Right, but AT forum is not a PR site for selling AMD/NV reference cards.
These "aftermarket" cards rarely make into general round-ups. TPU included. So, it's very important to have a nice reference card, even just for PR/reviews.
Again, most review sites tend to include reference in the benches. Had the reference 290 had better cooling, it would have had better ratings in the reviews and obviously it would have affected sales in a positive way. I know lots of people who are making these split-second buying decisions. Because, as we know it today, the performance has been there from day 1. And it has aged very nicely for a 1-year+ old card.
Here we can look at a dozen of competing cards from AMD and NV, scour the web for awesome deals , reference reviews of after-market cards and provide recommendations accordingly. There are certain members of this forum who either refuse to acknowledge this idea for some reason or flat out refuse to make recommendations outside the box. How long did it take for people to acknowledge that an after-market 7970Ghz was faster than a 680? A long time and only when R9 280X started trading blows with a 770. After that point, it was swept under the rug that 7970Ghz/R9 280X was about 10% faster and now all the reviews show 680 getting owned by a 7970Ghz/R9 280X just as we knew a long time ago.
It's almost a double standard since HD7970/7970Ghz reference card reviews rolled-out to compare reference AMD cards to the amazing after-market NV offerings, as if AMD doesn't even produce cool, quiet factory cards. Maybe it's even earlier than that with GTX460 FTW vs. reference HD6870. I've seen this double standard over and over when 7970Ghz reviews continued to ignore after-market 1Ghz+ 7970 cards and the same posters continued to ignore those offerings even when you physically could not buy a reference 7970Ghz card in retail.
You are right. There is "double standard" in everything... and don't forget brand recognition.
I agree that would be very helpful. However, we also have to keep in mind the CPU bottlenecks. I've seen time and time again people recommend someone spend $80-100 more for a 970 when a gamer uses a stock 2500K but the reviews in question are running overclocked i7 3770/4770/4790K chips.
Yeah, well.. this is not exact science, you know. At any case, CPU-limited or not, 970 is still a decent GPU to recommend.
For example, the 6% advantage of a 970 at 1080P over a 290X will completely disappear in those cases due to a CPU bottleneck. That's why it's pointless to continue repeating the same thing over and over that a 970 > 290/290X in all cases.
Money-wise, aftermarket 290(x) is the GPU to get today, I agree. Unless of course,
you want better efficiency per watt and / or require HDMI 2.0 functionality
or other Geforce features.
It's gotten so bad that people recommend a $350 970 over an after-market $200-225 R9 290. To justify their recommendation, they refuse to accept current reviews that show almost irrelevant performance deltas but a massive price premium difference.
All my friends that were in need, have all bought 290 or 290x in the recent few months. As soon as I pointed them out, what incredible value 290 has over the Geforce newer series. Unfortunately, it would not have happened, if nVIDIA hadn't started producing those cards. So, they are very thankful to NV and used the opportunity. Personally, I don't give a ****. But 290 at $200-250 is hard to pass, even if nobody likes the extra heat it dumps inside the case. Money talks.
Our forum was never this biased in the past but now CPU bottlenecks, price/performance and recommendations specific to the OP are flat out ignored in favour of personal brand preferences. That's not objective advice.
Things change. 10 years ago, nobody cared about Intel's higher power consumption compared to AMD, now "power consumption this", "power consumption that" is all you hear these days. It's like Ebola virus. Amazing, isn't it?
In this instance even if somehow a 970 brings another 3-4% avg. increase in performance due to better drivers, it changes nothing about the overall conclusion for the OP. However, certain posters seem to lack the idea that context matters and refuse to recommend a competing brand when in certain cases, it's easily the better option. Furthermore, the double standard extends not only to noise and temperatures but to performance comparisons.
There may have been some misunderstanding. Relax
While claims are made that an after-market 970/980 is faster than a "reference clocked" version, the same is rarely discussed about after-market R9 290/290X cards by the same members,
despite the after-market 290/290X also providing 5-8% faster performance than reference designed versions. Whatever advantage is gained with after-market NV cards is also gained with after-market AMD cards, negating the entire point that reviewers use lower clocked 970s.
Yeah, well
Can you care to guess why these double standards and ignorance of faster performing, cool and quiet AMD cards has perpetuated since HD6870 vs. GTX460 FTW reviews? ^_^
Well, GTX 460 was quite a decent card for its day and the card that will probably receive DirectX 12 treatment, unlike its AMD counterpart which happens to be on a wrong architecture and thus no support, lol.
But seriously, I have no idea why is that. I have no close relations with either site. But if I had to guess, it's either brand preference or monetary gain.