290 VS 970

290X > 970 in raw performance because of the severe 970 throttling at the high end of power consumption.

I should know because I've been benching my strix against my oc'd 290x.
 
290X are already under 280$ in the used market.. =)...

Problem with 'used market' for AMD is that its mixed with mining cards. Do buyers just take the sellers word that the card hasnt been running 24/7 for months on end?
 
Problem with 'used market' for AMD is that its mixed with mining cards. Do buyers just take the sellers word that the card hasnt been running 24/7 for months on end?

Buy one with a serial based warranty. If it goes bad, you still get working card out of the deal.
 
Thats not how this game is played.
AMD will be playing the next card in their deck, which is the same card as it was going to be before Maxwell launched.

Be prepared for a FX5800Ultra? You mean what Nvidia will need to do to answer AMD?

Wasn't the card they played the r9 285? Considering tahiti is EOL, the next card in AMD product stack is either something smaller than Tonga or the big Fiji chip which will EOL Hawaii.

It doesn't make much sense to slot something in between the 360mm2 tonga and the 500mm2 Fiji. Unless, they did something drastic to the architecture which they didn't if Tonga is anything to go by, you would just get hawaii performance if they did.

So unless they release a 20nm card which is impossible in the next 6 months, they don't have a direct response for gm204. Although Fiji could beat a GM204 card, it would take alot more power doing it and a bigger more expensive chip to do so. And it would be an empty victory if GM210 takes the crown. Being the fastest card on the market allows a premium to be charge on the card which is crucial for these monster die cards.

Tonga really needed to be a faster card. The generally poor reception/lack of excitement in comparison to the gtx 970 and 980 launches, just kills alot of faith in the company. If the launch of Tonga, came with a better reception, people wouldn't be so happy about the gtx 970/980s.

Your right that all AMD can do is play the next card in their deck, but that's going to be trouble if their deck was original stacked to play against Nvidias last gen of cards.

You can say all day they were targeting the gtx 760, but if I was either AMD or Nvidia and I was making a new 360mm2 chip, I sure would want to charge more than 250 dollars for it. But with the performance of r9 285, that's all they can charge and thats too high.

Why this spells a bit of trouble for AMD is the last time AMD lost both the performance, efficiency crown was the 8800 gtx. Typically AMD took the efficiency crown and Nvidia took the performance crown for the last 6 or 8 years(atleast when they were on the same node). But that 8800 gtx generation was a very expensive event for AMD. Can they afford another one of these bombshells? GCN is very mature at this point unlike first gen VLIW which had an over glaring flaw of too little shader power, so the fix isn't as easy for AMD this time.
 
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Wasn't the card they played the r9 285? Considering tahiti is EOL, the next card in AMD product stack is either something smaller than Tonga or the big Fiji chip which will EOL Hawaii.

It doesn't make much sense to slot something in between the 360mm2 tonga and the 500mm2 Fiji. Unless, they did something drastic to the architecture which they didn't if Tonga is anything to go by, you would just get hawaii performance if they did.

So unless they release a 20nm card which is impossible in the next 6 months, they don't have a direct response for gm204. Although Fiji could beat a GM204 card, it would take alot more power doing it and a bigger more expensive chip to do so. And it would be an empty victory if GM210 takes the crown. Being the fastest card on the market allows a premium to be charge on the card which is crucial for these monster die cards.

Tonga really needed to be a faster card. The generally poor reception/lack of excitement in comparison to the gtx 970 and 980 launches, just kills alot of faith in the company. If the launch of Tonga, came with a better reception, people wouldn't be so happy about the gtx 970/980s.

Your right that all AMD can do is play the next card in their deck, but that's going to be trouble if their deck was original stacked to play against Nvidias last gen of cards.

You can say all day they were targeting the gtx 760, but if I was either AMD or Nvidia and I was making a new 360mm2 chip, I sure would want to charge more than 250 dollars for it. But with the performance of r9 285, that's all they can charge and thats too high.

Why this spells a bit of trouble for AMD is the last time AMD lost both the performance, efficiency crown was the 8800 gtx. Typically AMD took the efficiency crown and Nvidia took the performance crown for the last 6 or 8 years(atleast when they were on the same node). But that 8800 gtx generation was a very expensive event for AMD. Can they afford another one of these bombshells? GCN is very mature at this point unlike first gen VLIW which had an over glaring flaw of too little shader power, so the fix isn't as easy for AMD this time.

You are counting chickens as runts before they hatch. If you believe AMD was expecting to compete against Kepler, well then, their sandbagging worked quite well.
 
You are counting chickens as runts before they hatch. If you believe AMD was expecting to compete against Kepler, well then, their sandbagging worked quite well.

Just reading the signs that are out right now. And most signs point towards Tonga being a lame duck.

So far what we know. Full Tonga is 2048 shaders according to confirmations at techreport and extremetech directly from AMD. A shader difference of 14 or 12.5 percent depending how u do the calculation.

Current tonga is 75% slower than the gtx 980 according to the review at techpowerup.com

The r9 285 has similar power consumption to gm204 + or - 20 watts.

And the silence from AMD is deafening right now.

4 of their cards(290x, 290 and r9 280x and r9 285) have been dispatched and its very difficult to make a case for any of them. Add in the superior brand value of Nvidia and you have a situation where if your going to do a leak, do it now because your cards are not going to sell at the prices they are listed at and not doing anything is doing more harm than good.

From the evidence, it makes more sense to count AMD out(atleast for the next 8 months) than to believe a miracle is coming. That miracle being tonga has 60-70% more performance hidden away.
 
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LoL. I will leave you with this... Why did Nvidia change the GTX970 price at the last minute?
 
You'll save money with the 290 but the 970 is more energy efficient and it runs faster. I say to get the 970.
 
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Problem with 'used market' for AMD is that its mixed with mining cards. Do buyers just take the sellers word that the card hasnt been running 24/7 for months on end?

How is that any different with any other component you buy.

You never know how the item was treated when you buy used.
 
I still would want to sway away from mining cards and get a brand new card instead.

but what kirbyrj said its already the best option, buy a card with serial based warranty or transferable warranty.. best of two worlds.. not matter how badly was treated the card, you can always RMA it..
 
Does AMD actually have room to reduce 290 pricing? Given its 5.2B transistor GPU on a 512-bit bus and 4GB of GDDR5, I have to wonder at margins they're operating at with it.

Whereas nVidia has enought thermal headroom to take their card from 165W to 250W with the need for an FX 5800 ULTRA like situation.
It's not clear such headroom actually exists in GM204.

There is a lot more information out there if you know where to look and who to listen to.
Thankfully, you're making it awfully easy to determine who not to listen to.

Haha :p... but I dunno know if they used edible water in the first place.
I'm sure the water used is quite safe to ingest, it being water and presumably non-radioactive. The additives, on the other hand, may make it quite dangerous to ingest.
 
290X > 970 in raw performance because of the severe 970 throttling at the high end of power consumption.

I should know because I've been benching my strix against my oc'd 290x.
Thats not a 970 issue but an Asus strix issue due to the cards design to prioritize quietness over absolute performance. In which case the boost may take a slight hit. Easily fixed by adjusting fan speed with a fan profile in MSI-AB. Nothing about "severe throttling" in any of the reviews of the card, it still performs like a champ.
 
It's not clear such headroom actually exists in GM204.

They have still a quite large room to play with GM204 even to launch a 980TI and Titan 2.. but without AMD competition that not gona happen soon

Thats not a 970 issue but an Asus strix issue due to the cards design to prioritize quietness over absolute performance. In which case the boost may take a slight hit. Easily fixed by adjusting fan speed with a fan profile in MSI-AB. Nothing about "severe throttling" in any of the reviews of the card, it still performs like a champ.

This and absolutely this.. specially those 970 out of the box at 1500mhz without throttling even in furmark...
 
They have still a quite large room to play with GM204 even to launch a 980TI and Titan 2.. but without AMD competition that not gona happen soon
It's not clear that they can reliably drive GM204 to a 250W power target with NVIDIA's requirements for chip longevity. One probably could push it that hard, but it means nothing if it's too unreliable to productize.
 
Honestly, why do people care if the card is watercooled or air cooled? we all know watercooling can be more efficient than air, so why complain? if the 390x uses 75W or 275W and has a water cooler vs air cooler, I'm fine with that :) quieter and more efficient and moving heat outside of the case.
 
i just bought a new tv and need hdmi 2.0 im thinking of selling my 4 290s to get a few 980s i really dont want to sell but need hdmi 2.0 for 4k
 
I wouldn't touch a 290 even for $200, because its hotter, louder, sucks more power. With the 970 you're getting latest/greatest tech, better drivers, better features (Shadowplay etc) and with a mild overclock the 970's are beating 290X's, so yeah.

Going off that list you just gave, I don't think you'd touch a 290 if it was twice the speed of a titan z, and cured cancer. You're not leaving Nvidia for any reason.
 
290X > 970 in raw performance because of the severe 970 throttling at the high end of power consumption.

I should know because I've been benching my strix against my oc'd 290x.

did AMD include a magic carpet so you can fly to north pole when you purchased the 290x?
 
Going off that list you just gave, I don't think you'd touch a 290 if it was twice the speed of a titan z, and cured cancer. You're not leaving Nvidia for any reason.

Though under the current circumstances he's right. GTX 970 performs similar to a 290X @ stock speeds.
 
I have 4 280x on sale. I think i should quickly sell them

try to sell it fast.. with the recent system requirements for game like shadow of mordor and the evil within, people are trying to buy these cards at any reasonable cheap prices... (people that still don't know about the GTX970;) or they guess they are super priced)
 
Might as well jump in here with my question: Looking to finally replace my two aging 6970s. I have three 1440p monitors and would like to be able to run a games at even low settings so long as it's playable.

How would a single GTX 970 compare to two 6970s? What about two 970s? Would that allow for at least some gaming at 7680x1440?
 
Might as well jump in here with my question: Looking to finally replace my two aging 6970s. I have three 1440p monitors and would like to be able to run a games at even low settings so long as it's playable.

How would a single GTX 970 compare to two 6970s? What about two 970s? Would that allow for at least some gaming at 7680x1440?

a single 970 compared to your 6970s?.. being honest twice faster than your 6970s..
 
Looks like none of the 970s come with more than one DisplayPort, so I'm not sure how I'd drive all three of these monitors. My 6970s have DVI-D and two DPs. You have to go with the 980 for more than that. How unfortunate.
 
Might as well jump in here with my question: Looking to finally replace my two aging 6970s. I have three 1440p monitors and would like to be able to run a games at even low settings so long as it's playable.

How would a single GTX 970 compare to two 6970s? What about two 970s? Would that allow for at least some gaming at 7680x1440?

At 7680x1440 you are going to need at least two cards to run games properly. There isnt a single GPU that can do it at that resolution yet and do it properly. Two 290x might do it but I would look into that. I don't know about the 9xx series but there should be tests with the 290x running eyefinity. Look to see if how they fair. That should give you some info to go by.
 
Um some of you are exaggerating like crazy. A 6970 crossfire setup is slightly faster than a 7970 ghz. A 970 is most certainly not more than twice as fast as the 7970 ghz. Heck a 970 is not quite even 50% faster than a 7970 ghz. That means a 970 would only be about 35-40% faster than a 6970 crossfire setup.
 
^ Yup, true, although... I remember Crossfire not scaling as well in the 5xxx and 6xxx series. AMD improved things a lot with 7xxx.

So, I would not be surprised if a single 970 OC'd is twice as fast in some games. Doubtful you'll be able to overclock the 6970s that much unless they are on water. I think it's definitely worth switching if you're considering it.
 
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