The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 Review: Featuring EVGA

Metro: Last Light

As always, kicking off our look at performance is 4A Games’ latest entry in their Metro series of subterranean shooters, Metro: Last Light. The original Metro: 2033 was a graphically punishing game for its time and Metro: Last Light is in its own right too. On the other hand it scales well with resolution and quality settings, so it’s still playable on lower end hardware.

It seems fitting that we start with a game where the GTX 970 and R9 290XU start out tied. Even at the R9 290XU’s strongest hand – 4K – the GTX 970 is at parity and that remains for 1440p as well. Only at 1080p does the GTX 970 even begin to trail the R9 290XU.

This game ends up being a very good summary of what we’re going to see. The GTX 970 and R9 290XU trade blows from game-to-game, but in the end the two are a tie, just as we see here. Which for NVIDIA is a great outcome, as it means they’re tying a card that's nearly 50% more expensive.

Meanwhile if we push on the gas pedal a bit harder with the GTX 970 FTW, we see the EVGA card pull ahead of the R9 290XU and stock GTX 970 by 8%. This is a bit above average overall for the GTX 970 FTW, but it does conveniently highlight the fact that even if AMD officially pushed the clock speeds of R9 290XU a bit more, they’d still end up with GTX 970 right next to them.