I think the R9 290X doom was premature.

[Jizz_Beard_thePirate]

Well, I bought myself a 970 mostly cause my 7850 is getting pretty old and I wanted to be ready for the Witcher 3 so I think the 900 series are mainly for the people that are looking to upgrade but can't really wait for the stacked ram gpu... Also, if you look at a lot of benchmarks for the 970 vs 290x

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1355?vs=1059

You can see that they perform very competitively but with the added advantage of Nvidia having better Driver support and some new features and atm, the 970 and r9 290x cost about the same

Now, as for the 980, granted its not the zomg killer considering it costs $500+ vs $350 for the 290x, but it does still perform faster in many/most cases so I think for the people that want to upgrade to the best of the best without going into dual gpu level, the 980 will be their choice

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1351?vs=1059

Now obviously, if you are upgrading for a 780 or a 290x, you wont receive zomfg benefits when going upto a 980 but if you are one of those people who are just upgrading, a 970 or a 980 might be a great choice none the less

And many people get an ultra high end gpu for 1080p cause many games require them to play them at max (a lot due to terrible optomization while others just due to pretty graphix)