Caught my eye because I'm getting a new computer "soon" (not sure if to wait and see what AMD fish up at Computex - it's probably best to wait, at least for possible price drops, but not playing TW3 while it's already out might sent me into a frenzy) and I'm not sure what monitor to get. I'm inclined to get the 980 right now because I'm very focused on TW3, and a 1440p screen sounds appealing - but it also means that I'll need to lower settings faster in new games, than how early I would have lowered them if I went with a 1080p screen, right? Not sure how to decide between lower settings but a higher resolution, or vice versa.My take is that a GTX 970 is still an excellent buy for the price, especially if you are playing at 1080p. Maxwell is really a powerful and efficient architecture, with good compute performance so it has no real weaknesses.
The only time I would caution against buying a GTX 970, is if you are playing at higher resolutions; specifically 1440p and above. If you are playing at 1440p and above, I would definitely get a GTX 980 instead.
Why? Well it's not just because of the VRAM issue. Due to the deactivated crossbar, the GTX 970 has a 224 bit bus instead of the full 256 bit bus on the GTX 980, so bandwidth to the 3.5GB is actually 196 GB/s compared to the GTX 980's 224 GB/s access to it's 4GB.. This can make a big difference at times in bandwidth limited circumstances. On average the GTX 980 is 15 to 19% faster than the GTX 970, but in bandwidth limited circumstances (ie higher resolutions, more AA or lots of compute shaders), the performance gap can rise to 30% and even greater in some cases..
The biggest strength of the GTX 970 lies in it's ability to overclock. Since it has such a low TDP, a well designed aftermarket GTX 970 usually has no problem overclocking to 1500 MHz with no voltage adjustment (and sometimes no fan adjustment), which is basically free performance.. At that speed, it's nearly on par with a stock clocked GTX 980..
So yes, the GTX 970 is still a great option and a very capable GPU
To me, settings beats resolution every time. You'll get higher overall IQ by boosting the settings rather than getting higher pixel count. In fact, I just recently installed the Witcher 2 (steam version is freaking unstable!) and I'm finally able to play with ubersampling @ 1440p with everything else maxed out on my GTX 980 FTW SLI with good performance.. But the performance hit from rendering each frame 4x (almost 6K resolution) wasn't justified when I looked at my screen, so I just disabled it.
If you do go with the 1440p monitor though, a single GTX 980 should easily be able to handle it with all settings turned on (except ubersampling of course). The only thing is, is that your frame rate won't be at 60 FPS like how it would at 1080p assuming the reports are accurate.
There's always overclocking though. Overclocking a GTX 980 can easily add about 20% and more to it's performance, which can help to mitigate some of the performance lost by using a higher resolution monitor.
I don't see a problem with long term considerations, as Maxwell is a forward looking architecture with full DX12 and DX12_1 feature level. The only way I'd see a GTX 980 being problematic in the long term is if you decide you want a 4K monitor. 4K is a tough nut to crack for any contemporary card, even the Titan X. Thats why I'm delaying going 4K myself until NVidia's 16nm cards come out next year with 3D stacked memory and NV link. Thats when 4K will finally be mastered, and by mastered I mean we'll be able to play at 4K resolution with all the bells and whistles ticked off..
But for now, 1440p is the perfect gaming resolution as it's high enough to provide a noticeable edge over standard HD in clarity and definition, but low enough to not be a tremendous burden to contemporary cards..
Well, I have two 970s in SLI, both overclocked (not voltage though) with an overclocked i7 4790K, bunch of hard drives, a liquid cooler etc, and have zero problems running them with a Seasonic made Corsair AX760. And I've seen people running dual 970s with lesser PSUs without problems.
Hi, I'm planning to upgrade my GPU to GTX 970, Gigabyte GV-N970WF3OC-4GD to be specific, but I'm wondering if my PSU will handle it? I have 500W Chieftec CTG-500-80P. Also, do you think i5-3450s will bottleneck this GPU?
I don't like the power supply. That card wants 8-pin and 6-pin auxiliary power connections. Your power supply has an 8-pin and 6-pin on the same cable, which makes it effectively a single 8-pin, if the wires they used will even carry 10 amps. I don't do, and won't recommend, fudging GPU power connections. You're dealing with too many amps.
It would be bare minimum, even if it were wired adequately. Power supply with two 8 or 6+2 connectors on separate cables.
It would be bare minimum, even if it were wired adequately. Power supply with two 8 or 6+2 connectors on separate cables.
So gonna get this baby tomorrow: http://www.msi.com/product/vga/GTX-980-GAMING-4G.html#hero-overview
Also going to be removing my HDD and switching over to a 500 GB SSD. Time for some quiet gaming!
Also going to be removing my HDD and switching over to a 500 GB SSD. Time for some quiet gaming!
Not to mention fast. You should see an improvement in loading times and a smoother experience in open world games that require a lot of streaming.
Also @GuyNwah I've noticed that since my dual MSI 970s are quite the heavy cards (and have no back plates) and even though I've wired my PCI-E connectors in a way that they slightly support them they do still sag noticeably. Should I be worried?
Oh I already have 2 120 GB SSDs ( one I got from a cupon from my previous GPU ) that I've used for gaming now I'm going with pure SSD power.
One of the things I'm happy about is finally being able to game 1440p at 60 FPS. Not all games ofc but I'll be able to do so in a good chunk of them.
Noticeable sag can be a problem in the long term. It puts stress on the motherboard. If allowed to persist over many cycles of use, you could break a trace or pop a component. Almost anything that counteracts the sag (and is non-conductive and doesn't interfere with airflow) is a good solution. Cable ties are good. Even dental floss has been used effectively.
Could I run into problems if I wire the cable ties/dental floss around the heat pipes?
The heat pipes are probably not the best place. They are soft metal, and I'd hate for a cable tie to kink one.
It would mess up your warranty, but drilling the fan bezel to take a little hook or eye would be the most effective. There are useless surfaces all over that fan bezel. Especially just aft of the auxiliary power sockets, where there's a little flange trying to protect the power wiring.
Alternatively, let the auxiliary power cords do the heavy lifting, and cinch them to a nearby hard point with cable ties.
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I recently purchased the same card. Should be here within afew days. I opted for the MSI over the Gigabyte G1 for the silent performance over the raw output performance of the G1. Plus i've always wanted to try an MSI card, also the card will match my cases colour scheme nicely.
Ha, and i also grabbed a 512gb SSD to go along with my purchase. GTA 5 and Witcher 3 will be the first games going on it.
The Gigabyte card is OK but MSI does have better coolers and when gaming with low fan speed that's what matters most. I've got silent fans in my case but I can barely hear the GPU when it's at 55% fan speed. At 60% I can hear it very faintly but that's not even close to how my old Gigabyte Windforce GTX 780 was. I could hear that thing at 30%-40% speed!
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