Gadgetory

recently AMD and NVIDIA executed some price cuts across their entire line current generation GPUs that means the geforce gtx 980 and radeon r9 390x are more affordable than ever at the bargain basement price of four hundred seventy dollars and three hundred and ninety dollars respectively okay so they're both hideously expensive but there seems to be the price of high-end gaming these days the point being if you have around four hundred ish dollars to drop on a graphics card which should you buy the more affordable 390x certainly seems very tempting but should you invest a bit more in the gtx 980 will you reach a point of diminishing returns well strap yourself in as I take you through an in-depth 22-game analysis that compares the GTX 980 a 99 390x head-to-head testing takes part at 1440p and using Fras we'll be reporting the average minimum and frame time performance both graphics cards provided a smooth 69 FPS average frame rate and Batman Arkham Knight at 1440p the 390x did dip down to a slightly lower 56 FPS frame rate despite the slightly lower minimum frame rate of 390x the frame time performance was the same as each card took just 18 point 6 milliseconds between frames previously we found the gtx 980 and i9 390x to be neck-and-neck in a battlefield 4 test but it seems AMD's new crimson driver gives the 390x a slight performance boost the 390 X was 2 frames per second faster on average of 1440p another close battle can be found in black ops 3 as the 980 was just a single frame faster of 1440p that said when comparing the minimum frame rate the 980 was 3 FPS faster though again this isn't exactly a significant margin the civilization beyond Earth performance is interesting as the 390x provided the highest average frame rate who was considerably slower than the 980 when comparing the minimum frame rate this afforded the 980 is slightly better frame time result as well both the 980 and 390x averaged 44 FPS at 1440 pin Crysis 3 the again we find it's the nine eightieth at delivers the better minimum frame rate resolve and consequently the better frame time performance the Dragon Age Inquisition performance was virtually neck-and-neck as the 980 was just 1 FPS faster on average while both provided the same minimum frame rate result despite that the 980 delivered considerably better frame time performance although both graphics cards provide a very playable performance in f1 2015 at 1440p the 980 was considerably faster reaching 80 frames per second opposed to just 70 FPS for the 390x despite the rather large frame rate discrepancy the frame time results were very similar fallout 4 played best on the 980 years though the difference in the average frame rate was just 3 FPS that said it was the minimum frame rate that made up the biggest difference is the 980 was 6 FPS faster than the 390 X here despite this the frame time performance was much the same as was the case with f1 2015 we find that both graphics cards were able to deliver silky smooth performance in grid Autosport despite the 980 offering considerably better performance with an average of 92 fps the 980 was 18% faster than the 390 x in this game as we found to be the case more often than not the 980 and 390x deliver very similar performance this time when testing with grand theft auto 5 the 980 was on average just one frame faster and despite the same minimum frame rate the 980 also delivered slightly better frame time performance as well the hitman absolution performance favored the 390x by a small margin as it was 3 FPS faster when comparing the average frame rate just 1 FPS faster for the minimum frame rate both the 980 and 390x averaged a playable 79 fps in Mad Max though the 390x did drop to a slightly lower 64 fps this method the 980 did provide better frame time performance but with both cards at or under the 20 millisecond mark the difference was negligible Metro redux still proved to be very demanding as the 980 averaged just 42 FPS that said this meant it was for FPS faster than the 390x the 390x took home the win in Middle Earth shadow of Mordor with an average of 54 FPS and a minimum of just 45 FPS the 980 wasn't a great deal slower with 51 FPS and a minimum of 43 FPS but the 390x was a clear winner here unsurprisingly the deity enjoys a rather large win in the heavily game works injected project cards winning by a 20% margin over the three 90s that said the 390x still delivered a respectable 60 FPS average of 1440p and the frame time performance wasn't bad either this time we find that although the 980 provided stronger average performance and Sleeping Dogs it was slightly slower when comparing the minimum frame rate even with the latest in video game ready driver Star Wars Battlefront plays considerably better an AMD Hardware this isn't surprising though given this is an AMD supported title and it is possible Nvidia can make up some ground nevertheless for now the game is best played on AMD hardware and the 390x was 23% faster than the 980 the 980 provided slightly better performance and thief with 82 frames per second opposed to 78 FPS for the 390x that said both graphics card delivered very smooth performance the 980 offered a reasonable performance gain in Total War a delight over the 390 X with an average of 35 fps opposed to just 30 fps for the Radian with tress effects enabled the 980 still does well with an average of 55 FPS making it 5 FPS faster than the 390x interestingly while the 980 was faster in Tomb Raider using truss effects the 390 X is faster in The Witcher 3 using hair works what madness is this with the game patched up to date we find that hair works now runs very well in AMD hardware it's a shame this feature was so damaging to performance when the game was released finally we have watchdogs and here the 980 and 390 acts to live a virtually identical performance though it is interesting to note that the 390x did provide better frame time performance there you have it 22 games tested and a heap of data to crunch breaking it down quickly the GeForce GTX 980 was on average just 3% faster than the Radeon r9 390x to 1440p we comparing the average framerate and 4% faster for the minimum frame rate before we declare the 982 obvious winner here let's factor in some pricing information currently on Newegg the cheapest 980 will set you back 440 dollars though most of price in the 472 480 dollar range still taking 440 dollars as a baseline means that the 980 is at least 13% more expensive than the 390 X that we expect on average to find around an 18% price difference this then makes a 390 X the better value option as it's just 3% slower and at least 11 percent cheaper unfortunately as is often the case it's not that simple as there's yet more factors to consider the 398 consumes at least 25% more power based on our testing while we don't believe this will impact your electricity bill too much it does speak to the cards true value on average we found that while the 390x provides a 13% overclock the 980 doubles that with an average boost overclock of 1534 megahertz for a 26% overclock also we found that partner cards such as those from gigabyte for example run cooler and quieter on the 1980s and they do on the 390x taking all these factors into consideration there are clear arguments for going either way still if we were to pick a winner here it would be the slightly slower Radeon r9 390x for the simple fact that out of the box performance is much the same and it's a heck of a lot cheaper thanks for watching another Hardware unbox comparison if you've got any questions at all then please head to our forum at Hardware on box comm or leave your question in the comments don't forget to hit like hit subscribe and I'll see you next time you