Gadgetory

hi and welcome back to harbor unboxed I'm your host Matt and in this episode we're going to compare and benchmark the geforce gtx 970 and the Radeon r9 390 last week we compared the geforce gtx 960 to the Radeon r9 380 to determine which was the best $200 offering out of the 22 games tested the r9 380 was faster in 80% of them and as a result the gcf's 960 was an average 60% slower at 1080p that being the case we declared the Radeon r9 380 as the winner after posting that video I've received an overwhelming number of requests for a similar comparison featuring the GeForce GTX 970 versus the Radeon r9 390 so most of my week has been spent benchmarking to make that happen the benchmarks focused solely on frame rate performance though I'm picking a winner will be taking into account power consumption and overclocking potential - speaking of which based on our own findings the iron.i 390 is an average capable of a 50 percent overclock while the GTX 970 is slightly better achieving a 20 percent overclock on average overclocking you might not sway us one way or the other but power consumption is a real consideration and this is where NVIDIA has a real advantage the Radeon r9 390 consumed on average 40 percent more power in our testing when comparing entire system consumption this is obviously a significant figure so it'll be interesting to see how their frame rate performance compares testing with just a few select games doesn't really give you the full picture so for this head-to-head battle we've selected 22 of the latest and most popular graphically intense games to run the 970 and 390 through testing takes place at 1440p as well as 4k although neither of these GPUs are really intended for 4k gaming on top of that we'll be testing each game with two different quality settings for example battlefield 4 was tested using the maximum in-game quality settings with two times multi sample anti-aliasing enabled and then again with a a disable completely The Witcher 3 has been tested with hair works enabled and then disabled on Tomb Raider was tested with and with our press affects both GPUs were tested using a core i5 6600 K processor under a fresh install of Windows 10 with the latest drivers installed all of that being said let's jump into the benchmarks the 970 average 48 frames per second of 1440p making it 6 frames per second faster than the 390 in Metro Redux a 14% performance advantage disabling tessellation eliminated the nine seven years performance advantages the 390 became three frames per second faster with a total of 59 frames per second with tress effects enabled the 970 was actually faster than the 390 with an average of 55 frames per second thank you 7 frames per second or 15 percent faster and tomato toning tres effects off still saw the 970 lead the 390 by 7 planes per second at 1440p battlefield 4 was tightly contested of 1440p both graphics cards rendered 59 frames per second with 2 times msaa enabled disabling anti-aliasing played into the hands of the 970 which was now 8 frames per second faster than the 390 with a buttery smooth 79 frames per second they've played best on the 390 as it delivered 53 frames per second on average making the Radian 4 frames per second faster than the 917 turning SSA a off significantly increased performance as expected and now the 390 was just 2 frames per second faster than the 917 again we find another tight battle between these 2 graphics cards this time we're testing with watchdogs here the 390 was just a single frame faster than the 917 turning off HPA o improved performance by 26% at 1440p and saw both graphics cards deliver an average of 68 frames per second the 390 was clearly faster in hitman with an average of 67 frames per second while the 970 was good for just 55 frames per second making an 18% slower testing hitman with FX AAA didn't change the performance margin at all is the 970 was still 12 frames per second slower than the 390 using the very high quality setting is all lower the 970 average 73 frames per second at 1440p and GTA 5 making it 11 percent faster than the 390 which managed 66 frames per second reducing the quality settings too high allowed both graphics cards average above 90 frames second though the 970 was still faster I'll be at by 3 frames per second the 970 was good for 71 frames per second in civilization beyond Earth making a six percent faster than the 390 with an average of 67 frames per second turning anti-aliasing off against our 4 frames per second separation in favor of the 970 between these two graphics cards the 970 was 7% faster than 390 when testing with Total War adalah although it should point out that this was just a 2 frames per second difference reducing the quality preset from extreme to quality allowed the 970 to render 45 frames per second on average making it 4 frames per second faster than the 390 both graphics cards averaged 37 frames per second at 14-14 The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt with hair works enabled turning off hair works favor the 390 which was now 2 frames per second faster than the 970 with a total of 46 frames per second testing with Middle Earth shadow of mordor saw the 390 average 59 frames per second and the 970 58 frames per second so it's fair to say things were very even in this title that said using the very high-quality preset the 390 became 5 frames per second faster than the 970 for a very playable 67 frames per second Assassin's Creed unity is a game like hitman absolution where the 390 demonstrates a serious performance advantage this time with an average of just 33 frames per second the 970 was 18% slower than the 390 which sat more comfortably on 40 frames per second turning off percentage closer soft shadows and screen space ambient occlusion helped the 970 out quite a lot and now performed within one frame per second of the 390 like most of the games tested thus far we find that the performance is very competitive between the 970 and 390 in Crysis 3 390 was just a single frame faster at 1440p with an average of 40 frames per second changing to x sm AAA for fxaa improved performance dramatically as the 390 was now good for an average of 59 frames per second again just 1 frame per second faster than the 970 yet again we find almost nothing separating these two graphics cards this time and dragon aging in here the 390 was just one frame per second faster than the 970 with an average of 48 frames per second to save me anti-aliasing entirely it really helped out the 970 which was now found to be four frames per second faster than the 390 with an average of 70 frames per second just a single frame separated the two graphics cards in arma 3 as the 970 rendered 53 frames per second opposed to 52 frames per second for the 390 toning ssao off along with anti-aliasing the 970 was able to pull a frames per second the head of the 390 with an average of 79 frames per second the 970 was four frames per second faster than 390 in good order sport with four times msaa enabled changing the anti-aliasing method from msaa to CMAA played further into the hand of the 970 which extended its lead over the 390 by eight frames per second both graphics cards perform very well in f1 2015 with an average of over 60 frames per second using the maximum in-game quality settings the 390 was the faster of the two with 67 frames per second giving a 2 frame per second performance advantage over the 970 lowering the quality setting saw the 390 beat the 970 by a single frame far cry 4 was dominated by the 390 which averaged 39 frames per second making it 6 frames per second faster than the 917 changing hpi-o 2's SBC while also setting the anti-aliasing mode from MSAA to SMA a allowed for quite a bit of extra performance despite these changes the 390 maintain a solid lead over the 970 as it enjoyed a 6 frame per second advantage the 970 averaged 48 frames per second and dying light making it just 3 frames per second faster than the 390 or 7% faster turning off anti-aliasing depth of field in H Bao allowed the 970 to extend its lead over the 398 or 6 frames per second just 1 frame per second favoured the 390 in Sleeping Dogs as the average 42 frames per second opposed to 41 frames per second for the 970 turning off SSA and reducing their fxaa level to normal significantly boosted performance at 1440p the the 1 frame per second performance margin remained as expected the 970 delivered a considerable performance advance to gym project cars with 56 frames per second making it nine frames per second faster than the 390 reducing the anti-aliasing mode from msaa and SMA a two fxaa we see a reasonable gain in performance the 970 was now able to average 70 frames per second though this meant it was just four frames per second faster than the 319 finally we have Call of Duty advanced warfare and here we find more competitive results the 970 was just one frame per second faster than the 390 with an average of 58 frames per second disabling SSA a and using FX a a rather than SMA a performance virtually doubles though the 970 was just one frame per second faster than the 390 the battle for the best value $300 graphics card was closely fought though in the end we feel NVIDIA won this round due to the GTX 970 being the more efficient graphics card breaking down the framerate performance we found things to be truly neck and neck between the 970 and the 390 of the 22 games tested the 970 was the fastest in 10 and coincidentally so was the 390 with two games resulting in a tie not only was the number of title wins even but so too were the performance ratios of the 22 games tested there wasn't a single frame when averaged separating two graphics cards using the higher quality settings at 1440p both the 917 the 390 averaged 52 frames per second meanwhile reducing the quality settings so both cards averaged exactly 71 frames per second which is quite amazing really another way of looking at it would be to say that in games where the 970 was faster it was an average 9% faster likewise the games where it was slower the 970 was an average 9% slower it was also interesting to find that at 4k the three and a half gigabyte 970 was so competitive with the 82 by 390 again on average nothing separated a two so even in memory demanding situations the 398 gigabyte memory buffer is of little consequence I'm not defending a videos choice to advertise the 970 as a 4 gigabyte graphics card when it can really only efficiently address three and a half gigabytes but it has to be said that this doesn't impact performance in any meaningful way the only reason we could see game is going for the 390 over the 9 at the same price would be for crossfire performance that's a we're not entirely confident crossfire 390s would beat sli 970 s in the end it's the GeForce GTX 970 superior efficiency that sees the Radeon r9 390 consume an average 40% more power that gets it over the line well I hope that settles the $300 performance GPU battle for now I'd like to hear what you guys think in the comments and please let us know if you'd like to see more GPU comparisons this has been Matt for Hardware unbox and as always thank you so much for watching if you enjoyed this video please don't forget to hit like and even consider subscribing to check out our future content as it's released