I couldn't believe the charts posted showing this card AS FAST as the GTX 980.
I should not that it's close to a 980 at stock speeds but the 980 has 17-25% overclocking headroom so it will ultimately beat a 390 by ~20% if you are willing to OC. $370 B-stock 980 is also a great deal. I can't recommend against that either. This more comes down to how you feel about spending an extra $100 now or buying a stop-gap 390 and using the $100 towards a 16nm HBM2 GPU in late 2016/2017.
I then did some research...and was shocked. I mean, really shocked! Russian, first off, I very much enjoy your posts and how much info you provide. Thank you very much for that.
Thanks a lot for your kind words! :biggrin:
A lot of people overhyped 970/980 but 390/390X are also solid cards, especially now that prices on them are falling.
I'm coming from a GTX 770 2GB and have been wanting to upgrade for a while in anticipation of Fallout 4. Before it launches, I want to play through FO3, FO NV and Skyrim, all heavily modded.
Here is what I would do in your shows. FO3 and FO NV are not demanding titles so you can play them with your 770 2GB. Both of those games should take you all the way until FO4 launches. This is important because if ideally you are upgrading for FO4, why not wait to see real world performance of 970/980/390/390X vs. each other at 1440P?
On the case of Skyrim modded, you can try it but 770 2GB will likely limit you at a lot with many mods at 1440P. If you go with FO3/FO NV first, and see FO4 benchmarks, you can always upgrade in November. The deals on R9 390/390X/970/980 are likely to accelerate in Q4 as it's the holiday season.
I can't think of a better card, after seeing this. Do I jump in? I play at 1440p. Or, do I go stupid and get a Fury X or 980 Ti? I also have Shoprunner so free 2-day shipping for a total of $259 shipped.
I am personally of the view that right now the best card to buy are 970/390 and GTX980Ti, nothing in between, except an EVGA B-stock 980s. Those are solid too. I wouldn't get a Fury X.
As far as your choice of games goes, I'd much rather go 970/390 for $260 now and then upgrade again to a 16nm 8-16GB HBM2 GPU when you need more power rather than get a 980Ti. The only question mark is how well FO4 will run at 1440P but if you follow my advice above, you just have a month and a bit to find out.
Having said that if you have a friend, cousin, family member or a quick way to sell a GTX770 for a good price and you are excited for an upgrade this year, it's hard to go wrong with a 970/390/b-stock 980.
I picked one up last week when it was $273. So far it seems to work fine; was a pia getting my 2500k system to accept it. I had to go through hell to flash the mb (they never released an official bios that could be flashed that would support the newer mb; you had to download something from the forum that only worked with a tool in some other forum and it is a really annoying bios but at least the card now works
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Definitly don't recommend this card if you have an old msi p68 mb. But other than that it seems fine. I'm using whatever drivers windows laoded. 3dmarks gives 12000 (no clue if that is good or bad); some people complain that the fans don't kick in until the card is above 60c and that is bad for the cpu (not gpu) (too much heat int he case). Seems ok in my system.
Thanks for your valuable feedback on this specific card and your compatibility issues.
As far as your last point goes,
modern Intel CPUs can easily handle > 90C. Therefore, it seems unfounded that some people would start panicking that their CPU temperatures are rising when the card doesn't turn the fans on up to 60C.
BTW, I recommend that you overclock your 2500K processor to get extra performance out of your system and squeeze the most out of that graphics card upgrade.
Would this be much faster at 1920x1200 than a 7970.
925mhz 7970 ~ R9 285/GTX960. You'd be looking at about a 49-51% increase on average.
Is the upgrade worth it for you? Well it depends if you can sell the 7970 for $80-100 or move it to replace your 5870 and someone actually would benefit from the 2500K+5870->7970 upgrade as well.
It also depends on what games do you play, etc. If you play a lot of indie titles or have a backlog of older less GPU demanding titles, then it might not be worth it. For example, after-market 7970 cards can overclock to 1150-1200mhz so it's possible for the games you do play a single 7970 OC is good enough to hold you over until 16nm HBM2 GPUs. If OTOH, you plan on playing the latest games in the next 6 months and plan on heavily gaming over this winter, then it might be worth it.
I personally like to upgrade when the performance increase is 75-100% faster than my existing card unless I can get a smoking deal but I've seen many people upgrade for a 15-50% increase. Everyone is different. ^_^
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