I think the R9 290X doom was premature.

[JEMC]

" Yes in 1080p the 900 series will always win, but who in their right mind gets an ultra high end GPU for 1080p these days?!"

Many people.

As torok says, game requirements are starting to rise to almost absurd levels (6GB of VRAM to use Ultra textures? Really?) and let's not forget that even with the lower level coding that DX12 will supposedly bring (which by the way is another winning point for Nvidia as the 9x0 series are the first one to fully support DX12), PC gamers will still need more powerful GPUs to play the same games as console gamers.

So an R9 or a 9x0 series to game at 1080p is not that silly, specially now with the prices of the 290 and the 970.

With that said, the difference in the high end market are nowadays so small, that going for the cheapest option is probably the better choice. Unless you game at 4K or have an Eyefinity/Surround setup with 1440 or 1600p monitors, in which case every single bit of power counts... although given that you'll have to go with 2 or 3 cards, it comes down again to price (3x290 or 2x980?).