980 now or wait for 380/390X?

RedTalon19

RedTalon19

Supreme [H]ardness
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My specs are in my sig. I play a lot of WoW right now but I have a high interest in replaying Shadow of Mordor and Tomb Raider after I upgrade. I plan on playing Alien Isolation, Star Citizen, maybe pick up some Borderlands again.. etc. Monitor runs at 2560x1600.

I've had the itch to upgrade for a few months already, but I've been trying to wait for the new AMD generation. I wanted to see how the 380 performs, but I'm seeing rumors its going to be late Q2 or even Q3 before they are commercially available? I don't think I can wait that long unless the general consensus is that it'll be well worth it.

I've done research myself but just can't decide. :confused: Do I pick up a single 980 now? Should I get dual 980s? :cool: Or do I hold out for another few months and see what AMD produces and make my decision then?? The itch is real.
 
I'd say wait for two scenarios

1) The 390x/380x is rediculous, and a must buy

2) The 390x/380x is just as strong as the 980 and the 980 gets cheaper, and the 980ti takes the 980 price point.
 
I can sympathize. I had been running a i7 920 with a 6970 - pre-ordered from the initial release. That card worked well enough at 1920x1200 - it wouldn't MAX Ultra everything anymore, but it still ran acceptably in pretty well every game I played on it. A couple months past I took my end-of-year bonus and built a new rig - I don't regret it.

The whatever-AMD-officially-calls the 380/390x's are around the corner (the multiple non-official benchmark leaks and such are starting to pick up, usually the indicator for an imminent release). That being said, I don't base anything off of them, at least until the card is officially released, we see how the official release drivers perform, and there's stock in the store (remembering that "launch" of the 680, where they were next-to-nonexistant for months).

If you buy a 980 today, it's a good card. It will still be the same speed it was the day you bought it when the 380/390x's come out, even if they are faster/better/whatever.

That being said, waiting just a bit may be prudent, even if you do decide to go with a 980 in the long run. The 980 is the GM204 chip, we haven't seen nVidia's GM210 yet (Titan 2?, 980Ti? whatever they will call it). That could very well be months out. I believe we'll see the 380/390x sooner than later though, and while nVidia respond to price/performance pressure as much as AMD does - if the 380/390x knocks it out of the park, we could see some nice price adjustments on available cards (possibly including the 980). I wouldn't expect much on the 980, nVidia doesn't discount much (they charge a premium for the Green, I suppose), but we could see a good bit of room on the 970, or a pushed release of a 960Ti in a nice price point that shakes the market up a bit.

You can play the waiting game forever. If you got the money, and don't mind the possibility that the 980 you buy today could be either $50 cheaper, or not the fastest card on the market any longer, come tomorrow, then I wouldn't wait. But if your wanting "the fastest card", or money is tight (and if your really considering 2 cards, it can't be that tight), then I'd hold off just a week or two longer.

I had my fill of SLI such that I never really recommend it unless you have something that absolutely needs it. Unless your running 3 of those monitors, or plan on stepping up to 4k sometime soon, I'd just start with a single card of whatever you decide, and then you can always add a second if needed later.

Just my 2c. I had the same upgrade itch, and I jumped on it. I was happy with the results, but I'll be honest, it doesn't really perform any better than my older rig (on my monitor, at least), but it's a heck of a lot smaller and quieter, and that is something.
 
All of the games you listed will run great with a 980 at 2560x1600, and its OC headroom sets you up for anything more demanding. Heck, you could save a couple bills and go with a 970 or 290x. Or maybe the best option would be to get a single 970 now which would allow you to play those games, then another once you need more performance.

The 380x/390x is an unknown quantity at this point and, as you mention, is at likely the earliest 5 months away. If you want to play those games right now, I'd go for one of the above options.
 
Just wait for the new cards. If they do indeed have HMB (I think yes) then they will probably be better for higher resolutions than the GTX980.
 
{NG}Fidel said:
Just wait for the new cards. If they do indeed have HMB (I think yes) then they will probably be better for higher resolutions than the GTX980.
Click to expand...

290x beats the 980 in resolutions.
Nvidia isnt a contender.
new card will be Godlike from amd.
 
I'd wait for the 1080, it'll be faster than the 390. But, you could also wait for the 490, because it'll be faster than the 1080.

Why wait when there will ALWAYS be a faster product just around the corner?
 
Because around the corner means about two to three months max. Why get buyers remorse when you know the launch window with some accuracy (april at the latest).
 
Wait for a deal on a vanilla R9-290($220-$250), pick that up for now, then when the R9-380x comes out sell the 290 and get the 380x. I personally was not waiting 4 months for AMD to get off their ass and release a new card, and I wasn't going to deal with the ram issues of the GTX970 or the price of the GTX980. I just wanted an upgrade from my dying R9-270x cards in CFX, and a 290 clocked at 290x speeds will be faster than two R9-270xs, was cheap (only $50 more than the woefully underpowered GTX960), and performs well.
 
The release date of the next AMD cards is all over the place. We haven't gotten any solid rumors at this point. There have been rumors everywhere from next month all the way until Q3.

harmattan is correct that a single 980 is very good for your resolution. There are very few games it would leave you wanting in, maybe AC Unity? I haven't played it.

With that said though, nVidia is in the dog house to a lot of fans, and AMD could really take advantage of this if they can get their shit together ASAP.

{NG}Fidel said:
Just wait for the new cards. If they do indeed have HMB (I think yes) then they will probably be better for higher resolutions than the GTX980.
Click to expand...

I just hope it's not another 2900XT where all that wonderful bandwidth is wasted. AMD has a big advantage in multi-card smoothness right now, and with the size of my tax return this year, I'm ready to buy two.
 
Those saying it's 2-3 months max for the 390 where are you getting this from ? More and more articles I read say more like June-July ?

Also because I'm interested in the same , what's the chance of the 390 being no hotter than a 980 ? Price or power I don't care about , but living somewhere that has 100 degree weeks with humidity in the summer I do care about heat .

If there's not much temp difference I might try the 390 - if it's guaranteed to be a space heater then it rules it out for me.
 
I hear you.

I'm running leftover CF 280x cards from my mining days and itching to upgrade also. Almost pulled the trigger on one of those great R9 295x2 deals since it's the only card which would not be a sidegrade for me, but decided to wait for next generation cards and freesync 4K monitor combo later this year..
 
rabidz7 said:
How many FPS are you looking for?
Click to expand...

The U3011 only supports 60hz, but honestly if it's above 30 FPS I could care less. Thankfully I'm not an FPS snob, and can typically forgo AA if I can max the resolution out. My current could only handle Shadow of Mordor at 1920x1200.

There are some really convincing arguments for both sides. The more I think about it, the more I don't want to wait anymore. I originally wanted to hop on some Black Friday deals but held out. At this point I could probably wait till President's Day and hope some decent deals roll around. If I can keep it a single card that would obviously be best, but I don't want to be underpowered at my higher res.

If nothing changes in the next 3 weeks I'll probably pick up single 980 and reevaluate in a year when hopefully AMD has worked out all the issues with the first release of the HMB architecture. It sounds like only the 380 will be released at first, then the 390 sometime after?? So maybe I'll look at the 390/390X once it's out.

Part of my upgrade itch is also linked to a new, bigger SSD so I don't have to offload any games to my spinning disk. I think I've settled on a 1TB Samsung, just can't decide if I want the Evo or Pro. Anyways thanks for the input.

EDIT: Also, is 4GB VRAM enough? I know Shadow of Mordor has some crazy requirements for ultra settings, but is that a sign of things to come in the next wave of games??
 
There have been a few reports of shops in Europe letting place holders on the web site slip out. If that's the case, we could be at less than a months wait.

If you want to play Star Citizen, then I would definitely wait since that will use Mantle.
 
Kwisatz Haderach said:
There have been a few reports of shops in Europe letting place holders on the web site slip out. If that's the case, we could be at less than a months wait.

If you want to play Star Citizen, then I would definitely wait since that will use Mantle.
Click to expand...

Damnit thats one of the main future games I want to play a good bit , and I was going to stick with Nvidia because I thought they were going to use Physx - they decided not to go that route ?
 
No it will benefit single card systems. The Star Swarm benchmark did not even support crossfire and ran like a dog on DX. With Mantle, even a single card got a large boost. My 7970's did at least. The people that see the most are systems that are under powered especially on the CPU end. I have a feeling this game is going to be more optimized than BF4 was for Mantle. So we really won't know until we have a version that is retail.

This game is kind of like when Crysis launched. People started building systems six months ahead of time dreaming of maxing it out from what was seen in the alpha footage. We learned a valuable lesson from that game. Never plan a system for a game that is not even launched. Either pick something now, and live with the decision, or stick it out a few months when you know there is going to be new tech launched.

I am not even going to discuss the Titan 2, but we know for a fact that a 980ti and a AMD is going to launch. For AMD Q2 is not that far away. Nvidia was probably planning to come out after AMD in order to adjust their cards clocks and stay on top. After the 970 memory problem, there is a slim chance they might try to get those cards on the shelves just to sweep that under the rug.

So, is there anything you can't play right now? If not, I would vote wait.
 
RedTalon19 said:
My specs are in my sig. I play a lot of WoW right now but I have a high interest in replaying Shadow of Mordor and Tomb Raider after I upgrade. I plan on playing Alien Isolation, Star Citizen, maybe pick up some Borderlands again.. etc. Monitor runs at 2560x1600.

I've had the itch to upgrade for a few months already, but I've been trying to wait for the new AMD generation. I wanted to see how the 380 performs, but I'm seeing rumors its going to be late Q2 or even Q3 before they are commercially available? I don't think I can wait that long unless the general consensus is that it'll be well worth it.

I've done research myself but just can't decide. :confused: Do I pick up a single 980 now? Should I get dual 980s? :cool: Or do I hold out for another few months and see what AMD produces and make my decision then?? The itch is real.
Click to expand...

Basically agree with other posters. Wait if you can. AMD makes some nice cards, if you can wait... you'll win by getting a great card, or a great deal on an nVidia card.
 
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