970 or 980?

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ben chi(f4)

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My current system is 2600k with 16gig ram. I'm running a gtx 680. My question is, should I upgrade to a GTX 970 or GTX 980? My mother board is the p8p67 asus
 
Back when the 970/980 first hit people swore than the 980 would be overkill for maxing games at 1080p/60. They were wrong. That's even more the case if you're interested in 120fps or 1440p.
 
ben chi(f4) said:
My current system is 2600k with 16gig ram. I'm running a gtx 680. My question is, should I upgrade to a GTX 970 or GTX 980? My mother board is the p8p67 asus
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What resolution is your monitor? If all you need is 1080P, then my 970 seems to be enough. For more than 1080P, I'd get the 980.
 
The PCIe 2.0 x16 (dual x8) interface appears to be causing a bottleneck for dual-GPU solutions, but single-card systems really shouldn't see an appreciable performance hit. I'm running a 2500K with a 970 right now and I can't complain. I couldn't justify the higher price for the 980 at 1080p, but if I were at 1440p or higher the whole 3.5GB VRAM issue might rear its ugly head.
 
ben chi(f4) said:
Thanks Razor, I'll be using 2 1080p and I'll just throw the 680 down for my physix.
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Are you actually displaying games on both monitors?

The 970 is good enough for a single 1080P display, but if you're going to be playing games on both, you'll likely want at least one 980.

For desktop use, the 970 is plenty for a system with two displays.
 
I've owned or own every high end card out there - stick with the 970. By the time you want "more" - you'll be able to choose from the 980 Ti and beyond. My secondary box rocks a 970 and it is crazy how nice they are for the price. The $350 to $550 jump is quite large for the minimal gains that you achieve.

However, common sense aside - if it were me - I'd get a TITAN X. :D

BTW: with the 980 Ti looming - may be worth it to get an EVGA GTX 970 so you have 90 day step up. There's rumors it could happen this Summer. If not - you didn't pay anything for it. I recommend the ACX 2.0+ powered SSC or FTW+ cards.
 
MrCaffeineX said:
The PCIe 2.0 x16 (dual x8) interface appears to be causing a bottleneck for dual-GPU solutions, but single-card systems really shouldn't see an appreciable performance hit. I'm running a 2500K with a 970 right now and I can't complain. I couldn't justify the higher price for the 980 at 1080p, but if I were at 1440p or higher the whole 3.5GB VRAM issue might rear its ugly head.
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I posted this in the other tread but thought I would add it here just from my experience.

. Was running a I7 920 with SLI 970's in an ASUS ROG RAMPAGE II that runs PCI-e 2.0 X16 for both cards then switched to ASUS x-99a that runs PCI-e 3.0 x16/x8 in SLI (which is the same speed as PCI-e 2.0 @ 16x). Performance from stuttering was night and day. Some games where unplayable until I upgraded CPU. The old "I checked CPU usage while in game" was nonsense. The 920 would be at 50% across all cores so I thought I was not CPU bottlenecked.
 
I've also had SLI 970's and SLI 980's as well as single card setups of both. Also had the STRIX, MSI Gaming, and Gigabyte G1 Gaming of each.

I recommend the MSI GTX 970 Gaming http://www.amazon.com/MSI-GTX-970-4G... for your setup. The 980 won't be bottlenecked by your CPU but the price to performance ratio is sooo much better with a 970.
 
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I ran Shadow of Mordor using Ultra textures (one that totally eats into VRAM) on 1440p on a pair of GTX 970's and most of the time I do not actually notice any of the VRAM bottleneck stuttering, there were some areas where I did notice a dramatic slowdown (mostly in places where I was absolutely piled on by Orcs), but I reckon I could solve that by dropping down to High textures instead (I don't think I actually noticed any difference in the benchmarks, I really just wanted to test VRAM issues, if any, on that game).

I don't own Advanced Warfare, another VRAM hog game, or GTA V, so I cannot comment on the performance of the 970's on that. But, at least for 1440p, there has so far no cases where I wished I got a single 980 instead of SLI 970's (I did not want to blow money on SLI 980's). If money was no object I would actually seriously consider a single Titan X for 1440p, and 980ti would probably be the biggest sweetspot for that resolution.

In fact, the fact that 970's have the VRAM segmentation, and the fact that games are hitting it was precisely the reason why I still think 980 is a bad buy, purely from a cost to performance ratio PoV, and I still expect 980ti to be a better bang for the buck than 980. If 980 came with 6GB VRAM rather than 4, or if 970 was segmented into 3+1 rather than 3.5+0.5. I would agree 980 is a much better choice. Right now, not so much.

Personally, if money was no object, Titan X would be in my list of considerations, if it is, I would probably wait a little longer for AMD to drop their 390x, and nVidia hopefully with 980ti to follow. Those would probably be much better long term choices than either 970 or 980.

My 2cents.
 
Upgrading to 16 GB 2133 MHz RAM helped my 970 SLI, 1440p rig definitely. I was previously running 8 GB 1600 MHz.

With recent driver updates and the extra RAM, 970 SLI runs Shadow of Mordor at ultra textures without problems for me. Before it was the only game that was giving me any issues, for example Far Cry 4 at 4K DSR + 2xMSAA ran just fine with about 3.7-3.9 GB VRAM use. 4xMSAA goes over 4 GB and starts to get occasional stutters. To be honest I think the segmented VRAM is a non-issue at this point as I haven't seen my framerates take a huge dump if going over the 3.5 gig barrier.

Currently playing GTA V at near max (extended distance scaling at half, reflection AA at x4 and motion blur off) settings in 1440p, 4xTXAA and it performs very well in general.

There's still nothing comparable from Nvidia in the same price range and I doubt the upcoming 980 Ti will make 980 prices (except used) fall all that much.

That said, I'd probably wait until the 980 Ti release because you might be getting cheap used 980s then depending on how big an upgrade it is over the 980.

Personally I see myself hanging on to the 970 SLI rig at least until next year when we hopefully have Pascal cards with 8 GB VRAM.
 
I use the 970 Gigabyte and i think the money for the 980 compared is a gab to high between these 2 models.So just go with 970.
 
I've got the same question - using the same processor and ram but with a 670.

I almost bit on the new version evga 970 deal that was going on today, but still wondering if that is the right card for 1080p gaming.

I'm seeing that my shiny new GTA V is being benchmarked as needing as much GPU as you can throw at it.

Ideally, I'd like my next card to last at least as long as this one, around 3 years.
 
Darknyt said:
Ideally, I'd like my next card to last at least as long as this one, around 3 years.
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Then wait until June? Price cuts could be imminent, or something more appealing than the 970/980. The 980 could be a $400 card one month from today.
Although I feel like a broken record saying that!

If you're planning to keep the card for 3 years, you will be kicking yourself if you buy pre-emptively.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
Then wait until June? Price cuts could be imminent, or something more appealing than the 970/980. The 980 could be a $400 card one month from today.
Although I feel like a broken record saying that!

If you're planning to keep the card for 3 years, you will be kicking yourself if you buy pre-emptively.
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I'm listening. I know (coming from my original Geforce2 MX 32gb) that you can always wait, but is this the prevailing wind right now?

I'm in no particular hurry, but can see this year's plate of games taxing my 670.
 
The only game I have run into that went over 3gb of ram in 1080p on ultra was Ryse: Son of Rome which sits at about 3.3g when there is plenty of action going on but I guess that's just 1080p
 
If you can wait one more month, ATI's next card might be better than either. If nothing else, it will hopefully drive prices down or possibly even spur Nvidia to launch a retaliation card.
If you have to buy today, go with the 980. It overclocks too...
 
ben chi(f4) said:
The coin isn't the issue. I'm more worried about my processor being the bottleneck.
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Your CPU is fine... Here is a review of the i7-3770k with clock-for-clock comparisons to the i7-2600k...

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/04/23/intel-core-i7-3770k-review/7

Go with the 980 if price is not an issue and keep your 2600k... just Overclock it. I have the EVGA GTX 970 FTW edition with an i5-2500k @ 4.4GHz and I'm quite pleased, the reviews place it with-in 10 fps for performance compared to the reference model GTX 980s. Since price is not an issue, get a really high OC'd model of the GTX 980 (like the EVGA FTW, or the 20th anniversary ASUS model) and you will be very happy. Upgrading your CPU would be a waste of money.

FYI... I couldn't find it, but there is another review somehwere that compared the Intel i5 and i7 Ivy Bridge, Haswell and Devil's Canyon clock-for-clock and there was very little difference (if any) between the Ivy Bridge (2600k) and the Devil's Canyon (4770k) when running at the same speeds... The point of the review was to see if 4-core vs 4-core HT made a huge difference for games... it doesn't.
 
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