GeForce GTX 970 & Radeon R9 390: Are They Still Game?

[Julio Franco]

Earlier this year we decided to dust off the venerable GTX 980 Ti along with the Radeon R9 Fury X to see how they were getting on it modern titles and what, if anything, had changed. Since then we've had loads of requests to create a similar article comparing the Radeon R9 390 and GeForce GTX 970. So that's exactly what we're doing.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/review/1410-gtx-970-radeon-390-years-later/

 

[psycros]

Now *this* came along at the right time..I had been seriously considering one of those cards.

 

[spinach pie]

Why make graphics card that completely slaughter any requirements needed ie 1080 gtx when the 970 still completely slaughters

 

[BSim500]

Why make graphics card that completely slaughter any requirements needed ie 1080 gtx when the 970 still completely slaughters

1440p/4K resolutions mostly. I'm honestly impressed though at how well even the lowly 1050Ti does in Doom & Prey on max settings at 1080p. Proof that 2017 games (and game engines) can be optimized a whole lot more if the developers wanted, especially for stuff like Civ 6 and Mirrors Edge Catalyst (which hardly look any better than Age of Empires 2 or Portal 2).

 

[slamscaper]

The GTX 1060 vanilla version runs about $200 everywhere, save for a special deal here and there where you can get $20 off if you're lucky. The MSI Gaming version you use here is a 3GB card that runs $230 on Newegg and Amazon right now.

I just don't agree with your assessment on what the 970 and R390 are worth. Considering they both still slaughter newer games and can outperform the 1060 in some respects, $120 would be a rip-off to sell one at. Even at $150 I'd feel bad getting rid of one. I'd rather keep it.

 

[Steve]

The GTX 1060 vanilla version runs about $200 everywhere, save for a special deal here and there where you can get $20 off if you're lucky. The MSI Gaming version you use here is a 3GB card that runs $230 on Newegg and Amazon right now.

I just don't agree with your assessment on what the 970 and R390 are worth. Considering they both still slaughter newer games and can outperform the 1060 in some respects, $120 would be a rip-off to sell one at. Even at $150 I'd feel bad getting rid of one. I'd rather keep it.

Not sure how you come to that conclusion. We saw here that out of the box the R9 390 is just 7% slower than either the 8GB RX 480 or 6GB GTX 1060 and your saying getting one for $150 (25% less) is a bad deal? $120 would make the R9 390 40% cheaper for a 7% reduction in performance, seems like a good pickup to me.

Not to mention the R9 390 was slightly faster than the GTX 1060 3GB overall, so why would you pay 53% more for the GTX 1060?

 

[Fobus]

Seems like 390 aged a little better. But I'm always surprised at how much more overclock headroom Nvidia cards have, and why Nvidia does not put more aggressive clock speeds out of the box.

 

[slamscaper]

Not sure how you come to that conclusion. We saw here that out of the box the R9 390 is just 7% slower than either the 8GB RX 480 or 6GB GTX 1060 and your saying getting one for $150 (25% less) is a bad deal? $120 would make the R9 390 40% cheaper for a 7% reduction in performance, seems like a good pickup to me.

Not to mention the R9 390 was slightly faster than the GTX 1060 3GB overall, so why would you pay 53% more for the GTX 1060?

No I'm not saying getting a 970 or R9 390 at $120-$150 would be a bad deal. That would be a killer deal. I'm saying a person selling one for that price would be getting a raw deal. They'd be better off keeping it at that price. But if you can find them at that price, have at it.

 

[slamscaper]

Honestly I think what's shown here is that both the 970 and the R9 390 are in fact "still game" in 2017.

 

[Steve]

No I'm not saying getting a 970 or R9 390 at $120-$150 would be a bad deal. That would be a killer deal. I'm saying a person selling one for that price would be getting a raw deal. They'd be better off keeping it at that price. But if you can find them at that price, have at it.

Sorry I did miss read your post. It's been a long day

Well people have their reasons I guess. Plenty of them have been selling at those prices, so gamers on a budget might as well snap them up.

 

[Raoul Duke]

Thank you so much for this article, it was just what I needed to see.

 

[Cryio]

Seems like 390 aged a little better. But I'm always surprised at how much more overclock headroom Nvidia cards have, and why Nvidia does not put more aggressive clock speeds out of the box.

That's always a weird mentality. You can overclock 1 GHz on the core of an Nvidia GPU and you'll get the same % increase on an AMD GPU with like 200 MHz instead of 1 GHz, yet everyone is blown away by Nvidia's OC while everything think AMD is meh, even though they get same results. And IMO, it's hilarious Nvidia needs to push the core clock so higher to get a tiny improvement where AMD's clock increase seems more reasonable to the actual performance increase.

 

[Raoul Duke]

Why make graphics card that completely slaughter any requirements needed ie 1080 gtx when the 970 still completely slaughters

well I'm running 3440 x 1440 so I'm thinking a 1070 GTX or more (the so called 'future-proof which doesn't really seem to exist LOL). Plus my Sapphire Nitro R9 390 seems pushed as far as it can go with clock and memory speed

 

[darkzelda]

GTX970 owner over here, I wish I've bought the R9 390, it seems to be better now overall, plus I recently bought a Freesync monitor.

 

[Nobina]

AMD cards always aged better from what I saw. They've put some effort in their drivers and that's one of the reasons. Nvidia tends to cripple old cards performance some say...Not gonna take that as a fact yet tho.

 

[R00sT3R]

Still rocking my 970's in SLI and have had no reason to buy in to this crazily overpriced Pascal generation of cards because

A. The only card I consider worth buying would be a 1080Ti which is almost twice as fast as my two 970's, and that is the metric I follow before upgrading my GPU's...double the performance for roughly the same cost.

B. There really hasn't been any games I was interested in enough, that ran badly on my 970's, that has actually made me want to spend the money on a new GPU.

C. All the games I currently play have great SLI support and allow me to run them maxed out at either 1080p/1440p 60fps or at 4K, locked to 30fps.

D. Pascal cards are now too old to buy new IMO, they'll be replaced with Volta in 6-8mths so I'm going to stick it out with my 970's.

 

[OcelotRex]

AMD cards always aged better from what I saw. They've put some effort in their drivers and that's one of the reasons. Nvidia tends to cripple old cards performance some say...Not gonna take that as a fact yet tho.

A more fair way to state this is that Nvidia tends to achieve "max performance" quicker than AMD. It's not the card "aging better" as much as it is "catching up" to reach full potential.

Look at the GTX 1060 6GB and RX 480 as an example - the 1060 lead on launch and the 480 has since caught it albeit nearly a year later.

 

[OutlawCecil]

I still have and use the GTX 970 and it's been great for me. I researched the he11 out of graphics cards a while back and found it to be the best bang for my buck and it hasn't let me down. I'll probably replace it within the next few years but it's fine for now for people who don't have $500+ for a graphics card!

 

[gusticles41]

A coworker just hooked me up with his "old" 970 for $120. Awesome deal, and the card is a beast! I'm still a 1080 gamer, so I have yet to see the thing skip a beat. But maybe when I upgrade to higher res I'll want something better...

 

[wiyosaya]

I've been considering a used 970, too, so it is great to see this article at this time.

 

[bea108]

Helpful article as I've got the 390 and after reading this won't consider upgrading for a while. Would have liked to see temp comparisons though.

 

[Evernessince]

Seems like 390 aged a little better. But I'm always surprised at how much more overclock headroom Nvidia cards have, and why Nvidia does not put more aggressive clock speeds out of the box.

Planned obsolescence. Nvidia's performance numbers in benchmarks often include overclocking numbers. This makes their cards appear faster to non-enthusiasts who will never overclock all the while not actually providing that performance because they don't overclock.

It is fine to include overclocking in benchmarks but it would be misleading to assume that allot of people are going to be taking advantage of it. I'm personally not a fan of it being the deciding factor of a conclusion unless your website is specifically for enthusiasts.

Given the information from the benchmarks above, I would recommend the R9 390 over the 970 at the same price. It's faster out of the box and matches the 970 overclocked. FreeSync should be considered as well, being cheaper and having wider adoption. Unless you are just buying a stop gap card, I see no reason not to pick the R9 390 over the 970. Right now though GTX 970s are cheaper 2nd hand in the US, so it's really whichever is cheaper unless you already have a FreeSync monitor.

 

[Mordeafaca]

I may have missed it but what was the oc clock achieved on the 970.
I'm 970 owner and this could help relate data with other benchs.
Thanks.

 

[Fobus]

Planned obsolescence. Nvidia's performance numbers in benchmarks often include overclocking numbers. This makes their cards appear faster to non-enthusiasts who will never overclock all the while not actually providing that performance because they don't overclock.

It is fine to include overclocking in benchmarks but it would be misleading to assume that allot of people are going to be taking advantage of it. I'm personally not a fan of it being the deciding factor of a conclusion unless your website is specifically for enthusiasts.

Given the information from the benchmarks above, I would recommend the R9 390 over the 970 at the same price. It's faster out of the box and matches the 970 overclocked. FreeSync should be considered as well, being cheaper and having wider adoption. Unless you are just buying a stop gap card, I see no reason not to pick the R9 390 over the 970. Right now though GTX 970s are cheaper 2nd hand in the US, so it's really whichever is cheaper unless you already have a FreeSync monitor.

In my country, and in much of Europe it seems, Nvidia cards are just cheaper and retailers have more in stock. It did not make much sense to buy 390 for me then. Also, it came 8 months later, and back then it was 290 vs 970.

 

[Fobus]

That's always a weird mentality. You can overclock 1 GHz on the core of an Nvidia GPU and you'll get the same % increase on an AMD GPU with like 200 MHz instead of 1 GHz, yet everyone is blown away by Nvidia's OC while everything think AMD is meh, even though they get same results. And IMO, it's hilarious Nvidia needs to push the core clock so higher to get a tiny improvement where AMD's clock increase seems more reasonable to the actual performance increase.

Your comment does not make sense to me. What 1Ghz overclock? What same % increase? And it's directly contradicted by the benchmarks of this article, that show far higher OC potential of 970 (and other Nvidia cards too)