Ive looked at both cards and in terms of pure specs the EVGA card wins by its boost clock. The MSI however has some nice software (although somewhat gimmicky) and is much beefier in terms of its heatsink. I will be overclocking the card I get so would like to know how it performs after doing so but I also need good stock speeds as I play games like skyrim which hate overclocks. If anyone was wandering I'm upgrading from a 760 DCU II so I'm long overdue an upgrade and am preparing for Direct X 12. What is everyone's opinions on these cards as they are priced almost the same here in the UK at aria PC. Thanks
if im right the Msi one has a 8 + 6 pin power connector, and the EVGA has dual 6 pin, like the reference board.
So it looks like that the Msi has a custom pcb.
Its most likely, that you might be able to push the Msi a littlebit higher wenn overclocking.
But ofc this is still a matter of sillicon luck.
In terms of performance out of the box, they will be arround equal.
If I remember correctly the ACX model of the 970 was not that good. Something about the die on the 970 being smaller than the 980, and EVGA just slapping on a cooler and calling it a day.
Is there a specific reason for going nVidia? The 390 is the same price equal or ahead performance with overclocks and if you are playing skyrim modded those 8gb of VRAM can come in handy.
The only real reason was CUDA.. I play around with game engines and other software occasionally but I like amd for its open-source philosophy. 8 GB VRAM does seem a good idea, especially as games are starting to utilise more memory and running games like skyrim with large textures etc. may be a good choice.
Also, the fact that 4GB on a 970 actually means 3.5GB is also a limiting factor.. A switch to AMD would be a nice change to messing with all the proprietary software that Nvidia forces on you too. The MSI R9 390 8G is about £5 more in the uk but that's negligible.. Newer drivers for the 390 would improve the card too.. Hmm...
Thanks for the help everyone, I've got some thinking to do...
Just options with them being so close in performance and price, something to think about. If you use the features on nVidia cards then that is definitely something to think about.
OK, I've decided. I'm going to buy the MSI 390 8G. The VRAM was the selling factor for me. Its also cheaper than both these cards. Thanks everyone!