HA, 50 watt difference and people were screaming it like it was the 2nd coming of christ.
Ya, because HardOCP would take max OC vs. OC. In that case the faster 980 SLI beat 290Xs CF while using 300W less power. You should see the arguments now how a 960 uses 100W less of power vs. the 290 but what this group of gamers is missing is that a R9 290 total system is 45-50% faster than a 960 system, while using less than 50% additional power. Perspective matters.
Should I, or should I not return my GTX 970 for an R9 290x? Let's assume I'll put aside my anger at being lied to by Nvidia and assume I want to use my card for three years for AAA games, with hopefully a smooth degradation in settings to still play games decently at 60FPS over its lifetime.
My priorities are strictly performance and longevity. I don't care a whole lot about how loud it is as long as it's not ridiculous like a reference 290x uber.
Honestly none of the 290/290X/970 will last any longer than each other over 3 years in AAA games. All will become too slow. The only exception would be GE vs. GW titles where we would see a larger discrepancy. Do I think a $320 MSI Lighting R9 290X will have a better resale value than a $350 970? Probably not. So that's not a strong enough factor either. I would say if you want another alternative, it would be to sell a 970 and get a used after-market R9 290 non-X and try to net $80-100 savings in the process (say sell the 970 for $300 and buy a used R9 290 for $200-220). That way when you upgrade to the next GPU in 2-3 years, you'll have $80-100 extra towards the next upgrade. That to me would actually provide you with the most benefit long-term. Again though if you play a lot of GW titles, then a 970 is still a solid card.
If I had to choose today and didn't have a card, I would pick an MSI Lightning R9 290X over any 970. Honestly don't stress it too much as at 1080P, a single 970 is unlikely to run into a > 3.5GB VRAM bottleneck.