[Review] R9 290 Vs GTX 970: The Ultimate Value Showdown

My attempted review of the 290 Vs the 970
Value is a subjective term. What is value? It depends on what you compare it to. For example the R9 290 is great value compared to the R9 290X because it costs 25% less and you only lose 5-10% of the performance, at least at stock clocks. It is a similar story for the GTX970. Compared to the GTX980 it represents great value because it costs $250 less and you only lose less than 10% of the performance. Of course, both of these cards are only value if you’re after a high end gaming experience, those looking for maximum performance per dollar probably still need to look elsewhere.
I want to take a look at these cards from a real user’s perspective, not some hardware review sites perspective where they always have the latest of everything and run benchmarks on a machine that isn’t used daily for regular computing tasks. Also from the perspective of a “money conscious” consumer who wants a high end experience whilst being able to sleep at night not worrying about how much money I just dropped on a graphics card I might only use 3-4 times per week.
This brings us to the machine the benchmarks will be run on:

Intel Core i5-2500k
Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3
Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 16GB
Silverstone Strider Plus 750W
Thermalright True Spirit 120
Xonar Essence STX
Dell u2312hm
Crucial MX100 512GB
NZXT S340
XFX R9 290

Also worth noting is my R9 290 is fitted with the Accelero Xtreme III, which allows it to run at full speed without causing me hearing damage.

I think this is a fairly typical of the majority of users; the CPU and Mobo are several generations old while the other (cheaper) components are changed more often.

The 2500k will be run at 4.6GHz, which is what it runs at every day, and the memory is 1600MHz CL9 but I think it’s fairly known now that memory has little impact on gaming performance. The operating system is windows 8.1 (UEFI) and the drivers are the latest from both manufacturers (14.12 Omega and 344.75). I don’t think there’s anything else major that will affect the performance numbers.

This my daily use machine and hence it has a full suite of random programs, services and drivers that can affect the overall performance you achieve. All benchmarks will be at 1080p unless otherwise stated. Super-resolution testing will be done at 2560x1440 which is the only common to both AMD and nVidia at the time of this testing.
I’m a big fan of synthetic benchmarks so I’ll be running various versions of Firestrike, as well as Unigine Valley and Cinebench R15. The games will be whatever is on my system at the moment; Bioshock Infinite, Crysis 3, Grid 2 and Far Cry 4. I don’t have any fancy tools, so you’ll be looking at average framerates provided by fraps, or the synthetic score. There will also be some power consumption numbers toward the end as well as some overclocking.

Disclaimer:
I have paid for both of these cards with my own money and I have absolutely no vested interest or favouritism toward either company. Can you trust me? Who knows, that’s for you to decide. I’d say you can trust me more than a tech website as I was not provided binned samples for free.

The cards:
XFX R9 290 @ 1040MHz Core, 1350MHz RAM
Gainward GTX970 @ 1051/1178MHz Core, 1750Mhz RAM

Benchmarks Away!
All benchmarks run 3 times and their averages are shown below:
http://i.imgur.com/DvnxEsC.png

As we can see the only significant advantage is in Far Cry 4, an nVidia gameworks title, AMD could close this gap over time. Processing godrays and fur really take a toll without the dedicated hardware.

Thermal Performance
Obviously the Accelero is able to cool the 290 with ease. That cooler is enormous. It also mostly makes comparing coolers pointless since it’s an aftermarket cooler. However I think it’s worth noting that my cheap 970 with a blower style cooler kept the card at or below 60oC the entire time whilst benchmarking. So I imagine the higher end coolers will do an awesome job and have good overclocking headroom.

Overclocking
The best I could achieve with my 290 was 10044 in Firestrike at a speed of 1250MHz which is definitely an extreme overclock considering the reference boost clock is 947MHz. I have come across few games that actually need that amount of power at 1080p so it runs at 1040MHz for the daily drive. I wanted to overclock the absolute balls out of this 970 so the bios was flash to raise the power limit to 165% (up from 106% factory) with +30mV core, +165% power, +300MHz core and 150Mhz Memory I got a Firestrike score of 10694 which is 6.5% faster than the max I could get with the 290. Power consumption cracked 395W for the 970 and 432W for the 290. As always with overclocking your mileage WILL vary.

Power consumption
There is less in it than I had expected considering how much everyone is spouting about the efficiency of the Maxwell cards, not that they aren’t good, they just aren’t life changing. At idle the 290 was 3% higher under a high usage scenario (FSX Combo) the 290 was 18.75% higher and under max OC settings the 290 was 9.37% higher.
http://i.imgur.com/J83RuPa.png

Miscellaneous Factors
Another thing everyone raves about is nVidia's software, which I thought was crap. nVidia control panel seems like it was made in the early 00's and offers nothing compared to Catalyst which is pretty good these days. Gaming Evolved (AMD) and Geforce Experience (nVidia) do absolutely nothing for me in terms of adding value but if you are hopeless at adjusting your game settings they may help you. They are of roughly the same quality. nVidia game stream is probably worth having if you're into streaming. Also CUDA, until Adobe and Autodesk (and others) embrace OpenCL/OpenGL and optimise their programs AMD will be a mile behind in the realms of media production.

Conclusion Time
So, which one should you buy? Performance wise it doesn’t really matter. The cheapest 290 worth buying is still around the $400 mark, and a 970 is at least $450. Is it worth $50 more? Personally I think yes. AMD claims to have made a 20% performance improvement over the past 12 months of the 290 series and if we assume nVidia can do the same then the performance gap may widen significantly. The 290 is fully mature whilst the 970 optimisation is just beginning. With the R9 300 series still a ways out (according to speculation) if you need a high end gaming experience now and want the most from your dollar get the 970.

Any questions let me know. Also keen for your feedback for possible future reviews. (Couldn't find a way to embed images?)
Thanks