Sapphire R9 380X 4GB NITRO OC or Zortan GTX 970?

BoboTheMighty

BoboTheMighty

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Weeell, I've been delaying this long enough, so I've been thinking of picking up either of these two babies. :p (Corrected… it's Zotac, but we all knew that).
Is this version of nitro worth it (around 30$ more) compared to regular one? How does it stack against 970 ( a bit more expensive here, 50$ or so…other 970's cost a lot more in this backwater).
Playing on 1920/1080 plus i3 4160( upgrading later on). How much PSU would I need for this? ( right now using xfx 550w core edition).
Don't plan to overclock or anything, few extra fps are not important so long as it's stable ( and above anything those damn console peasants are running :p).
 
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Nvidia > AMD every time, but that's just my opinion. ;)

Your 550w PSU should suffice assuming it has the necessary connectors, but check the minimum requirements just to be sure.
 
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It's rational opinion.
For some odd reson only they know, AMD just can't make a proper driver that won't cause problems. A few days ago the driver caused GPU fans to stop which led to overheating (cards won't melt ofc, but the game will either crash or the system will BSOD/freeze).
I'm not saying nVidia is without sins, but they seem to make less critical errors than

Perhaps that will change in the future but do yourself a favor and if you're buying a new card today, go with nVidia.
 
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Eh, I think I'll go with Amd, never really had any problems with their drivers. One thing though...with this overclocked version I basically get few extra fps with a bit higher PSU requirements?
 
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A 380X 4 GB is ca. 5% faster than a factory overclocked GTX 960 4 GB. Which means nothing in gaming performance. Factory o/c'ed 380X cards will probably make it 8-10%. These values make the 380X a huge disappointment. This chip is either too expensive for its performance or too slow for the money.

A GTX 970 is roundabout 40% faster than a 380X. So it's simply a different market segment.
 
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I remember a happy time, not so long ago, when I was Amd and ATI all the way. Times have changed, and I certainly wouldn't buy a 380X.
 
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Eh, I'll probably wait for a price drop on 970...with any luck world economy will crash in a month or two and bring GPU prices down with it.
One question though...these manufacturer labels like Sapphire, etc... are more a quality of assurance sort of thing, right? No difference between actual performance or something, at least for the same basic model?
 
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Yeah - barring overclocking and cooling setups, the same models between manufacturers should have the same silicon.
 
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These manufacturers create their own custom designs with components selected by them. The graphics chip is always the same, although the manufacturers take the liberty to tact it slightly faster (within agreements with AMD or NVidia I suppose), depending on target audience. From a performance standpoint the differences are small though. One model might have a 3% overclock, the other a very silent cooler, the third certain components selected for long term durability while the 4th looks incredibly cool in your rig. You set your priorities and pay 30 bucks or so more for it.
 
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Ripper said:
Yeah - barring overclocking and cooling setups, the same models between manufacturers should have the same silicon.
Click to expand...

Not always. There are reference design cards and there are custom design cards.
For the GTX 970, for example, there is no nVidia reference design at all so every graphics card built with a GTX 970 GPU is a custom design by the card manufacturer.
The GTX 980 on the other hand exists in both variants, i.e. reference design and custom design.
 
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I own the Zotac GTX 970 and I can play all current games on very high settings with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080. Most of the time this card doesn't get hot at all.
 
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Moriendor said:
Not always. There are reference design cards and there are custom design cards.
For the GTX 970, for example, there is no nVidia reference design at all so every graphics card built with a GTX 970 GPU is a custom design by the card manufacturer.
The GTX 980 on the other hand exists in both variants, i.e. reference design and custom design.
Click to expand...

But the reference vs custom design only applies to the layout of the card, the cooling, etc. I'm pretty sure the GPUs are all the same - Nvidia makes the silicon, and then sends it out for the manufacturers to assemble the cards.
 
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I'm not sure now much is that hungarian shop reliable, but has some juicy prices.
High risk, high profit it seems:
http://forum.pcekspert.com/showthread.php?t=272026
http://www.bug.hr/forum/topic/opcenito-o-ict-biznisu/iponeu-iskustva/229222.aspx

A bit more expensive, but just a bit, is Alzashop, but I never heard anyone had problems with them:
https://www.alzashop.com/gigabyte-gtx-970-gaming-4-gigabytes-d2921644.htm?o=1

But, I'm not into Gigabyte, I'm always buying Phantoms:
https://www.alzashop.com/gainward-gtx970-phantom-4-gigabytes-ddr5-d2758958.htm?o=1
 
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Well, just curious if you are into AMD why don't you consider the Radeon 390X 8GB GDDR5 ?
 
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Well, it's nearly twice as expensive, no? Also 8GB seems like overkill for most games and I'd probably need a lot better power supply.
 
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Well as far as I've seen, it would cost about the same as the GTX 970, but you'd get more, but if you'd also need to buy a new power supply... of course I understand!
 
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