m0ney said:
I don't want to be that guy but from my own experience I would recommend going with Nvidia and here is why: - Nvidia used to have better frame latency, that is a very important thing in your gaming experience. Notice I said used to have because I don't know the current situation, maybe AMD has improved in that department. - Nvidia cards generate less heat and hence usually are quietier. Of course it depends on particular card, brand and model. |
1. The first part is no longer true. In fact, 960 has horrible frame times against the 280X, and is WORLD'S apart from a similarly priced 290.
http://www.techspot.com/review/948-geforce-gtx-960-sli-performance/page3.html
It actually takes $400 960 SLI to match a single $240-250 R9 290 in games:
http://www.techpowerup.com/mobile/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_960_SLI/23.html
That's shockingly bad. NV really screwed up with the 960's pricing. The card should be $149 with that level of performance.
2. An after-market 290 = reference 290X in performance. That means 45-50% more performance at $250 going with a 290 over a 960:
http://www.techpowerup.com/mobile/reviews/Gigabyte/GTX_960_G1_Gaming/28.html
3. ^ Notice in that review 960's horrendous performance in AC Unity, Shadow of Mordor? That's because 2Gb of VRAM is no longer enough for 1080p PC gaming in 2015. Want more proof?
960 bombs against the R9 280/280X 3GB and 290X 4GB in Evolve, another VRAM heavy title.
http://www.sweclockers.com/artikel/20031-snabbtest-grafikprestanda-i-evolve/3
4. Your last point is SKU specific. You can easily find cool and quiet R9 290/290X cards:
MSI Gaming R9 290 is $240 on Newegg after rebate:
http://m.newegg.com/Product/index?itemnumber=14-127-774
Noise levels are top notch on it
5. Games will only get more VRAM intensive as we see 2nd and 3rd wave of PS4 console ports. For that reason going GTX570 1.28Gb SLI is a waste of time and money. Secondly, XDMA Cross-fire is smoother than SLI (see HardOCP's reviews). This also means 960 2GB and 960 SLI 2GB are already obsolete! What makes it worse is a single AMD R9 290 card with no SLI profiles is as fast as 960 SLi. What happens in games where SLI doesn't scale? It's a walkover; making things worse that 960 SLI costs 60% more than the 290. Ouch.
6. On average the GTX970 is only 5% faster than an after-market 290 but costs $330+. Since he has a stock i5 2500K CPU, but most reviewers use highly overclocked 4.2Ghz+ i5/7, he would never see any of that 5%. Moreso, in Mantle games, he would get faster performance since his CPU bottleneck would be lifted.
Given the price digference between 970 and 290, a $240 290 is a clear winnee for the OP. He can pocket $90 towards a 250GB SSD like Samsung 850 EVO or save it for an after-market cooler to overclock his CPU or put it aside towards 14nm GPUs in 2016/2017. The 960 at $200-250 is a horrible option by all accounts, 45-50% slower than a 290, and that disadvantage grows to 75-90% where 2Gb of VRAM becomes a major bottleneck.
Cordair 650W is easily powerful enough for a 290X max OC and a Core i7 5960X @ 4.5Ghz. Right now NV's lineup is all underperforming below $330, while 980 is badly overpriced. The best value on the market is an after-market 290. Alternatively one will have to wait for June/July when R9 300 series launches and pricing and performance get readjusted for the entire market.
