Help me decide! Fresh 970 or Mined 1060??

Z

Zyklon808

Gawd
Joined
Oct 8, 2007
Messages
518
Need help deciding before the weekend!

Ok, so here is the set up :
AMD Ryzen 2200g
Corsair sfx 450 psu
1080p gaming


The cards:
MSI Armor 1060 3gb - mined on, slight discoloration behind gpu itself. Clean hsf.

Evga basic 970 4gb - never mined, only games, cherry condition.

The situation : What card should I stick with?? I know the 970 has some extra cores over the 1060. However the 970 is old in the features department The 1060 is newer but has spent time in the mines!

With power concerns and the facts stated above, what card would you keep for the 2200g system?
 
I would go with the 970... I would only support going with the 1060 if it were a 6gb model.. 970 will be still more than enough for 1080P 60fps gaming
 
The mining history of the 1060 is not a problem, IMO. The 3gb of RAM, however, is.

That said, with the 970 you'll only get 3.5gb, so it's not that much of a difference.

All depends on how high you plan to set your texture quality, I guess. I'd say it's a bit of a wash.
 
performance about the same
some wins for 1060 some wins for gtx970

Since the cards are about he same eprformance new beats used

just my 2cents
 
You have both? Why not compare them on the games you currently play most? If things are a wash I would got for the tiny ram boost of the 970.
 
VanGoghComplex said:
That said, with the 970 you'll only get 3.5gb, so it's not that much of a difference.
Click to expand...

You're both right and wrong, depending on how you look at it;
Ryan Smith

In the grand scheme of things then, depending on how you want to define memory capacity the GTX 970 can be said to have either 3.5GB of VRAM or 4GB of VRAM. Only the first 3.5GB segment is a high-speed (full bandwidth) segment, and for naïve operations this is the segment that software will want to use. However the final 512MB segment is accessible, and despite its lower performance it is still usable and still far better than going to system memory, in which case GTX 970 has and can access a full 4GB of VRAM. This means that both answers can be correct, and like so many other facets of modern technology, the true answer is often more complex than a single number.
Click to expand...
 
CAD4466HK said:
You're both right and wrong, depending on how you look at it;
Ryan Smith
Click to expand...
Ever played on a 970 that's had to dip into that last 500mb of VRAM? I have, and trust me: for all intents and purposes I'm right and not wrong. Having a 60fps experience crash into sub-20s means the card has 3.5gb of memory.

Saying the 970 has 4gb of VRAM is like saying your 200hp truck has 250hp because there's a riding lawnmower in the bed.
 
VanGoghComplex said:
Ever played on a 970 that's had to dip into that last 500mb of VRAM? I have, and trust me: for all intents and purposes I'm right and not wrong. Having a 60fps experience crash into sub-20s means the card has 3.5gb of memory.

Saying the 970 has 4gb of VRAM is like saying your 200hp truck has 250hp because there's a riding lawnmower in the bed.
Click to expand...
What fucking lawnmower has 50hp and fits in a truck bed?!
 
VanGoghComplex said:
Ever played on a 970 that's had to dip into that last 500mb of VRAM? I have, and trust me: for all intents and purposes I'm right and not wrong. Having a 60fps experience crash into sub-20s means the card has 3.5gb of memory.

Saying the 970 has 4gb of VRAM is like saying your 200hp truck has 250hp because there's a riding lawnmower in the bed.
Click to expand...

Yes I have. Did I experience stuttering? Yes I did. Did I drop 30FPS because of slow VRAM? No I did not.
There are 2 camps when it comes to the 970, peeps who have issues with them and peeps that don't. I'm in the camp that has issues with it because of the 1 week that I borrowed it to make up my mind if it was worth it or not. But it still has 4GB of VRAM, even if the last 512MB is potentially worthless.
 
The 970 of course. Should be a no brainer. More memory if only slightly.

The GTX 1060 3GB shouldn't even be allowed to be called a 10 series card.

Also, Cuda Cores

GTX 970 : 1664
GTX 1060: 1152

Memory Bandwidth

GTX 970: GB/s 224
GTX 1060 GB/s 192

The GTX 970 is the clear choice.
 
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VanGoghComplex said:
Ever played on a 970 that's had to dip into that last 500mb of VRAM? I have, and trust me: for all intents and purposes I'm right and not wrong. Having a 60fps experience crash into sub-20s means the card has 3.5gb of memory.
Click to expand...

fightingfi said:
970 has 3.5 gigs of ram did you forget allready?
Click to expand...

false both.. i have on a secondary machine a GTX 970 that game at 1080P flawlessly.. and most of the games that are over 3.5gb vRAM usage are absolutely no issue.. PSU on my main machine got damaged this last weekend and I was gaming on the 970 machine, I was actually Impressed on how well it has aged that GPU and how still offer great gaming performance at 1080P. I would take that 970 any day over a 3GB 1060..

VanGoghComplex tell me which are those games that turned a 60fps gaming experience into sub 20s? I have that GPU right now in use..
 
Araxie said:
false both.. i have on a secondary machine a GTX 970 that game at 1080P flawlessly.. and most of the games that are over 3.5gb vRAM usage are absolutely no issue.. PSU on my main machine got damaged this last weekend and I was gaming on the 970 machine, I was actually Impressed on how well it has aged that GPU and how still offer great gaming performance at 1080P. I would take that 970 any day over a 3GB 1060..

VanGoghComplex tell me which are those games that turned a 60fps gaming experience into sub 20s? I have that GPU right now in use..
Click to expand...
If I recall correctly, it was Far Cry 4 and modded Skyrim in particular, but it's been years. And I never said the 970 would do poorly for 1080p gaming. It's a wonderful card for that application. All I said was that it effectively has 3.5gb of VRAM, and while it technically has more, performance suffers a serious hit if you ever have to use it.
 
VanGoghComplex said:
Ever played on a 970 that's had to dip into that last 500mb of VRAM? I have, and trust me: for all intents and purposes I'm right and not wrong. Having a 60fps experience crash into sub-20s means the card has 3.5gb of memory.

Saying the 970 has 4gb of VRAM is like saying your 200hp truck has 250hp because there's a riding lawnmower in the bed.
Click to expand...

...Claiming that the 970 has issues after the 3.5GB is Bull SHIT.

I have owned 2 970 FTW's and NEVER had a performance slowdown or seen FPS Drop significantly at 1440p EVER.

Maybe when it first launched, but a few months afterwords I never had a single issue with it period. I just cant with people like you who clamor that.

That said, if its the 3GB 1060.. Pass. Grab the 970 and be happy. IMO tho, make sure it's got two fans. Prefer the FTW of EVGA but any will do. As long as its got 2 or more fans.
 
Squall_Rinoa89 said:
...Claiming that the 970 has issues after the 3.5GB is Bull SHIT.

I have owned 2 970 FTW's and NEVER had a performance slowdown or seen FPS Drop significantly at 1440p EVER.

Maybe when it first launched, but a few months afterwords I never had a single issue with it period. I just cant with people like you who clamor that.

That said, if its the 3GB 1060.. Pass. Grab the 970 and be happy. IMO tho, make sure it's got two fans. Prefer the FTW of EVGA but any will do. As long as its got 2 or more fans.
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You can call me a liar all you want. I know what I saw and I was using the tools to verify my findings. I had my 970 for a year and a half, and on newer titles or ones which I used high resolution textures, I often had to dial things back to keep from going over the 3.5gb line.

Worth mentioning, again, is that I'm not saying the 970 is a bad card. It's a great card, a great value, and is still awesome for 1080p gaming. It's just that OP was asking about two cards that are pretty closely matched on paper, and the giant asterisk beside the 970's "4gb" spec is worth mentioning.
 
Squall_Rinoa89 said:
...Claiming that the 970 has issues after the 3.5GB is Bull SHIT.

I have owned 2 970 FTW's and NEVER had a performance slowdown or seen FPS Drop significantly at 1440p EVER.

Maybe when it first launched, but a few months afterwords I never had a single issue with it period. I just cant with people like you who clamor that.

That said, if its the 3GB 1060.. Pass. Grab the 970 and be happy. IMO tho, make sure it's got two fans. Prefer the FTW of EVGA but any will do. As long as its got 2 or more fans.
Click to expand...
Don't all the evga 970s have 2 fans? I've had the ftw, ftw2, oc, and prob another variant of evga 970 and they all had the exact same cooler from the looks of it
 
UPDATE:
I love this spirited commentary on the positives and the negatives with actual information I need being the end result. The reson why I stay in the [H]ardforums!

This also had me rolling "What fucking lawnmower has 50hp and fits in a truck bed?!"

So this is what I have decided, the 1060 will go into a friend's system as described by the fist post. I'll take the 970 for my 2600x machine I got sitting around.

The power efficiency of the 1060 in a 450 watt psu works well and all he does is play Fortnite anyways.
The 970 and it's cuda cores and extra mem bandwidth will go for my guest computer that has a higher end psu as well.

Thanks for the help guys!
 
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