GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon R9 290 – Should I upgrade?

A gamer simply can’t have enough graphics power in his rig, which makes the upgrade question omnipresent. To show you whether it makes sense to upgrade from one generation to another we created this series of articles, where we will compare graphics cards from different generations. Today we’re having a close look at the differences between the GTX 980 from NVIDIA and the over one year old Radeon R9 290 made by AMD.

 

 

Test Setup

Motherboard
  • ASUS Maximus VII Hero (BIOS 0224)
CPU
  • Intel Core i7-4770K @ 4.0 GHz (Turbo On / HT On)
Memory
  • G.Skill Ares Dual Channel 2x8GB @ CL11-12-11-28-1T-Auto DDR3-1600 MHz
Graphics Cards
  • AMD Radeon R9 290
  • nVidia GeForce GTX 980
Drivers
  • Windows 7 x64 (up to date)
  • nVidia ForceWare latest version
  • AMD Catalyst latest version
Games
  • Borderlands – The Pre-Sequel
  • BattleField 4
  • Watch Dogs
  • Tomb Raider
  • Sniper Elite 3
  • Crysis 3
  • Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
  • Thief
  • GRID Autosport
  • Sleeping Dogs
  • Metro Last Light
  • Assassin’s Creed Unity
  • Far Cry 4
Games and OS
  • Windows 7 x64
  • All games were up to date on the
System Drive
  • OCZ Storage Solutions Arc 100 240GB
PSU
  • Seasonic Platinum SS-1000XP / 1000 Watts