The difference between different manufacturer's video cards is normally just cooling system. All the cards used are identical, but manufacturers use their own cooling systems. Some of them are quieter, some of them are more effective and allow manufacturers to add some slight factory overclock to their GPU, and some cooling systems are just done as cheaply as possible.
Unless you plan to overclock, or care about the noise your computer is generating, you can just purchase the card from any manufacturer and it'll do well enough. But if you want to do some overclocking, or would prefer the computer to be quieter, then there are large differences between manufacturers.
Thats not true, theres quite a bit of GPUs with custom PCBs nowadays (and ever since both brands gave manufacturers free hands, so to speak, which were very rare before that).
Good 550w PSU is enough to run any single GPU setup.
Yes, you're correct about the custom PCBs.
550W PSU is not enough to run all single GPU setups. For example a setup with Radeon 390 (275W) and AMD FX 9590 processor (220W) would not run with just 550W PSU.
And thats still 495w (math...) in LEAST favorable situation, which wont happen unless for some reason you stress test your whole rig 24/7.
In normal use that rig wont draw more than 400w.
You need to get a power supply that will supply enough power in all situations, even the least favorable. During multi-hour gaming sessions with modern games there will be something that gets close to least favorable situation sooner or later, and if the computer can't get enough power in that situation, it'll crash or have other errors. Power fluctuations can also damage the computer.
You need to have enough power also for motherboard, RAM, hard disk, DVD drive, fans and USB devices attached to the computer. That's why 550W PSU would not be enough for my example configuration.
550w is enough power in all situations. Educate youreslf better on PSUs. To give you a hint: good 550w PSU can actually do more than 550w while bad "750w" PSU could actually do less than 500w.
Id slap a 970 in it and call it a day. As quiz said, the 380's are an option but you're gonna spend 10 to 20 a year more in power usage. So, over the long run i do think you're better off with the 970. I wouldn't recommend a 960.
As to your last question. No, unless you're getting one of the manufacturer specific cooling options, then all the reference cards are basically identical. I personally like EVGA, they've treated me right in the past on warranty stuff. But, honestly any of the major manufacturers would be fine.
I'd question what you're doing with your life if you play games so much at the electricity cost difference approaches $20/year. Any modern GPU will use little power at idle outside of the occasional bug like the one that caused crazy power consumption on Nvidia at 120 Hz or higher. Only under heavy gaming loads will the card burn a lot of power, and even then, you're probably looking at 100+ hours of heavy gaming to make a $1 difference in your power bill.
Just to put some numbers behind this, because I see it come up a good bit:
Average electric price in the US is $0.12/kWh. Top end video cards use upwards of 300W, so to get to 1 kWh, that's 3.33 hours at 100% load, with a top end card.
SO, more to the point, the difference between two cards, such as the 970 and 380. The 970 has a TDP of 145W stock, the 380 is 190W stock. So that's a 45W difference, at full load and at stock clocks.
A casual gamer may play around 10 hours per week. For the sake of calculations, let's assume that is at fully loaded. For a casual gamer, it's about $2.80 difference in electric bills.
A very active gamer may play for 40h per week (that's a full time job right there). That comes out to about $11.25 in additional electric bills.
Now, that's not exactly true, because your video card won't sit at 100% load all the time, even while playing games. nVidia and AMD have much different power management schemes - nVidia will try to push until you hit a limit, AMD will only throttle down if you hit a limit. So the actual electric bill difference will probably be something less than that.
But it gives you a decent idea of where you are sitting. If you are doing something like GPU Folding or Bitcoin hashing or other distributed work while your not gaming, $20 in electricity may not be a stretch, but if your just gaming on it, you probably won't get anywhere near a big enough difference for it to really matter. But the 380 also gives you some extra performance for that extra power, so it's not like your just throwing that electricity cost out the window.
I'm currently running a 4790K and a 980GTX on a 450W PSU and it works fine. Granted, it's a very nice 450W Seasonic that can actually push 450W and not some random 450W unit, and nothing is overclocked.
Using my UPS as a power meter, the computer, 2 24" monitors, a 4-bay NAS, and my 25W amp, while running Prime95 and Furmark at the same time, all come in at around 400W drawn from the wall.
That being said, that isn't exactly what I would recommend. I usually recommend 600-650, which gives a good margin for overclocking and age degradation.
The difference between different manufacturer's video cards is normally just cooling system. All the cards used are identical, but manufacturers use their own cooling systems. Some of them are quieter, some of them are more effective and allow manufacturers to add some slight factory overclock to their GPU, and some cooling systems are just done as cheaply as possible.
Unless you plan to overclock, or care about the noise your computer is generating, you can just purchase the card from any manufacturer and it'll do well enough. But if you want to do some overclocking, or would prefer the computer to be quieter, then there are large differences between manufacturers.
Thats not true, theres quite a bit of GPUs with custom PCBs nowadays (and ever since both brands gave manufacturers free hands, so to speak, which were very rare before that).
Good 550w PSU is enough to run any single GPU setup.
Yes, you're correct about the custom PCBs.
550W PSU is not enough to run all single GPU setups. For example a setup with Radeon 390 (275W) and AMD FX 9590 processor (220W) would not run with just 550W PSU.
And thats still 495w (math...) in LEAST favorable situation, which wont happen unless for some reason you stress test your whole rig 24/7.
In normal use that rig wont draw more than 400w.
You need to get a power supply that will supply enough power in all situations, even the least favorable. During multi-hour gaming sessions with modern games there will be something that gets close to least favorable situation sooner or later, and if the computer can't get enough power in that situation, it'll crash or have other errors. Power fluctuations can also damage the computer.
You need to have enough power also for motherboard, RAM, hard disk, DVD drive, fans and USB devices attached to the computer. That's why 550W PSU would not be enough for my example configuration.
550w is enough power in all situations. Educate youreslf better on PSUs. To give you a hint: good 550w PSU can actually do more than 550w while bad "750w" PSU could actually do less than 500w.
But it gives you a decent idea of where you are sitting. If you are doing something like GPU Folding or Bitcoin hashing or other distributed work while your not gaming, $20 in electricity may not be a stretch, but if your just gaming on it, you probably won't get anywhere near a big enough difference for it to really matter. But the 380 also gives you some extra performance for that extra power, so it's not like your just throwing that electricity cost out the window.
If you're doing some specialized workload and not just playing games, then which card is better at that specialized workload can be a huge factor. To take the bitcoin mining example, during the Fermi and Kepler generations, an AMD card was about four times as fast as an Nvidia card that would be comparable at gaming. Even if it used a little more power, four times as fast completely overwhelmed that.
Exactly what power supply do you have? Give the exact brand name and model. A good 800 W power supply will handle either card fine, but a fire hazard that will explode if you try to pull 400 W from it might not, even if it says 800 W on the label.
Exactly what power supply do you have? Give the exact brand name and model. A good 800 W power supply will handle either card fine, but a fire hazard that will explode if you try to pull 400 W from it might not, even if it says 800 W on the label.
Corsair TX850M.
Your power supply is more than enough to handle either of those video cards. Or both of them at once. (Not that I'd recommend that, but you've got a lot of headroom.)
Exactly what power supply do you have? Give the exact brand name and model. A good 800 W power supply will handle either card fine, but a fire hazard that will explode if you try to pull 400 W from it might not, even if it says 800 W on the label.
Corsair TX850M.
Your power supply is more than enough to handle either of those video cards. Or both of them at once. (Not that I'd recommend that, but you've got a lot of headroom.)
So 390 vs 970, which one would you recommend? Currently I am leaning towards 970, but that vram is a turn off for me.
OTOH, 390 looks great but I had bad experience with radeon before (hd 5870 burnt out after a year of usage, didnt OC).
Exactly what power supply do you have? Give the exact brand name and model. A good 800 W power supply will handle either card fine, but a fire hazard that will explode if you try to pull 400 W from it might not, even if it says 800 W on the label.
Corsair TX850M.
Your power supply is more than enough to handle either of those video cards. Or both of them at once. (Not that I'd recommend that, but you've got a lot of headroom.)
So 390 vs 970, which one would you recommend? Currently I am leaning towards 970, but that vram is a turn off for me.
OTOH, 390 looks great but I had bad experience with radeon before (hd 5870 burnt out after a year of usage, didnt OC).
Games that I would play, The Division, BnS, BDO.
As I said earlier in the thread, at the same price, I'd lean toward the R9 390, as it is a little faster. But if you find one card substantially cheaper (e.g., $20) than the other, get the cheaper card.
All of New Egg's GeForce GTX 970s and GTX 980s are mysteriously sold out at the moment. They do have some listed at crazy prices from other stores. Amazon still has a GTX 970 at a good price, but you may have to shop around if that's what you want.
I don't think the VRAM issue is a big deal in the 970. Sure, you can find some very isolated cases where it matters, but they are hardly typical. For most cases, anything over 2G is still overkill for single monitor gaming.
That being said, I'd go with whichever is less expensive that has the style of cooler your looking for. Either will work great.
Cards burn out from time to time, even nVidia ones. The AMD 5000 series in general was a very good line. But if a card manufacturer put on cheap VRMs or skimped on the cooling, that's on the card vendor, not on AMD. There are nVidia board manufacturers that do that kind of stuff as well.
The difference between different manufacturer's video cards is normally just cooling system. All the cards used are identical, but manufacturers use their own cooling systems. Some of them are quieter, some of them are more effective and allow manufacturers to add some slight factory overclock to their GPU, and some cooling systems are just done as cheaply as possible.
Unless you plan to overclock, or care about the noise your computer is generating, you can just purchase the card from any manufacturer and it'll do well enough. But if you want to do some overclocking, or would prefer the computer to be quieter, then there are large differences between manufacturers.
Thats not true, theres quite a bit of GPUs with custom PCBs nowadays (and ever since both brands gave manufacturers free hands, so to speak, which were very rare before that).
Good 550w PSU is enough to run any single GPU setup.
Yes, you're correct about the custom PCBs.
550W PSU is not enough to run all single GPU setups. For example a setup with Radeon 390 (275W) and AMD FX 9590 processor (220W) would not run with just 550W PSU.
And thats still 495w (math...) in LEAST favorable situation, which wont happen unless for some reason you stress test your whole rig 24/7.
In normal use that rig wont draw more than 400w.
You need to get a power supply that will supply enough power in all situations, even the least favorable. During multi-hour gaming sessions with modern games there will be something that gets close to least favorable situation sooner or later, and if the computer can't get enough power in that situation, it'll crash or have other errors. Power fluctuations can also damage the computer.
You need to have enough power also for motherboard, RAM, hard disk, DVD drive, fans and USB devices attached to the computer. That's why 550W PSU would not be enough for my example configuration.
550w is enough power in all situations. Educate youreslf better on PSUs. To give you a hint: good 550w PSU can actually do more than 550w while bad "750w" PSU could actually do less than 500w.
Exactly what power supply do you have? Give the exact brand name and model. A good 800 W power supply will handle either card fine, but a fire hazard that will explode if you try to pull 400 W from it might not, even if it says 800 W on the label.
Corsair TX850M.
Your power supply is more than enough to handle either of those video cards. Or both of them at once. (Not that I'd recommend that, but you've got a lot of headroom.)
So 390 vs 970, which one would you recommend? Currently I am leaning towards 970, but that vram is a turn off for me.
OTOH, 390 looks great but I had bad experience with radeon before (hd 5870 burnt out after a year of usage, didnt OC).
Id slap a 970 in it and call it a day. As quiz said, the 380's are an option but you're gonna spend 10 to 20 a year more in power usage. So, over the long run i do think you're better off with the 970. I wouldn't recommend a 960.
As to your last question. No, unless you're getting one of the manufacturer specific cooling options, then all the reference cards are basically identical. I personally like EVGA, they've treated me right in the past on warranty stuff. But, honestly any of the major manufacturers would be fine.
I'd question what you're doing with your life if you play games so much at the electricity cost difference approaches $20/year. Any modern GPU will use little power at idle outside of the occasional bug like the one that caused crazy power consumption on Nvidia at 120 Hz or higher. Only under heavy gaming loads will the card burn a lot of power, and even then, you're probably looking at 100+ hours of heavy gaming to make a $1 difference in your power bill.
Its actually pretty simple power calculations. The average cost of power in the US is about $0.12 per kw/h. So, if you have a video card that uses 100w more power, and lets say you average 2-3 hours of gaming, 5 days a week on average (a lot of gamers will do a lot more than that on weekends, but average it out lets say 15-20 hours a week, which i dont think is ridiculous for an average gamer), So, with that math, when you are actually using the PC to game, and thus the GPU is using load level power usage, you're spending about 12 cents extra for every 10 hours of gaming you do, so if you average 15 hours a week, thats 18c a week for 52 weeks in a year, or $9.36/yr more in power usage.
That also depends on where you live, power is significantly more expensive in other areas of the country too. So that is a very variable number. Also, lets be honest, for most gamers 15 hrs a week is pretty light.
IMO its enough that it has to be factored in. If the price/performance difference between a 390 and a 970 is say 10% (so you're getting the same performance as the 970 for 10% less money), but you eat up that 10% savings in power over the course of the cards life (lets say 2-3 years), Then what have you really acheived?
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Id slap a 970 in it and call it a day. As quiz said, the 390's are an option but you're gonna spend 10 to 20 a year more in power usage. So, over the long run i do think you're better off with the 970. I wouldn't recommend a 960.
Like Quiz said, the $ savings on power consumption are so trivial as to not be worth mentioning.
The real benefit from the significantly lower power requirements of the current generation Nvidia cards is in less heat and the lower overall card and case fan speed and noise that flows from that. Everything else being equal, a case with a 970 in it will be much quieter than one with a 390.
I've bee an AMD fan for decades and usually go with the comparable AMD cards. But not this last time. My new found quiet with the 980 is much appreciated after many years living with loud cards.
Except its not, you guys are being disingenuous about it by calling it trivial.
Would you call leaving a 100w light bulb on 15-20 hours a week trivial? Have you replaced literally any of your 25-40w incandescent bulbs with 12-15w with CFL light bulbs? Even if you don't use that light but maybe a couple hours a day?
Let's be honest here. Its not ridiculous but its absolutely enough to be discussed and factored in to a purchasing decision. See my above post for actual math and real data.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
The power consumption difference is a real difference, but its significance is small. And it's already priced into my recommendation above. If the Radeon R9 390 has the same power consumption as the GeForce GTX 970 but nothing else changed, then I'd say that unless you have some unusual reason to strongly prefer Nvidia, getting the Radeon R9 390 over the GTX 970 at the same price was an easy call, as it is clearly faster, even if it's not by an enormous margin.
For what it's worth, I wasn't objecting to claiming a $10/year difference for an avid gamer. It's the $20/year figure that I was objecting to.
Id slap a 970 in it and call it a day. As quiz said, the 390's are an option but you're gonna spend 10 to 20 a year more in power usage. So, over the long run i do think you're better off with the 970. I wouldn't recommend a 960.
Like Quiz said, the $ savings on power consumption are so trivial as to not be worth mentioning.
The real benefit from the significantly lower power requirements of the current generation Nvidia cards is in less heat and the lower overall card and case fan speed and noise that flows from that. Everything else being equal, a case with a 970 in it will be much quieter than one with a 390.
I've bee an AMD fan for decades and usually go with the comparable AMD cards. But not this last time. My new found quiet with the 980 is much appreciated after many years living with loud cards.
Except its not, you guys are being disingenuous about it by calling it trivial.
Would you call leaving a 100w light bulb on 15-20 hours a week trivial? Have you replaced literally any of your 25-40w incandescent bulbs with 12-15w with CFL light bulbs? Even if you don't use that light but maybe a couple hours a day?
Let's be honest here. Its not ridiculous but its absolutely enough to be discussed and factored in to a purchasing decision. See my above post for actual math and real data.
Your data is anything but actual. Theres nowhere near 100w difference. In fact, some GTX970 have same 8+6 pin power connectors as 390.
Once you realize that power consumption will be up to 50w higher (and less than that depending on the GPU load) especially when you factor in that 390 is generally faster card and youll need to OC GTX970, which will then use more power and produce more heat (and then if you OC 390 it will be in the lead again). Or, the other way around, you can undervolt (downclock) 390 to use much less power.
Bottom line is that they cost about the same and 390 is generally better card: faster and it will age much better than GTX970.
The power consumption difference is a real difference, but its significance is small. And it's already priced into my recommendation above. If the Radeon R9 390 has the same power consumption as the GeForce GTX 970 but nothing else changed, then I'd say that unless you have some unusual reason to strongly prefer Nvidia, getting the Radeon R9 390 over the GTX 970 at the same price was an easy call, as it is clearly faster, even if it's not by an enormous margin.
For what it's worth, I wasn't objecting to claiming a $10/year difference for an avid gamer. It's the $20/year figure that I was objecting to.
Fair enough. I only said that because electricity costs can vary quite a bit in the US. Some less than 10 cents a kw/h and some significantly more than 20 cents. Hawaii for example averages 34 cents per kw/h. So i don't know where he is and the 10 was based on an average and a rough estimate of gaming time.
I only seek to make sure people are considering all the variables. The cost/performance argument isn't as simple as looking at overall benchmark vs price point, there are other variables that really should be considered.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
The power consumption difference is a real difference, but its significance is small. And it's already priced into my recommendation above. If the Radeon R9 390 has the same power consumption as the GeForce GTX 970 but nothing else changed, then I'd say that unless you have some unusual reason to strongly prefer Nvidia, getting the Radeon R9 390 over the GTX 970 at the same price was an easy call, as it is clearly faster, even if it's not by an enormous margin.
For what it's worth, I wasn't objecting to claiming a $10/year difference for an avid gamer. It's the $20/year figure that I was objecting to.
Fair enough. I only said that because electricity costs can vary quite a bit in the US. Some less than 10 cents a kw/h and some significantly more than 20 cents. Hawaii for example averages 34 cents per kw/h. So i don't know where he is and the 10 was based on an average and a rough estimate of gaming time.
I only seek to make sure people are considering all the variables. The cost/performance argument isn't as simple as looking at overall benchmark vs price point, there are other variables that really should be considered.
Your point on electricity costs being crazy in some places is a good one--and one that I had ignored.
Comments
You also confuse 12v rail with 3.3v and 5v rails.
Average electric price in the US is $0.12/kWh. Top end video cards use upwards of 300W, so to get to 1 kWh, that's 3.33 hours at 100% load, with a top end card.
SO, more to the point, the difference between two cards, such as the 970 and 380. The 970 has a TDP of 145W stock, the 380 is 190W stock. So that's a 45W difference, at full load and at stock clocks.
A casual gamer may play around 10 hours per week. For the sake of calculations, let's assume that is at fully loaded. For a casual gamer, it's about $2.80 difference in electric bills.
A very active gamer may play for 40h per week (that's a full time job right there). That comes out to about $11.25 in additional electric bills.
Now, that's not exactly true, because your video card won't sit at 100% load all the time, even while playing games. nVidia and AMD have much different power management schemes - nVidia will try to push until you hit a limit, AMD will only throttle down if you hit a limit. So the actual electric bill difference will probably be something less than that.
But it gives you a decent idea of where you are sitting. If you are doing something like GPU Folding or Bitcoin hashing or other distributed work while your not gaming, $20 in electricity may not be a stretch, but if your just gaming on it, you probably won't get anywhere near a big enough difference for it to really matter. But the 380 also gives you some extra performance for that extra power, so it's not like your just throwing that electricity cost out the window.
I'm currently running a 4790K and a 980GTX on a 450W PSU and it works fine. Granted, it's a very nice 450W Seasonic that can actually push 450W and not some random 450W unit, and nothing is overclocked.
Using my UPS as a power meter, the computer, 2 24" monitors, a 4-bay NAS, and my 25W amp, while running Prime95 and Furmark at the same time, all come in at around 400W drawn from the wall.
That being said, that isn't exactly what I would recommend. I usually recommend 600-650, which gives a good margin for overclocking and age degradation.
You also confuse 12V rail to PSU's total wattage. You're the one who's using different terms than PSU manufacturers, not me.
OTOH, 390 looks great but I had bad experience with radeon before (hd 5870 burnt out after a year of usage, didnt OC).
Games that I would play, The Division, BnS, BDO.
All of New Egg's GeForce GTX 970s and GTX 980s are mysteriously sold out at the moment. They do have some listed at crazy prices from other stores. Amazon still has a GTX 970 at a good price, but you may have to shop around if that's what you want.
That being said, I'd go with whichever is less expensive that has the style of cooler your looking for. Either will work great.
Cards burn out from time to time, even nVidia ones. The AMD 5000 series in general was a very good line. But if a card manufacturer put on cheap VRMs or skimped on the cooling, that's on the card vendor, not on AMD. There are nVidia board manufacturers that do that kind of stuff as well.
Thanks for the clip, man.
That also depends on where you live, power is significantly more expensive in other areas of the country too. So that is a very variable number. Also, lets be honest, for most gamers 15 hrs a week is pretty light.
IMO its enough that it has to be factored in. If the price/performance difference between a 390 and a 970 is say 10% (so you're getting the same performance as the 970 for 10% less money), but you eat up that 10% savings in power over the course of the cards life (lets say 2-3 years), Then what have you really acheived?
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Would you call leaving a 100w light bulb on 15-20 hours a week trivial? Have you replaced literally any of your 25-40w incandescent bulbs with 12-15w with CFL light bulbs? Even if you don't use that light but maybe a couple hours a day?
Let's be honest here. Its not ridiculous but its absolutely enough to be discussed and factored in to a purchasing decision. See my above post for actual math and real data.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
For what it's worth, I wasn't objecting to claiming a $10/year difference for an avid gamer. It's the $20/year figure that I was objecting to.
Once you realize that power consumption will be up to 50w higher (and less than that depending on the GPU load) especially when you factor in that 390 is generally faster card and youll need to OC GTX970, which will then use more power and produce more heat (and then if you OC 390 it will be in the lead again). Or, the other way around, you can undervolt (downclock) 390 to use much less power.
Bottom line is that they cost about the same and 390 is generally better card: faster and it will age much better than GTX970.
I only seek to make sure people are considering all the variables. The cost/performance argument isn't as simple as looking at overall benchmark vs price point, there are other variables that really should be considered.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche