Gadgetory

that was difficult to do a straight face actually I'm not even I'm not sure that I did it all right how's my hair look is that all right good welcome back to harbor unbox for a video I promised about two months ago now normally I'd like to leave you guys hanging but with the arrival of Verizon 7 followed by the GTX 1080i then Rison 5 Verizon 5 and well more horizon 5 that brings us to today anyway back in February I revisited the geforce gtx 970 to see how the video is hugely popular maxwell base GPU was getting on in modern titles the 970 has been heavily criticized for the whole three and a half gigabyte memory debacle and many claimed it would fall in a heap before too long making it a bad buy especially for second-hand shoppers what I found though was quite the opposite the 970 proved very capable at iupi and even the 1440p resolution out of the box it was on par with the RX 470 though once overclocked we did see a performance boost of 12% on average which allowed it to match the our explore oh you four gigabyte while falling only slightly short of the gtx 1066 gigabyte in the end I recommended second-hand shoppers try and find a GTX 970 for around $150 us or say two hundred and fifty dollars ozzie of course if you can snag one for less that's even better following that video the plan was to revisit the r9 390 to see how AMD's counterpart gets on in today's games and how it compares to the GTX 970 so that's exactly what we're doing lined up I have 22 games on the menu most of which are very recently released titles and all have been tested at 1080p and 1440p for comparison we have not just the GTX 970 but also the gtx 1070 1060 1052 i RX 480 and RX 470 so we should be able to work on exactly where the r9 390 slots in today's landscape for testing I've taken my old hrs Radeon r9 390 Ice q 2x OC this card benchmarked in that out-of-the-box configuration and then again with a custom overclock out-of-the-box the card features a core clock speed of 1020 megahertz which is an insignificant 2% boost over the AMD reference clock speeds I was able to manually raise the clock frequency or eleven hundred and twenty megahertz which was a further ten percent overclock finally by default the gddr5 memory comes clocked at 1500 megahertz and for our custom overclock I pushes up to 1700 megahertz for throughput of 6.8 gigabits per second finally all testing was conducted using our core i7 7700 K test system overclocked to 4.9 gigahertz with 32 gigabytes of ddr4 3000 memory first up we have rising the Tomb Raider here the r9 390 is able to match the RX 470 and while an 82 FPS average is certainly very playable that did make it quite a bit slower than the GTX 970 overclocked it gains an additional 5 frames at least placed it on par with the RX 480 still even overclocked the r9 390 couldn't catch the GTX 970 in this title moving to 1440p we find similar margins though the r9 390 does close in a little bit on the GTX 970 of course rise of the Tomb Raider isn't in video sponsored title and therefore tends to favor the green team a little bit more still it's a visually impressive game it's well worth including and with over 21 other games to look at it's not going to screw the results by a meaningful margin interestingly the r9 390 performs like a champion Far Cry primal leaving the R X 480 behind and comfortably beating the GTX 970 that said even factoring overclocking in the r9 390 has just enough Headroom is stay ahead of the overclocked GTX 970 moving to 1440p the r9 390 remains very strong pushing 48 fps while the overclocked GTX 970 does fall away managing just 43 fps it would seem that the larger memory buffer of the r9 390 is playing to its advantage here that said though both cards did play much better at 1080p the division is a very visually pleasing game using the ultra quality preset but even so the r9 390 makes out very well and once overclocked averaged 58 FPS at 1080p this made it slightly faster than the GTX 970 for good measure now 1440p gamers will want to reduce the quality settings slightly that's 43 FPS on average with dips below 30 fps is an ideal the same will also be true for GTX 970 owners as you would expect the r9 390 performs very well in hitman and once overclocked it came second only to the gtx 1070 as this is an AMD sponsored title it wasn't surprising to see the r9 390 crushing the GTX 970 here we find much the same story at 1440p here the 390 managed to average 60fps while the overclocked GTX 970 struggled to average 50 fps quantum break is in the game AMD fans like to see included but it's not that old yet so expect to see it hanging around till later this year anyway the r9 390 averaged over 60 FPS with the game maxed out at a DP so there isn't much to worry about here not only that but it managed to stay ahead of the GTX 970 overclocked to the GTX 970 does catch up at 1440p though wasn't able to match the r9 390 once it was overclocked similar to games such as hitman in the division you will want to sacrifice visual quality ever so slightly at this resolution for smoother frame rates unsurprisingly the r9 390 handles overwatch at 1080p with ease delivering a silky smooth 155 FPS on average and 165 fps once overclocked it might have been a bit slow on the GTX 970 in this style but with well over 100 FPS at all times it hardly matters moving a 1440p we do see framerate drop as you would expect and now the GTX 970 isn't that much faster than the 390 in fact the minimum frame rates are very similar indeed like overwatch we find high frame rates in Doom as well though this time the r9 390 is ahead quite a bit once overclocking factored in moving to 1440p again reduces the frame rate quite a bit and now the r9 390 and GTX 970 s performance is fairly similar though the radeon GPU is of course still faster as you can see the r9 390 handles total war Warhammer with relative ease maintaining over 60 FPS at all times in its out-of-the-box form meanwhile overclocking helped us squeeze a few more frames out of the card once again though in terms of performance it was very similar to the GTX 970 at our DP River in a 1440p gives the r9 390 the edge over the GTX 970 though I should emphasize that it's only a very slight edge with nothing more than the factory overclocking in play we set the H is 390 and game with GTX 970 are neck and neck in Mirror's Edge catalyst overclocked the 970 does a little better but the margins are hardly extreme jumping the 1440p helps out the r9 390 and its battle against the 970 though once again the margins are very minor race fans will enjoy slightly ever so slightly better performance with the GTX 970 as the r9 390 trails by a few frames a second at 1080p and much the same as also found as 1440p still both graphics cards enabled smooth gameplay performance in this title using the maximum in quality game settings the r9 390 did very well in Deus Ex mankind divided matching the 4 gigabyte 480 out of the box while I match the a gigabyte version once overclocked this made it a good bit faster than the GTX 970 even with the Maxwell part overclocked of course mankind divided is an AMD sponsored title so the findings here are totally surprising moving a 1440p we find much the same though no the graphics cards tested were particularly impressive in terms of performance using the very high quality preset pushing over 60fps at all times in battlefield 1 isn't particularly difficult with modern mood range hardware which speaks to how well the games optimize even with the ultra quality settings in play the r9 390 sped at over 80 FPS on average at 1080p moving to 1440p we still saw an average of over 60 fps and once overclocked the r9 390 and GTX 970 delivered very similar performance mafia 3 is still inexplicably demanding using the high quality preset though the game does tend to favor hardware from the green team as a result the GTX 970 was found to be slightly faster than the r9 390 at 1080p now 1440p you can forget about the higher quality settings even a medium the game is extremely demanding anyway here we see the 390 and 970 delivering the same performance the HIAS r9 390 was good for an average of 77 FPS at 1080p when playing Gears of War 4 making it a few frames faster than the game would GT X 970 overclock the 970 does pull a few frames ahead so the roles are reversed jumping to 1440p again plays in favor of the r9 390 and here we see both previous generation GPUs render 52 fps on average which is quite impressive given we using the ultra quality preset titanfall 2 fans will enjoy the fact that the previous generation graphics cards are still able to deliver exceptional performance in this title the 390 was also fast in the 970 in both the out-of-the-box form as well as with the custom overclock the margins did close up at 1440p though it was interesting to note the r9 390 offered exceptional minimum frame rate performance beating the 970 by 6 FPS out of the box granted higher frame rates aren't necessary will enjoy Civilization 6 but it's nice to see the r9 390 providing strong results all the same averaging over 60 fps at 1080p will ensure smooth animation in this title as the game is primarily CPU bound we find only a slight dip in framerate performance when jumping from 1080p to 1440p call of duty infinite warfare is another modern title it's not particularly demanding though you could argue that down to the somewhat dated looking graphics anyway the 390 was good for at least 73 FPS on average allowing it to match the GTX 10 63 gigabyte while overclocking put it within striking distance of the 6 gigabyte model moving to 1440 peter 390 can be seen leading the gtx 970 and the margin is reasonably large when comparing the out-of-the-box performance watchdogs 2 provides similar results between the factory overclocked gtx 970 and r9 390 both averaging around 55 FPS at 1080p this meant custom overclocking gave the GTX 970 the edge but the margins were far from extreme now 1440p the overclocked GTX 970 pulls further ahead hitting 47 fps to the r9 390 s 41 fps ideally gamers will want to lower the quality settings here to achieve frame rates closer to 60 FPS for those of you unaware using very high quality settings makes Resident Evil 7 a massive vram pig and as a result even at 1080p the r9 390 is able to pull ahead of the gtx 970 or well ahead out of the box the 390 was almost 40% faster than the 970 that's a devastating margin right there increasing the resolution only makes life harder for the gtx970 as the r9 390 is now 47% faster whereas the r9 39 is good for at least 66 FPS the 970 can only muster 45 FPS for those of you who like to cross swords we have for honor and here we find not the dingdong battle between the r9 390 and gtx 970 out of the box the r9 390 was a smidgen quicker while the 970 pulled a fraction ahead once overclocked we find much the same story at 1440p between the 390 and 970 still the 390 looked good overclocked matching the RX 488 gigabyte we're getting there people second last game and its prey here the 390 turned out an impressive 95 FPS on average which placed it on par with the gtx 970 moving to 1440p the 390 again matched the 970 out of the box so i overclocking did hand in the 970 a rather massive win over the 390 still both will good for over 50 fps at all times using the very high quality settings all right we made it dawn of war 3 the last game tested right so at 1080p the 390 was good 473 FPS on average which is essentially what we saw from the 970 once again overclocking help the 970 snag the leaders at 85 FPS to the 76 FPS of the overclocked 390 on the other hand the 1440p resolution once again helps out the r9 390 allow it to close in on the overclocked 970 in the engine average of around 50 FPS is plenty for smooth player performance in Dawn of War 3 the power consumption for the r9 390 isn't as bad as I recall total system consumption only increased by 13% over the gtx 970 so really that's not a big issue at all not only that but with a high-end overclocked core i7 7700 k cpu the entire system consumed well under 400 watts when gaming overclocking the r9 390 did push consumption up to 351 watts for the entire system but even then that's still very manageable of course when compared to current generation GPU such as the gtx 960 or the RS 480 the r9 390 does look like a bit of a power Pig alright whole 23 games and the bag it felt like for the most part the r9 390 and GTX 970 were pretty well neck-and-neck often trading blows depending on the title but which one came out on top overall and by how much well let's go take a look shall we well out of the box the r9 390 was 7% faster than the GTX 970 producing on average 80 fps at 1080p and the margin grew to 8 percent at 1440p overclocked to 390 enjoyed a performance boost of just 5% on average and this was seen at both tested resolutions meanwhile the GTX 970 did much better through overclocking and joying on average a 12 percent boost in performance surprisingly however even with this massive boost the GTX 970 was still only able to match the 390 with both GPUs overclocked what's really interesting to note is that almost two years ago back when Matt was presenting on the channel in this beautiful blue top we put together a 22 game battle between the r9 390 and GTX 970 and not a single game featured back then was featured in today's video back then we found both graphics cards to live at identical performance across the 22 games tested at 1440p in the comparison we picked the GTX 970 / the r9 390 so the simple fact that it consumes less power and overclocked considerably better as you might imagine we did quite a bit of flak for picking the GTX 970 mostly because that whole like I said 3.5 gigabyte memory device and at the time most reviewers were going with the safer option which was the r9 390 quite a number of viewers claimed that within a year the GTX 970 would fall on a heap as newer more demanding titles were released allowing the 390 to take charge and therefore making it a wiser investment well here we are well over a year later with 22 new and much more demanding games and as you've just seen it's still neck and neck the r9 390 has made up some ground though that's not entirely surprising as a MIDI has made significant strides in their driver development otherwise known as fine wine technology it's a funny spin that anyway overclocked both graphics cards now deliver similar performance overall while the GTX 970 still remains a little more power efficient so picking between the two is just as hard in 2000 17 as it was back in 2015 thankfully you don't really need to worry about which one to get as much these days I would simply go with the best second-hand dealer you can find with out-of-the-box performance similar to that of the rx 470 or GTX 1060 which cost around a hundred and seventy dollars u.s. or two hundred and forty dollars Australian you won't want to spend that much on a second-hand GTX 970 or r9 390 given they are secondhand and that means that there isn't going to be any kind of warranty couple that with the fact they do consume more power I would aim for a maximum purchase price of one hundred and fifty dollars u.s. or around two hundred dollars Ozzie it might be hard to find these graphics cards for those prices though is they have held their value very well that's probably because of the performance just seen that said though I recommend you look to spend about a hundred and twenty dollars u.s. or 180 dollars Ozzie at those prices you will be getting a really good deal well that's going to do it for this one hope you guys enjoyed the comparison and I'm keen to see how these two GPUs compare in another year or so for pricing please check the links in the video description and if you do want to support the channel directly and gain access to a monthly live stream with Brian from tech CD and myself then consider pledging $1 per month on patreon anyway that's all of begging I'm going to do on this one I'm your host Steve see you again soon guys it you