780 vs R9 390 (NOT NV vs AMD)

[Insomniator]

Just sent my 780 away :'(

Kinda leaning towards the 970 at this point, esp since I have an mATX case and it's bugging me the 390 is a rehash of the 290. Could just wait for some deals though, both cards seem overpriced at ~300 bucks still. 390's were in the ~$250 range last month right?

Got a 9600GSO 768 running now lol.

 

[thesmokingman]

There's a 970 for 233 ish in the deals forum. The 390 would be better at larger resolutions and padding for these newer games that keep requiring more and more vram though. I don't think you'll find a 390 at 233 ish.

 

[Headfoot]

290s were $250, not 390s. 390s are refreshed, I wouldn't call them a rehash. The doubled memory runs a lot faster, the core overclocks farther and it uses the same power as the 290 despite having much faster memory, 2x as much of it, and clocking higher.

So its not a huge difference, but its an actual tangible difference. Probably not worth the $50 difference if you can find an aftermarket 290 still at $250. But those have mostly dried up.

If you can nab the $233 970 that is a pretty smokin deal.

 

[Insomniator]

What do you guy think about a 390x for $310? One is currently $355 on Newegg.

 

[RussianSensation]

What do you guy think about a 390x for $310? One is currently $355 on Newegg.

Are you going to play FO4? MSI Gaming 970 for $280 - $45 = $235 + a choice of AC:S or R6S sounds good.

GTX980Ti for $570 - $45 = $525 could be tempting if you consider keeping the card for 2-3 years before your next upgrade. If you sell the game bundle, it makes either the 970 or the 980Ti even cheaper.

Depends on how long you want to wait. Maybe wait until Cyber Monday as I have a feeling there might be 1-2 deals on 970/390/390X/980/980Ti cards.

 

[tential]

I recommend to NOT wait for Cyber Monday. I saw the best deals in the weeks leading up to CM/BF.
I'd grab that 980Ti for $570....
That's as good as it is going to get lol

 

[Insomniator]

I recommend to NOT wait for Cyber Monday. I saw the best deals in the weeks leading up to CM/BF.
I'd grab that 980Ti for $570....
That's as good as it is going to get lol

Yeah that 980TI is super tempting, still a lot to pay for a card with Pascal comin up though!

 

[thesmokingman]

Yeah that 980TI is super tempting, still a lot to pay for a card with Pascal comin up though!

Get the 970 for 233 then? The 390 for 310 is decent too. Tough choice. If yer gonna be waiting for next gen, I'd save that 77 bucks and get teh cheaper card personally.

 

[Mezzanine]

Everyone also needs to keep in mind, most of the reference models they link in benchmarks are not even boosting to 1GHz. I know there is a lot of disdain for the GTX 780's, and for some very valid reasons, but when overclocked to the range above, they run very well in most games.

Agree with this, I sold my 970 and picked up a reference 780 for a great price. At stock it barely boosted to 1000mhz but I OC'd it to 1200mhz and it's benching better numbers than my 970 was. It's a beast with an overclock.

 

[RussianSensation]

Agree with this, I sold my 970 and picked up a reference 780 for a great price. At stock it barely boosted to 1000mhz but I OC'd it to 1200mhz and it's benching better numbers than my 970 was. It's a beast with an overclock.

I find this hard to believe, in a literal sense. The 780 OC benchmarks here were used as a reference point against a stock 390 (970). Both of those cards overclock, especially the 970. Since per the benches provided, even a max overclocked 780 couldn't even match a stock 390, trailing it by 5-13%, and considering that 390 can overclock 15% (970 can overclock 15-23%), there will still be a 15-25% gap between a max overclocked 780 and a max overclocked 390/970 at 1440P. For $30-40 out of pocket, if he locked in a $190-200 resale on his 780, another $30-50 to get a 970 with AAA games or a 390 seems like a solid option.

Computerbase has a stock 390 outperforming the 780 by 24%, which suggests to me that 780 would need to be almost max overclocked just to even come close to a stock 390, which seems to be the case per the benches in this thread. But then you still have 3GB of VRAM vs. 3.5 on 970 and 8GB on the 390, and probably the worst possible driver optimizations and DX12 performance in 2016 games among Kepler, Maxwell and GCN architectures.

I guess it just depends on what games the OP will play and how long he wants to keep the card. Also, getting a free Assassin's Creed Syndicate game + 2-3 year warranty on a new card and MSI Gaming 390 or MSI Gaming 970 turn off their fans at low GPU load (quiet) are nice bonuses.

 

[Deders]

Computerbase has a stock 390 outperforming the 780 by 24%, which suggests to me that 780 would need to be almost max overclocked just to even come close to a stock 390, which seems to be the case per the benches in this thread.

Firstly I'm not disagreeing that the 390 is overall a more forward thinking card, but I think internet benchmarks are skewed because they were made at a time that for whatever reason Nvidia were prioritising 970/980 optimisations over everything else, usually at the release of the game and often instead of re-testing for every article, they just use the old benchmarks as a guideline. It takes a while for Kepler performance to catch up, sometimes a couple of months.

Secondly I can't see any 780 results in your link.

And for the record my benchmark was made at 1202MHz core and 7000MHz memory which judging by what I see in people's sigs is a fairly moderate overclock. It equates to 15% over max stock boost speed for my card.