[FG_Regulus]

"Slower and more expensive".

Yes, $240 r9 290s all the time xs down to $260 at times. The former is very near the 970 and the latter overcomes in many games. Both are preferred at 1440+. A $320 970 is definitely worth it.

You may also want to consider that those AMD cards are years old while those are the newest Nvidia offerings (which aren't significantly better than Kepler - which now has poor driver support for because of this). AMDs 300 series coming out in 2 weeks (ish) is the competitor for maxwell. And instead of a minute cash grab update, it's a significant change.

Edit: There is no problem not buying inferior products. Sometimes there really isn't a choice because of the schism in features or performance. And sometimes the morality involved isn't worth fussing over.

In regards to that AMD comment: I honestly don't know what that has to do with this conversation. Amd isn't infallible amd their history had mistakes as well, but right now they're the best option for GPUs. I'll tell someone to buy Intel for performance everyday though. On the other hand, look at how little innovation Intel had brought up while Amd barely competes with them. Lack of competition produces high prices with little progress.

[freehunter]

Intel has had massive progress in their chips, reducing TDP and pushing really good integrated graphics. The new quad core Atom chips can run Skyrim on a Windows tablet.