I'm at the point of deciding what gpu I'm getting and I am tossing up between a 970 or 390.
I have a Silverstone strider plus 700w 80+ bronze power supply and was wondering if that would be enough for either card? as that would probably be a deciding factor for my purchase.
at the moment I am leaning towards the 390 a little in terms of preference but I'm open to suggestions and or reasons not to get it over the competition etc.
mainly going to be gaming a 1080p with games like heavily modded skyrim / fallout and such which is where I think that 8gb of vram might come in handy.
awesome, I was just also worried about the driver problems I had been hearing about the 300 series having. black screens and such which is only why I'm a little hesitant. but mostly they do seem to be from people upgrading from the 200 series, where as this is a new pc so it might be ok for me ?
the 300 series doesn't have issues anymore. on a similar note, it doesn't matter if the PC is old or not, as long as you have a good quality PSU you'll be fine.
is it enough? well i have an RM850 from Corsair so the fan only spins if i get above what 50% load. i dont think i have ever had my fan spin up even under full tilt and my CPU is a power hungry FX8350. so yes, definitely enough
I had crossfire Tahiti GPUs in my PC earlier this year, with an i7 4790k overclocked to 4.8ghz. Power from the wall hit 551w. With only one GPU installed, it pulled anywhere from 330w to 380w. That's while running a GPU benchmark and a CPU stress test at the same time to ensure that both were pegged at 100%. Other things that were using power include LED RGB lighting, 12 fans, 2 SSDs, 1 HDD, a Corsair h100i for the CPU and an Antec H20 620 for the GPU.
well its awesome that ill be able to run it on my 700w, total load off my mind big time.
the 390 does seem to be good value for the money, but im hearing that amd has crappy driver support for games as well which has me a little worried too. for me its like a damned if you do, damned if you dont lol i just dont know which one to go with 970 or 390?
nvidia has good driver support, amd is better value for money, hell a 390x is $100 cheaper than a 980 in Australia where i live. but nvidia seems like a shady company and the 3.5 gb could limit me, but do i really need the 8gb for 1080p gaming ? also again the drivers with amd and lack of support
Depends on what your powering other than the GPU for example if your running 15TB of storage in an assortment of 15 drives you might be over your power supply limit.
Be reasonable here guys... Take a look at the reviews. The power consumption in them is the entire system power draw, not just the gpu. Even 9590 with 390 can't draw 700 wats. Intel i5/i7 with 390 will be just fine with 500/550 PSU. 390 is the better gpu. Heavy moded Skyrim is exactly how people discovered the 970 Vram issues. And the radeon is both faster and have more ram. And if later on some DX12 game catches your attention, it have better DX12 support. My recommendation - Sapphire. My advice - Not Asus and not MSI.
Just go with the 390 and be happy, it's more than enough for 1080p gaming. Could probably pull off 1440p with OK results. The VRAM's a bonus, can have lots of fun modding the crap out of skyrim and the like...
The 750W is recommended. You can get away with less. Wouldn't recommend risking <600W though.
I have never had an issue with AMD drivers. Maybe a long time ago this was an issue but not anymore. Even then I'd argue it was more a myth. They don't release drivers as frequently but they are working on that. Never head an issue with nVidia drivers either except the Windows 10 driver but that was a pretty quick fix.
Lack of support mainly comes from nVidia and Gameworks fucking over AMD cards and their own older cards. Looking at you Project Cars with a GTX 960 beating a 390X and a 780 Ti...
THe 290/390 is the optimal price to performance card for 1440p IMO. TBH it does better as the resolution goes higher. Even when I had one 290 I could easily max a majority of games at 1440p. Two is perfect for 4K.
Touch off topic but you sure? Doubt it'd last long, would rather go with a single more powerful card too. 980Ti should be around the same price? Then you've got the option of adding another 980Ti later and that'd be a killer at 4K.
295Х2 is killer for 4K and you can always add another one as long as you have the radiator space and the PSU for it. It beats the Titan in all non Nvidia games. Keep in mind, Crossfire works way better than SLI.
ok well im going to go for it then, might try that gigabyte r9 390 then, seems pretty nice and i hear a lot of good things about the company.
and for context my system is
i5 4690 non k coolermaster hyper 212evo (got it for free so why not?) asus h97 pro gamer western digital 1 tb caviar blue 2 x 4gb g skill ripjaws x 1600 dvd drive
I've been running two R9 290s for a while now at 4K. I can max pretty much every game. Many I can even run with AA. I'm sure in a year or two it will slow down a bit but I'm sure I'll still be able to get 45 FPS + so I'm confident.
In my experience I haven't had an issue with VRAM (I only have 4GBs because 290s) so 8GB should be enough. These are very powerful cards at 4K. Generally one will beat a 980 or come very close at 4K. With an OC even more so.
I should note that I have two R9 290s. I bought the one for around $325 and the second for around $200 when they were on sale. $525 is an amazing deal for solid 4K performance. Buying two new 390s for ~$600 probably doesn't make sense but if you can find older cards or already have a 290 it makes great sense.
Now I would probably recommend a 980 Ti or Fury but at the time two 290/390s were the way to go and if you do have one already it is a no brainer.
More was just a response to your comment that the 390 would be "OK" for 1440p gaming. It most certainly is okay. Way more than OK.