better besides a Titan X until late 2016. It sucks but I've had SLI before and I'm not going down that road again, it's single GPU for me or bust.

Your 970 doesn't have 4gb of unadulterated vram though. If you had a 290x or 980 and are willing to tweak your settings, you would find that you are fine at 4k. Another great option would be an 8gb 290x.

 

[Hattori]

multi-quotes exist for a reason...

 

[ZOONAMI]

multi-quotes exist for a reason...

I'm usually on my phone and that's kind of a pain in the ass with cutting and pasting, if there is an easy way on mobile please enlighten me.

 

[EmptySpace]

I'm usually on my phone and that's kind of a pain in the ass with cutting and pasting, if there is an easy way on mobile please enlighten me.

there's a plus-sign (+) button beside the quote(") button on each post

 

[ZOONAMI]

there's a plus-sign (+) button beside the quote(") button on each post

Aha! Lol thank you!

 

[Coulomb_Barrier]

Wouldn't it be great if AMD surprised everyone and got up on that stage and unveiled an 8GB HBM card.

That would really be game on for them versus Nvidia in the uber GPU space, and would position them nicely with the rumoured $850 price. If they then also announce a 4GB HBM 390 for ~$600, then they'll be playing some pretty smart cards, excuse the pun.

 

[desu]

Wouldn't it be great if AMD surprised everyone and got up on that stage and unveiled an 8GB HBM card.

That would really be game on for them versus Nvidia in the uber GPU space, and would position them nicely with the rumoured $850 price. If they then also announce a 4GB HBM 390 for ~$600, then they'll be playing some pretty smart cards, excuse the pun.

Would really love to see that, but I have no hope for that.

 

[mrklaw]

How is the 290x on power, noise and heat? I switched from my 7950 to a 970 because the 7950 was just too damn loud. The 970 is super quiet relatively speaking - using less power is a nice bonus but he main thing is that less power = less heat = less noise.

Price difference in the UK seems more than the U.S. about £50 difference between a 290x (£230) and 970 (£280). That's enough of a buffer that, even if the 399x/980Ti pushed 979/989 orices down a little bit, I'm not sure the 290x would drop much. If it could get to £199 that would be great.

At least being water cooled, the 390x should be damn quiet.

 

[Fou-Lu]

My roommate's 290x is much louder than my 7970. Seems to run cooler though.

 

[Linkup]

Isn't that only when developers go out of their way to support that? If so, that's just a subset of a subset of PC games.

API handles it or you can let it handle part of it or you can handle it yourself.

If anyone wants to get a great overview of what DX12 can do then watch Max McMullen talk at Build 2015. As he shows, we are just beginning to try new things with multiadapter support.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2015/3-673

Also yes memory will stack with the new APIs and at least with DX12 developer adoption is faster than previous d3d.

 

[Coulomb_Barrier]

Hopefully:

390X (will have a new name like NV's Titan) - 8GB HBM, $850
390 - 4GB HMB, $650
380X - Re-badged 290X, 8GB GDDR5, 5-8% faster, quieter, cooler
380 - Re-badged 290, 5-8% faster, quieter, cooler
370 - etc

 

[DieH@rd]

Hopefully:

390X (will have a new name like NV's Titan) - 8GB HBM, $850
390 - 4GB HMB, $650
380X - Re-badged 290X, 8GB GDDR5, 5-8% faster, quieter, cooler
380 - Re-badged 290, 5-8% faster, quieter, cooler
370 - etc

IMO:

390X 4GB HBM watercooled $800+ [limited availability]
390X 4GB HBM aircooled $650-700
390 4GB HBM aircooled $500-550
380X - $350-400
380 - $300-350

380/380X coming in 4/8 GB variants

 

[badb0y]

Hopefully:

390X (will have a new name like NV's Titan) - 8GB HBM, $850
390 - 4GB HMB, $650
380X - Re-badged 290X, 8GB GDDR5, 5-8% faster, quieter, cooler
380 - Re-badged 290, 5-8% faster, quieter, cooler
370 - etc

They should call it the AMD Zeus

 

[Coulomb_Barrier]

They should call it the AMD Zeus

It might be lol. Or have some other slightly silly name.

IMO:

390X 4GB HBM watercooled $800+ [limited availability]
390X 4GB HBM aircooled $650-700
390 4GB HBM aircooled $500-550
380X - $350-400
380 - $300-350

380/380X coming in 4/8 GB variants

I hope you're wrong that line-up wouldn't do much for them in the market unfortunately.

 

[velociraptor]

IMO:

390X 4GB HBM watercooled $800+ [limited availability]
390X 4GB HBM aircooled $650-700
390 4GB HBM aircooled $500-550
380X - $350-400
380 - $300-350

380/380X coming in 4/8 GB variants

If AMD releases with those prices, they'll be doomed. And rightfully so.

 

[AJLma]

If AMD releases with those prices, they'll be doomed. And rightfully so.

Depends. If the 380x is improved the similarly to how the 285 improved on the 280, then that would make the 380x a beast of a card at that price.

Doubtful that AMD had time to get all of that done though.

 

[DieH@rd]

If AMD releases with those prices, they'll be doomed. And rightfully so.

I want lower prices too, but I don't see them having access to cheap HBM. Hopefully I am wrong.

 

[velociraptor]

I want lower prices too, but I don't see them having access to cheap HBM. Hopefully I am wrong.

I just hate the fact AMD love rehashing old products. While the previous cards were fairly powerful, they're also very power hungry.

I am also curious to see how much of a step up AMD's high end offerings will be. It seems to me that there only seem to be incremental GPU increases. Nvidia did very well with the 970 GTX though. Great value for money.

 

[DieH@rd]

I just hate the fact AMD love rehashing old products. While the previous cards were fairly powerful, they're also very power hungry.

I am also curious to see how much of a step up AMD's high end offerings will be. It seems to me that there only seem to be incremental GPU increases. Nvidia did very well with the 970 GTX though. Great value for money.

Non-reference cooled 290X are also great value for money. They are powerful and silent. Few bucks more for power bill at the end of the year is not bothering me.

As for incremental increases... well... it looks like 390X will be around Titan, and that's a great boost from 290X, while still remaining on 28nm tech.

 

[michaelius]

Depends. If the 380x is improved the similarly to how the 285 improved on the 280, then that would make the 380x a beast of a card at that price.

Doubtful that AMD had time to get all of that done though.

Recent rumors suggest it's same old hawaii with higher clocks and 8 GB vram.

 

[cjp]

Ray-deon or Rad-eon?

 

[Dictator93]

Ray-deon or Rad-eon?

I have always sad Ray-deon. I think AMD and ATI formerly say the word as such as well.

 

[ashecitism]

Ray-deon or Rad-eon?

I have always sad Ray-deon. I think AMD and ATI formerly say the word as such as well.

yeah at 10s he says the former

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQhp2m5RuzI

there's also this lol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaS7A4-oUNU

I always said the latter though

 

[BeEatNU]

For me it's always interesting to see the anti-SLI folks. I've never had any major issues nor minor for that matter while running SLI except for SC

 

[jfoul]

We have pictures of the 390X & 980ti. Both cards are also currently in the hands of select media, and reviewers (980ti tease @ 1:18:24). We're almost there!

 

[cjp]

I have always sad Ray-deon. I think AMD and ATI formerly say the word as such as well.

yeah at 10s he says the former

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQhp2m5RuzI

there's also this lol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaS7A4-oUNU

I always said the latter though

Thanks.

 

[Hattori]

I wish Nvidia wasn't so cheap and actually include backplates for their enthusiast cards

 

[LilJoka]

Ugh, read the posts on the last page. They are virtually equal at 1080p, 290x is 8% faster at 1440p and 10% at 4k. I am running 4k with my 290x, I just can't max everything out. A mixture of settings at 4k looks ridiculously good on my 4k 65" Panasonic.

Non-reference 290x is just as cool and quiet as a 970, in some cases cooler and quieter (sapphire tri-x vs a 970 coil whining all the time). My 290x is in an evga hadron air which is pretty much one of the smallest itx cases you can get a full-sized GPU into and heat is not an issue.

So yeah, again, the 290x is the better buy. It would be the better buy if they were the same price. More and more games are going to start hitting that slow .5gb of ram, even at 1080p.

You use percentages to make it seem like a huge deal, if 4K is 30fps, 10% is 3fps, do you see thats actually irrelevant, even within the margin of error? At 1440p 8% is probably around 5fps, that could be 55fps vs 60fps (that isnt the difference between running Utlra vs high textures for example), but you are over exaggerating the difference. I think you are generalising too much when you say 970's coil whine, neither of the 2 MSI 970s i bought have coil whine unless im running 200fps.

I wish Nvidia wasn't so cheap and actually include backplates for their enthusiast cards

If you want to get rid of GPU sag, the backplate isnt needed on the reference designed coolers because the blower type design has the entire metal casing screwed to the board, and the metal wont bend obviously. Its the non reference coolers that need it since they use open air designs where the PCB is left to support itself.