R9 390 or GTX 970??

I

ihira

Gawd
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Sep 30, 2007
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My GTX 580 hit the fan after 4.5 years :(
I need a replacement and I'm stuck between these two.
They're pretty much the same price.

Reviewing benchmarks it seems for general performance r9 390 is a tad faster than GTX 970?

Also how much faster is a r9 390/GTX 970 compared to a GTX 580?
I can't find any direct comparisons becuase GTX 580 is pretty old.

It will be paired with a i7 2600K (stock clock) on 1920x1200 res. if that matters.

I just need someone to push my descision, thanks.
 
At that resolution I'd get whichever is the better deal. If you plan to up your res get the 8GB 390 as some games need more than 3.5GB VRAM on higher resolutions.
 
Either card is roughly twice as fast as a 580, but in newer DX11 games they are usually faster than that. On top of just the raw GPU power, they also have the potential to be even faster at high resolutions/settings since they carry more than twice the VRAM (assuming the regular 1.5GB model).
 
If you have a halfway decent power supply, I would say the 390. If you plan to play at higher resolutions in the future, the 8gb ram will definitely be a boost for future games, over the 3.5gb from the 970.
 
txsizzler said:
If you have a halfway decent power supply, I would say the 390. If you plan to play at higher resolutions in the future, the 8gb ram will definitely be a boost for future games, over the 3.5gb from the 970.
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Agreed.
 
You should see a ~2x performance gain over your 580 with either option. That said the 970 vs 390 is essentially a question of power consumption vs vram. If 100 watts is more important than 4GBs of ram then go with the 970. If it's the other way round get the 390.
 
It's more like 70w more for the 390, but that's still a substantial amount. I'd O/C that 2600k though. At that res you are going to be CPU bound with cards that powerful in some games.
 
txsizzler said:
If you have a halfway decent power supply, I would say the 390. If you plan to play at higher resolutions in the future, the 8gb ram will definitely be a boost for future games, over the 3.5gb from the 970.
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The 390 does not have the power to push 8GB VRAM. If you were talking about xfire then it would be a different story.

Also, those thinking about getting a 390 should consider the 290x 8GB. It's a much better deal usually and can be flashed to 390x bios.
 
Kaisei said:
The 390 does not have the power to push 8GB VRAM. If you were talking about xfire then it would be a different story.
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Come again? More ram is all about loading larger more detailed textures and loading a shit texture takes the same amount of processing power as loading a larger one (albeit with more memory bandwidth demand).
 
Darakian said:
Come again? More ram is all about loading larger more detailed textures and loading a shit texture takes the same amount of processing power as loading a larger one (albeit with more memory bandwidth demand).
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That's not true. There is a such thing as too much VRAM on GPUs that aren't powerful enough.

"Having 8GB of VRAM is great, but it won't fully be utilized until you put two of these video cards together in CrossFire and run at 4K. You simply do not have GPU power to push the massive amount of 4K pixels, so the extra VRAM is a waste in single GPU configuration. CrossFire is the only solution that will make the Radeon R9 390/X a good gaming experience at 4K. That is what it is going to take, in single-card format, these are not going to handle 4K very well purely based on performance they are able to deliver. The horsepower just isn't there as a single-GPU."

"Here is the rub when it comes to 8GB of VRAM on the Radeon R9 390X, that 8GB of VRAM is not going to show its potential unless you have the performance to utilize settings that benefit from that much VRAM. As a single video card, the Radeon R9 390X is not powerful enough to run at the settings that would push the envelope on the VRAM past 4GB at 4K."

As quoted from HardOCP.
 
I was talking about textures, but you're right. A larger frame buffer will also demand more ram and require more processing power. To be fair nothing runs 4k well right now.
 
Darakian said:
I was talking about textures, but you're right. A larger frame buffer will also demand more ram and require more processing power. To be fair nothing runs 4k well right now.
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Yea... what Skillz said. No way Hawaii architecture can push 8GB VRAM without a second GPU to help it out...
 
Darakian said:
I was talking about textures, but you're right. A larger frame buffer will also demand more ram and require more processing power. To be fair nothing runs 4k well right now.
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Even that's wrong. A higher-resolution texture will increase the local memory bandwidth required, as it will have to be read by the GPU every time it's sampled. Caching can help, but not eliminate this bandwidth.

Twice the texture resolution = twice the texture bandwidth (not the only load on total memory bandwidth used by a game, but a major one). So no, pure VRAM space is not the only limiting factor for texture resolution. And both the GTX 970 and the 390 are bandwidth-limited.
 
GTA V uses all 4GB of VRAM on my bros 290x, just for reference.
 
rive22 said:
GTA V uses all 4GB of VRAM on my bros 290x, just for reference.
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Yeah exactly. I think we'll see a lot of well optimized games (i.e. run on enthusiast hardware) that make use of ram the way GTAV does in the coming year or two.
 
rive22 said:
GTA V uses all 4GB of VRAM on my bros 290x, just for reference.
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No, it doesn't. It fills it because it's there.

Whether or not it actually NEEDS that memory it consumes is another thing. If you can produce a graph for me like this one, you'll actually KNOW what you're talking about:

http://techreport.com/blog/28800/how-much-video-memory-is-enough

Do this for your 290x, and show conclusively the performance hits a wall at higher resolutions, then I would believe you. Otherwise, you are just quoting the VRAM usage numbers from Afterburner, while you have no idea how the game actually uses that VRAM.

Just use VSR to run higher resolutions.

The Tech Report test shows that every 4GB Maxwell and Hawaii and Fiji card can play at 4k resolution with the highest texture load on Shadow of Mordor without hitting a hard VRAM wall. Yes, even the legendary 970 only hits the VRAM wall at 5k resolution! Comparative performance dropoff is the only real way to tell if a VRAM wall has been hit, as each game uses available VRAM differently.
 
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What I do know is GTA V will not let you enable higher options without the additional VRAM. So in that sense, it matters to have it.
 
rive22 said:
What I do know is GTA V will not let you enable higher options without the additional VRAM. So in that sense, it matters to have it.
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You can turn off the limiter. It's optional, as far as I've read (I don't own the game).

I dare you to tell it to ignore the limit cap, and try putting some settings one one tick higher than it says you have VRAM for.

Come back and yell at me if your performance tanks, but I'm almost certain it will not. The VRAM limit is probably a "worst-case" limit for people running this game on 4GB system ram, or running the video card in some decrepit old PCIe slot running at 4x.

More ram installed in your system means more swap space for the game to use as an off-card texture cache. A faster interface between that cache ram and the GPU (full x16 2.0 or 3.0 PCIe slot) = more robust ability to make the most of what little VRAM you have. The better your PCIe connection and available system ram cache, the less the game has to rely on using your VRAM for a big dumb on-card cache space.
 
Turning off the limiter and going over the VRAM takes a hit in GTA IV after modding it with high res textures, though that game was poorly optimized. I tried the commandline codes in GTA V but they wouldn't take. I'm willing to try if anyone knows how to bypass the VRAM limiter. My game rig has 16GB RAM.

I tried using the -norestrictions -nomemrestrict commands.
 
Yeah, I just got home form work and watched the video I linked. The vram limits are complete bull.
 
defaultluser said:
You can turn off the limiter. It's optional, as far as I've read (I don't own the game).

I dare you to tell it to ignore the limit cap, and try putting some settings one one tick higher than it says you have VRAM for.

Come back and yell at me if your performance tanks, but I'm almost certain it will not. The VRAM limit is probably a "worst-case" limit for people running this game on 4GB system ram, or running the video card in some decrepit old PCIe slot running at 4x.

More ram installed in your system means more swap space for the game to use as an off-card texture cache. A faster interface between that cache ram and the GPU (full x16 2.0 or 3.0 PCIe slot) = more robust ability to make the most of what little VRAM you have. The better your PCIe connection and available system ram cache, the less the game has to rely on using your VRAM for a big dumb on-card cache space.
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It appears so far that your assumption is correct bro. :D I went over my VRAM as much as I could which was an additional 1GB at my res. Unfortunately since everything else was already maxed out the only other option was going with 8x msaa which hurts performance badly. BUT, the 20fps were smooth and not studdery and everything rendered properly the way it should unlike when doing this in GTA IV. Upon monitoring system resources the system RAM picked up the slack. Very cool bro. :cool:
 
Glad to hear it man! For the most part, you can get away with 2GB for 1080p gaming. You only benefit from 3-4GB at 1440p and above, and of course you can (mostly) game at 4k with only 4GB ram.
 
blank said:
Yeah exactly. I think we'll see a lot of well optimized games (i.e. run on enthusiast hardware) that make use of ram the way GTAV does in the coming year or two.
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I don't think GTAV is well optimized. At least not from the time it was released to about May-ish 2015 it was not. It was taking up all the VRAM that it could, constant crashes due to memory leaks, etc. I hear it's gotten a bit better with patches recently, but still, not as optimized as other games.
 
Kaisei said:
I don't think GTAV is well optimized. At least not from the time it was released to about May-ish 2015 it was not. It was taking up all the VRAM that it could, constant crashes due to memory leaks, etc. I hear it's gotten a bit better with patches recently, but still, not as optimized as other games.
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My GTA V has not crashed a single time. No glitches, no bugs, it uses 4 CPU cores, handles crossfire perfectly good, is fast, looks great. Compared to GTA IV they have done an absolutely phenomenal job. It is a 60GB game.
 
rive22 said:
My GTA V has not crashed a single time. No glitches, no bugs, it uses 4 CPU cores, handles crossfire perfectly good, is fast, looks great. Compared to GTA IV they have done an absolutely phenomenal job. It is a 60GB game.
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GTA V crashes are pretty wide spread.

https://support.rockstargames.com/hc/communities/public/questions/203283328-GTA-V-PC-Memory-leak

There are several other crashes and bugs not related to memory as well. If you haven't gotten any crashes then you are pretty luck, I would say.
 
I'm don't think that crashing is precisely the same thing as optimized. Stable implies not crashing.
 
Well it constantly crashing due to memory leaks means it's not optimized. If it were, then it would be using a proper amount of memory and not just the maximum amount. On a similar note, optimizing does not mean utilizing ever little bit of VRAM, it would mean using just enough to perform.
 
Kaisei said:
GTA V crashes are pretty wide spread.

https://support.rockstargames.com/hc/communities/public/questions/203283328-GTA-V-PC-Memory-leak

There are several other crashes and bugs not related to memory as well. If you haven't gotten any crashes then you are pretty luck, I would say.
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crazy, I guess I'm lucky. I've never had a single problem with the game. I noticed most people in that that are using only 8GB system ram in their rigs. Maybe that has something to do with it.
 
Kaisei said:
Well it constantly crashing due to memory leaks means it's not optimized. If it were, then it would be using a proper amount of memory and not just the maximum amount. On a similar note, optimizing does not mean utilizing ever little bit of VRAM, it would mean using just enough to perform.
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Yeah, I mean I'm thinking of optimized very generally. I agree that if you are putting objects in memory and then not doing anything with them, or at least clearing them, then you are probably not being super efficient with resources. GTA V is a complex game however, so I imagine it's very difficult to account for all objects in memory and what to do with them under all possible states. If they open sourced the game, people could help the find and fix bugs, which would make the community and support much better. For example, Arkham Knight might have been reported by the community by now if the game developers had made it open source.
 
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