So I'm expecting to receive my tax refund soon, and in effect, my plan to build a new PC will now come sooner than expected. My original build featured an r9 290, i5-4590, 8gb of ram (with another 8gb to be added later), and a stock 1080p 60hz display.

Now that the new gen GTX cards were released, I'm now undecided among three different cards for completely different reasons. It's either I stick to the r9 290 and wait until the price drops, or I go with the 970 which fits my original budget. The other option is to wait until February and splurge on the 980 and add two more 1080p displays to maximise the power.

Basically, I'm choosing between saving cash, buying sooner, or splurging when I have enough money.

Thoughts?

Also, a little something extra: Clicky

10 years ago*

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If I were you, I'd wait till February to get a more powerful graphics card and while waiting, I would try to reduce my backlog, lol... It seems worth it to wait just a few months, you might be regretting it later otherwise.
Also, if a new card is announced in January 2015 and is set to be released in July 2015, I'd also wait for that one!

Conclusion: I don't really know, it's a really hard choice!

10 years ago
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You'll be waiting forever then

10 years ago
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Sad truth... :(

10 years ago
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Yeah, and maybe by then the R9 300 series would be released as well. If those are cheaper, I might go with those. Also, I still have 3.5 years of uni left, so I'm not exactly in a hurry anyway

10 years ago
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What do you have now?

10 years ago
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It says a R9 290, I only buy Nvidia cards so I'm not sure what that is :)

10 years ago
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Umm...I thought that was only a planned build? In other words he had been planning to go with the R290 but is now reconsidering with the launch of the new nVidia cards?

10 years ago
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That's what I understood too...

10 years ago
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I think he meant that his plans were to build the computer with an R9 290, not that he already had one.

The R9 290 is not a bad card, I bought one in November last year for the machine I build for myself then. But if I were building a new system today, I don't think I'd use the R9 290 for it - I'd go for the 980.

10 years ago
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I'm gaming on my sister's "old" laptop (she's bought a new one that better suits her needs), which has a GT630M. I can manage to get 60fps with Metro Last Light (original) on its lowest settings, surprisingly

10 years ago
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In that case upgrade to the 970 right now and forget the rest.

10 years ago
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Get the GTX 970. It's 2/3 the price of GTX 980 with 85% of the performance and should be more than enough for for 1080p gaming. Multimonitor gaming is not worth it IMO.

That being said I'm buying the GTX 980 and gaming on a single 1080p monitor. Just because I can.

10 years ago
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Fair enough. haha. the 980 does cost A$800 at the store I plan to buy from, and I may have to spend half of my budget-to-be on just the CPU and GPU. My plan to do multiple displays are for other reasons as well, but it's also completely optional anyway.

Meanwhile, I think you might still maximise the power of the 980 with a single 1080p display anyway with DSR

10 years ago
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same but because i can't afford those expensive monitors :(

10 years ago
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Sorry I clicked Delete instead of Edit. :(

Multi-monitor is just weird because you'll always see the separation between the two screens. It'd be better if we had twice as bigger screens (of course, with the same ppi) than what we have now. Don't know what would be the price point of those though...

10 years ago
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yeah, I'm also looking into 21:9 displays as well, or at least a 1440p one if ever I get the 980 instead

10 years ago
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get the 970, best for your money. I am going to buy the new cpu when they are launched from intel and the gtx970ti when its out

10 years ago
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Would they be supporting DDR4 by then? If so, I may as well just wait for those, then.

10 years ago
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I currently upgraded my cpu from amd phenom II to i7 and few weeks back was looking into get a GTX 780. But seeing how the 970 is pretty much on point with that and cheaper, I'm definitely gonna go with the 970. Also its going to be a pretty good upgrade for me since I still have the power hungry and loud GTX 480.

10 years ago
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Yeah I hear both cards run more efficiently compared to its predecessors. More power and cheaper electricity bills! Yeah

10 years ago
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Yea that really stood out to me too, nice knowing they don't run as hot and use less electricity!

10 years ago
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It also really helps a lot since electricity here in Australia is crazy expensive compared to other first world countries.

Also that being said, should I expect using a smaller PSU now that it is the case? 550-600W would be my sweet spot

10 years ago
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Yea the watt requirement is lower than the 780 card. Both 970 and 980 require 500 watt PSUs. The thing is don't want to go cheap on a PSU. It's always best to go with a good brand because you don't want your PSU to crap out and lead to damaging the rest of your system. I got my corsair TX 650 watt PSU around 2009 and its still running strong.

10 years ago
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yeah to be fair I'm getting a premium-y PSU that's within my budget, but I might get a 1000W one if I plan to SLI with an additional card in the future

10 years ago
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Unless you can get an R9 290 for significantly cheaper than a GTX 970, the 970 wins. The 980 doesn't really make sense unless you absolutely need that little extra single card performance.

10 years ago
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hmmm, fair enough since the 970 now works a little better with bigger resolutions now compared to the 770

10 years ago
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I would wait a little more, we're in a transition moment. The new GTX just got released, which are great but still Maxwell 28nm, Nvidia promissed 20nm for this year. And the next gen games are yet to be released (GTA V, Dying Light, The Division, No Man's Sky, Evolve and so on...) I want to upgrade from HD6990 but I'll wait to see future benchmarks.

10 years ago
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Nothing next gen about GTAV.

10 years ago
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I think the PC, PS4 and X1 versions will be a lot better than the previous GTA V. Well.. I hope so.

10 years ago
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I probably won't be playing those games until probably when they're dirt cheap in sales anyway, but yeah I might as well hold off until DDR4 and Maxwell come around

10 years ago
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970 without a doubt

10 years ago
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