The Power of the Darkside?

Team red has made me surrender to the darkside. As I have always had nothing but nVidia graphics cards in pretty much every computer I have ever built, I have come to trust them. They have always done well by me. However AMD / Radeon will be my next card.

I'm looking at the R9 290 4gb. The specs on the 290 and 290x are awesome !! Mantle also looks promising too. I recently have seen them on sale for about $250. I plan on getting one of these bad boys real soon.

Trying to get ready for 4K.

Asus has a nice 28" 4K monitor for $560.

Currently running a Palit GTS 450 (1gb). FX 8320 eight core processor. 8gb ram.
Battlefield 4 ........30fps-70fps settings on medium @1080p
3D Mark benchmark score for tests "The dive" (mid range PC) = 5600 pts ....................... "Cloudgate" (basic PC/home PC) score = 11000 pts (Download 3D Mark for free and test your rig) I will post the same tests with the R9 290, and see the difference.

What card are you running?
Team red = Radeon or Team green = nVidia

[DMPCo]

i switch back and forth between them. i currently have a 290,290x and the 295x2 ( Not in crossfire). I am also making the plunge to 4k gaming. i will be switching profiles between my eyefinity setup and a 50 vizio p502ui-b1 which has a 4k 60hz hdmi hookup. i run the 290 in a steam box i built and switched out the 290x awhile ago for the 295x2 in my main rig. each of the cards i have had no trouble with however i won't be buying a sapphire branded amd card again.

Dat 295x2 is a beast.

[DMPCo]

lol so true but she is a power hungry girl.

Team Red HD Radeon 4870 1GB (yeah, it's old, but still runs good)

Can I be that guy that ruins the AMD parade?

Hardly. Would love to upgrade to a R9 290 though...Mmmm

I heard that GTX 970 turned out to be a baloney

Yeah there are alot of pissed off 970 owners. The GTX 970 is a 980 with a chip disabled and is not unlockable. It's rated at 4gb and through nVidia disabling one of the chips faceplants at 3.5gb. The R9 290 has been tryed and tested to function at full capacity. XFX double D R9 290 comes with a lifetime warranty and is currently $245 on Tigerdirect. GTX 970s are going for $330+ with no lifetime warranty and in my opinion flawed. I know which one gets my money.

[(TKC)-o]T3[o]

Yeah there are alot of pissed off 970 owners. The GTX 970 is a 980 with a chip disabled and is not unlockable. It's rated at 4gb and through nVidia disabling one of the chips faceplants at 3.5gb. The R9 290 has been tryed and tested to function at full capacity. XFX double D R9 290 comes with a lifetime warranty and is currently $245 on Tigerdirect. GTX 970s are going for $330+ with no lifetime warranty and in my opinion flawed. I know which one gets my money.

One problem, 970's still out perform 290.

[DMPCo]

Yeah there are alot of pissed off 970 owners. The GTX 970 is a 980 with a chip disabled and is not unlockable. It's rated at 4gb and through nVidia disabling one of the chips faceplants at 3.5gb. The R9 290 has been tryed and tested to function at full capacity. XFX double D R9 290 comes with a lifetime warranty and is currently $245 on Tigerdirect. GTX 970s are going for $330+ with no lifetime warranty and in my opinion flawed. I know which one gets my money.

One problem, 970's still out perform 290.

barely and at a higher price point for 5-10% gain. also at higher resolutions 290 does better cause it is not crippled with memory bandwidth of 320 GB/s vs the 970's 224 GB/s bandwidth

[(TKC)-o]T3[o]

Hate to lay it on the line.. but Nvidia is killing it right now. It's not even a contest any more frankly. You can spin it however you like, but there is only one lead dog at this time. This is just the first review google pulled up.

http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-R9-290-v ... ce-GTX-970

Radeon is now Pepsi to Nvidia's Coke. 2nd place isn't bad though. However, Ricky Bobby says, "If you ain't first, your last".

There is absolutely no doubt that nVidia makes great cards. I am still a big fan of them and almost went with a 960 or 970 , it pretty much came down to bang for buck and I have heard great things about Mantle, so the AMD R9 290 has been ordered. I am a bit bummed though that I wont be able to use gsync. On the other hand, I don't know how many times AndersOny has direct x failures and he has a really nice pair of 770s. Regarding the 970, I think nVidia should have rated the 970 at 3gb as it is incapable of reaching 4gb of vram. Perhaps a driver will give the 970 a boost, but that is yet to be seen. I plan on running 4k , so vram will be very important. The 970 is still a great card, if the price was more competitive with 290 ,my decision would have been more difficult. Also for me, my mobo does not support SLI but it does support crossfire.

FYI, the link you gave is comparing a R9 290 reference card. I have looked at many benchmark comparisons and , yes the 970 slightly edges out the 290. However , in my opinion, not enough to warrant spending the extra money for. The 290 gets hot and will thermal throttle, and the reference card has a poor cooler. A 290 with a good cooler gets some pretty decent frames/bench scores, and a decent 290 , with a decent cooler would score higher than that comparison. I do agree that overall the 970 is the better card, even with the 3.5 GB ceiling. That maxwell GPU is a beast.

[(TKC)-o]T3[o]

I'm glad you are happy with your purchase.. that is all that matters. I will be posting my new specs once I order my new system next week.

BTW, you can do a search on any 970 vs 290 and they all pretty much show 970 as the winner. But if you need to save a few $... BTW, why would they rate it at 3 and not 3.5?