The phantom version? then it's yes. One of the highest out of the box overclock gtx 970 out there. I also intended to get it but the 2.5 slot design will impede my airflow( i have a sound card at the bottom).

still if you can get the R9 290 cheaply, i suggest go in that route, I don't see much improvement compared to gtx 970 for example, though in games like Skyrim with ENB modding, you can definitely see vast performance improvement with the gtx 970, mainly no more stuttering and random fps drops   

Thats not what he mean. GTX 970 are better than R9 290. But against 290X, it pretty much comprable.

it's stable, for screen tearing , use adaptive v-sync in Nvidia control panel and enable v-sync in game, should iron out the tearing most of the times. tdp will be slightly higher than the reference card, but it's not a biggie bcoz this maxwell card is very power efficient. The temp is also cooler.
Only the 290X has an 8GB memory buffer bro, theoretically it's faster than the 290 and neck to neck/ a bit faster than the 290X but in some games , but sometimes the amd card is faster likewise vise versa nvidia is faster in other games. One thing for sure you can definitely max out most of the games out there with this card 

You'll only need 8GB cards if you're running multi-mons/high res display/4K.

You can get away with 4GB, i don't play xplane10, just be generous with the texture packs, this thing can eat up the vram pretty fast 

Techview is selling it at RM1170.

Everything maxed out.

Where got RM1299? It's RM1399.

Already got 240GB SSD. Don't need another.

Even if GTX980TI launch, I still see no point or reason for Nvidia to further cut price on GTX970, which is already cheap and high in demands.

I thought they usually play the game of down rank and rebrand previous gen card?

If that is the case, then 970 should take on 290 or 290x, still not enough to threaten 970.

Yes, it all depends of competition. When one control the market, they can literally control the price. The competitive price of 970 is largely perhaps of the success of 290/290X kicking Nvidia ass.