Ask GN 12: GTX 970 or R9 390? & All About Dx12 & Vulkan

By Steve Burke Published March 04, 2016 at 8:30 am

It's been a few months since our “Ask GN” series had its last installment. We got eleven episodes deep, then proceeded to plunge into the non-stop game testing and benchmarking of the fourth quarter. Alas, following fan requests and interest, we've proudly resurrected the series – not the only thing resurrected this week, either.

So, amidst Games for Windows Live and RollerCoaster Tycoon's re-re-announcement of mod support, we figured we'd brighten the week with something more promising: DirectX & Vulkan cherry-picked topics, classic GPU battles, and power supply testing questions. There's a bonus question at the end, too.

Timestamped Questions from You!

0:25 - StoreBrand: "If Nvidia cards need an SLI bridge to connect how does the 970 connect to the 390x without the bridge? Sorry if this was already explained.?"

1:53 - anon emous: "so when are we going to see actual GAINS in games? Vulkan, DX12... When?"

4:19 - Guglielmo Bagella: "i'm wondering, maybe I lost it when you said (in case sorry) but is there any difference in the cpu usage between dx11 and dx12 here in AOS??"

6:04 - ammus: "Would a cheap psu tester do the same job as the multimeter?"

7:03 - lokura 122: "what should I get, gtx 970 or r9 390??"

10:15 - Hilo: Bonus question!

Cheers, everyone. We love this stuff.

Editorial, Host: Steve “Lelldorianx” Burke
Video Production: Andrew “ColossalCake” Coleman

Steve Burke

Steve started GamersNexus back when it was just a cool name, and now it's grown into an expansive website with an overwhelming amount of features. He recalls his first difficult decision with GN's direction: "I didn't know whether or not I wanted 'Gamers' to have a possessive apostrophe -- I mean, grammatically it should, but I didn't like it in the name. It was ugly. I also had people who were typing apostrophes into the address bar - sigh. It made sense to just leave it as 'Gamers.'"

First world problems, Steve. First world problems.