What would you be playing mainly?
Thanks for the replies guys.Going to head up to my local Microcenter and see what I can get with 500$. Seems that Microcenter seems to stock a lot more 970's than 290x's though I am looking at this Diamond Refurb from Microcenter for 240$I'd probably go 290X for long term. If you had a bunch of nvidia sponsored titles you'd get more performance 'now' from the 970. Due to the VRAM issue (after 3.5G utilization your performance sucks on the 970) and nVidia abandoning each older chipset when they release a new one, the 290x should be a better card at the end of their lifespans.
That and you can probably find a used mining 290x for around $200.