My last rebuild was in 2012. It's thankfully still going strong - but I've gotten around to upgrading the GPU(680). After much deliberation, I went with a GTX 970.
I couldn't justify the price of the 980 (especially in eu) considering it's another mid-range masquerading as a high-end card. But, with a month until the games' release, and unfortuately there was no AMD release, nor anything to force NV's hand with releases, so I was stuck with choosing either the 980, or 970.
I was very wary with my decision. But
so far, I'm very pleased with it. I went with the ASUS 970 Strix, and overclocked it to 1510/2000 and it's basically got 980+ performance with that OC, and excellent temps that stay under 60c with low fanspeeds. I am still a bit worried about the memory segmentation issue, but hopefully should be fine at 1440p until I go with pascal, or such.
My system is;
i7 3770k @ 4.4 GHz HT on
ASUS Maximus V gene
8GB DDR3 2133 CL9 1T
GTX 970 @ 1510/2003
OS running on a Crucial M4 128GB SSD atm, along with whatever game I'm currently playing, but I was thinking of getting a better/bigger one, maybe an 850 evo, or such. Not sure, yet.
Asus Strix, MSI Gaming 4G and Gigabyte Gaming G1 are all good choices.
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Asus Strix:
+ Better power circuitry vs the reference card but not as good as the MSI model
+ Hybrid fan mode
+ Quiet
+ Backplate
- Not a huge overclocker vs MSI and Gigabyte
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Hope this helps.
Everyone keeps saying this lol. Just putting my own experience here;
People keep saying the Asus 970 won't overclock well, because it has a lower TDP, and a single 8-pin connector. This is typically only true for hardcore overclocking with LN2, etc. Efficiency, cooling, and build quality are just as/if not more important when it comes to air overclocking potential. but ofc, it's more luck, than anything else tbh ; p
So far, I'm super impressed with my own GTX 970 Strix, tbh. Like I mentioned above, It's currently overclocked at 1510 core, and 2003 memory, with cool temps. Which according to my tests surpasses the performance of the 980 stock.
Obviously milage will vary, but I thought I'd chime into this misconception going around, is all ^-^