Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unbox today we've got an old-fashioned GPU battle on our hands it's the GeForce GTX 970 versus the Radeon r9 290 now recently I did revisit the 290 I checked out how it stacked up against more modern GPUs but that was more of an upgrade guide I suppose today we have the main event and it is a battle that I know many of you have been very interested in and I suppose after five years a lot of you just want to know which GPU is the best before that today's video sponsor is deep cool and they're amazing anti leaked technology featured in the new captain 240 pro after years of research and development deep core has created a leak free all-in-one liquid cooler using that patented automatic pressure relieving radiator which as the name suggests fence any air pressure from within the loop to avoid leakage for more information please check the link in the video description ok so let's quickly rewind for a moment back in September 2014 Nvidia revealed at the GTX 970 for the first time some 10 months after the Radeon r9 290 release so the 970 was the much newer product and unsurprisingly it came in offering a little extra performance at a slightly better price AMD did quickly respond with aggressive r9 290 price cuts but with the 970 generally 10 to 15% faster on average and considerably more power efficient it went on to be a best-seller despite the vram controversy throughout 2015 the GTX 970 was typically the punchier GPU and with a slew of high quality AIB models to pick from it easily outsold the r9 290 however many of those who purchased the r9 290 were jumping up and down about how it would be a better investment down the track whether or not they were talking five years down the track we'll never know but at least today we can settle which GPU offers the best performance in 2019 for this test we have 33 games all of which have been tested at 1080p as this is the more suitable resolution for these GPUs and we'll look closely at the results for 13 games before moving on to our usual head-to-head comparison graphs the standard GPU test system has been used to comprises of a core I nine nine are okay clocked at five gigahertz with thirty two gigabytes of ddr4 3200 memory okay that's everything let's get into the blue bar graphs first up we have apex legends and right away we're seeing some pretty neck-and-neck performance between the GTX 970 and r9 290 this one simply too close to call and with just a frame minute which is well within the margin of error it's safe to say performance was identical using either GPU when compared to our modern GPU we're looking at GTX 1063 gigabyte like performance so not amazing but given their age it is also reasonably impressive moving on we have the division two and this is a title it works exceptionally well with AMD hardware as evidenced by Vega 64 beating the GTX 1080 and our TX 2060 while the 580 crushed the 1060 so with those comparisons previously established it comes as little surprise that the r9 290 absolutely dusts the GTX 970 beating it by a 19% margin the 970 does perform significantly better than the three gigabyte 1060 but even so you will want to dial down the quality settings a little bit next up we have shot of the Tomb Raider and this is another title it sees AMD GPUs doing very well and here the GTX 970 was 12% slower than the r9 290 the 970 basically mimicked the GTX 1063 gigabyte or I guess you could say the 1060 mimics the GTX 970 either way performance was decent despite trailing down on 290 okay so I promised this order wasn't picked on purpose but here we have yet another title that works extremely well with AMD GPUs again the GTX 970 was 12% sold in the r9 290 this time when testing with forza horizon for though i should note that despite that performance was still very playable still in three of the more recently released titles we've seen the online 290 doing exceptionally well finally we have a solid win for the GTX 970 this time when testing with hitman two using the DirectX 11 API that's what I should just quickly point out that enabling the new patched in DirectX 12 mode it doesn't really change things at all the 970 was still the superior GPU in this title performance in Just Cause 4 was pretty similar using either the 970 or 290 the GeForce GPU did pull ahead in our test when looking at the average frame rate however the 1% lower result was identical with both managing 40 FPS so overall the experience was much the same moving on we find a rather close battle and testing with Resident Evil 2 the r9 290 was just 6 FPS faster at 1080p and this meant the 970 performed more like a three gigabyte 1060 again not a bad result given the average framerate was 66 FPS but this one is still a clear win for the 290 fortnight is a game that does favour nvidia gpus thanks to its use of the Unreal Engine 4 this can be seen when comparing the GTX 1016 rx 580 for example it can also be seen when comparing older GPUs such as the GTX 970 and r9 290 here the 970 was 18 percent faster delivering 87 FPS on average the GTX 970 also stacked up really well in MetroAccess with an average of 48 fps at 1080p using the ultra quality settings this minute was 23% faster than the r9 290 placing it basically on par with the 60 GB GTX 1060 and irx 590 so a very solid result for the old Maxwell GPU next up we have Tom Clancy's Rainbow six siege and here the GTX 970 is more competitive than I was expecting Oracle was being a pretty easy win for the r9 290 back in the day but here it was just 5% faster on average that said the 1% load performance was still more consistent though the experience was still extremely smooth with the GTX 970 and moving on frame rates were surprisingly similar when testing with battlefield 5 here the GTX 970 was just 3 FPS faster ik waiting to a 5 percent margin and this is why I typically call it a tie when the margin is 5% or less still this meant the 970 did very well in this title as we've seen many times already it's often very similar to the 3 gigabyte gtx 1060 second last game tested is World of Tanks and this is a title that generally doesn't like AMD GPUs or perhaps it's AMD GPUs that don't like World of Tanks either way it's not great news for the red team the r9 290 was still able to live a very playable performance but we see a 36% uplift when looking at the GTX 970 that's obviously a rather significant performance improvement and the last game that we're going to look closely at the results for is far cry new dawn and here we have a tie 70 FPS apiece and that place both the GTX 970 r9 290 on power 3d about 1060 performance italia peak using the ultra quality preset certainly was respectable and you won't need to turn down any quality settings here now this is one area where the Maxwell GPUs always had a big advantage over the AMD competition and it's an advantage in video still holds today for what was a similar level of performance the r9 290 drove total system consumption up by 30% and that's obviously quite a significant figure this is why the GTX 970 graphics cars typically around much cooler and quieter than the r9 290 models okay so that's how the GTX 970 r9 290 stack up in all those titles and it seemed as though we saw quite a bit of back and forth so I'm really interesting which model was faster overall based on what we've seen so far I don't imagine the 970 is still 10 to 15 percent faster like what most reviewers including myself found back in 2014 that said let's just jump into the 33 game comparison to find out what's what well there's your fine wine working right there aka AMD's slow driver development seriously though that is an impressive comeback for the r9 290 but it is interesting to note that while overall they were much the same the 970 was faster by a 5% margin or greater in 16 of the 33 games tested while the 290 was faster by a 5 percent margin or greater in just 11 of the games so the 970 certainly was the more consistent performer the smaller three and a half gigabyte primary vram partition heard it in Wolfenstein especially with the settings used for testing and then we saw that dirt fall also favors the radeon gpus using CMAA whilst range brigade is an AMD sponsored title and well optimized for Radeon GPUs aimed it also does well in the division to Sniper Elite for Forza horizon 4 and shadow of the Tomb Raider so no surprises there it is mostly older titles or in video sponsored games where the green team does well a game such as World of Tanks Warhammer to Metro Exodus project cars - and fortnight for example out of interest I decided to look at the game's release dates to see if the r9 290 was getting the better of the GTX 970 in more recently released titles while I did only test 11 releases from 2018 you can see that the wins are pretty evenly split but for the 2019 titles released so far that we have tested so the more demanding titles released this year then the r9 290 is thus far getting the better of the GTX 970 not sure this means much just yet like I said just looking at this out of pure curiosity moving on I decided to see how the GTX 970 stacked up against the gtx 1066 gigabyte i don't avert the GTX 970 was 15% slower so here we're comparing a 2014 release with an MSRP of $330 u.s. - a 2016 release with a 250 dollar US MSRP and for those wondering back when we reviewed the gtx 1066 gigabyte so when we reviewed it at launch the 970 was 15% slower so we can safely say that no nvidia gimping as it's often referred to appears to have taken place of course in video doesn't actively give performance we've proven this time and time again on the channel it's a complete load of nonsense and plenty of other media outlets have also proven this Nvidia certainly guilty of prioritizing newer architectures while optimizations for older generations tend to come a bit later if at all for the really old models now if you've been holding out all these used for a three to four hundred dollar upgrade the GeForce RT X 2060 might be of interest after four and a half years you're looking at an 86 percent performance boost on average for roughly the same price the 2016 MSRP is 20 dollars higher so that's about a 20% boost each year which isn't a lot but by today's standards it's certainly not terrible either and really this is your best option at this price point at least your best readily available option at this price point because yes I know sometimes Vega 56 are selling for $300 some regions but not all regions and not Australia but anyway obviously you can see what options you have available in your region if you have a 300 dollar Vegas craps card then yeah that might be worth buying anyway in classic J's 2 cent style I digress well there you have it the GTX 970 went from being 10 to 15% faster four years ago to just a percent in 2019 at least based a 33 game test sample also despite its sarena half gigabytes of vram the GTX 970 still does seem to be the more reliable performer which might surprise some of you especially after you've no doubt heard over and over again how it's doomed and will be completely useless before too long because of that limited vram buffer well that obviously hasn't happened yet and with a few minor tweaks the GTX 970 can carve its way through all the latest and greatest titles at an EP without an issue still to give credit where I suppose credits do the Radeon r9 290 is still extremely impressive and in 2019 it's there's really nothing wrong with it personally I'm completely attributing the r9 290 s come back to Andy's driver development and not anything to do with the partition de Vere am buffer or Nvidia neglecting driver support fine wine is really what it's all about here that is AMD getting on top of their driver optimization over the past few years and that's really why the owner and 290 has come along so nicely anyway I hope you enjoyed the benchmarks in this video and remember you can jump over to our patreon page for all 33 graphs if you want to take a closer look at any of the games tested thanks for watching I'm your host Steve I'll see you again next time you