Best 970 brand to buy right now?

E

eddie500

Gawd
Joined
Jan 23, 2003
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It used to be simple, I would just go buy a EVGA card and that is what everyone was recommending.

From my research it seems EVGA's have a lot of issues with their 970. It seems that their heat sink doesn't make proper contact with certain areas and also it is plagued by the coil whine. People are even saying to stay away from EVGA, this makes me want to just stay away from EVGA. I do know the coil whine may be a problem with any brand card, hard to really tell.

I just don't know which brand to buy now and am asking for recommendations. I would like the card with the least chance for coil whine, and also a relatively quiet card that doesn't overheat.

For the people who are going to say use Google search, I have been searching but it is hard to find any general consensus on what is the best brand card. It seems that the opinions are varied and also many posts are old and newer versions of cards are out.

There has to be a general opinion on what is the best brand or best value out there right now?

Thanks
 
It seems that their heat sink doesn't make proper contact with certain areas
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For the love of Christ this was never an issue. The MSI card so many people love has *zero* pipes in direct contact with the GPU core.

Buy the Gigabyte card if you want the best overclock
Buy the MSI card if you really want to overclock but don't want a 12 inch Gigabyte card in your PC
Buy Asus if you want the most power efficient and quiet 970

Any brand can run into coil whine, no card is immune. I went through an EVGA 970 and a MSI 970 before getting a card without whine.
 
ocellaris said:
For the love of Christ this was never an issue. The MSI card so many people love has *zero* pipes in direct contact with the GPU core.

Buy the Gigabyte card if you want the best overclock
Buy the MSI card if you really want to overclock but don't want a 12 inch Gigabyte card in your PC
Buy Asus if you want the most power efficient and quiet 970

Any brand can run into coil whine, no card is immune. I went through an EVGA 970 and a MSI 970 before getting a card without whine.
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Hmm, I think I like the Asus if that is the case. I don't overclock anymore so why not go with the most quiet and power efficient card.
 
If you plan on getting an Adaptive-Sync or G-Sync monitor then more DisplayPort is a good thing. Then again if you never plan on running multiple displays then it doesn't really matter. For me I just want an HDMI for my TV and DP for my G-Sync monitor.
 
The EVGA SSC card is probably your best bet. There are some crazy deals on it on Newegg right now.
 
OwNjaH said:
The EVGA SSC card is probably your best bet. There are some crazy deals on it on Newegg right now.
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Just got one of these installed and man is it awesome! No coil whine or anything and runs cool and quiet.
Of course I JUST missed the newegg deal w/ the free backplate :mad:
 
I <3 my Asus Strix 970, but I can see going evga if the step up program is something you want to do. I just wanted a quiet and efficient card coming from my previous.
 
cicatriz63 said:
Just got one of these installed and man is it awesome! No coil whine or anything and runs cool and quiet.
Of course I JUST missed the newegg deal w/ the free backplate :mad:
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Call them - they gave me a $25 GC. Can't hurt. Just act like you don't expect anything - don't be a dick. Worked for me!
 
My first MSI card is my gtx970 gaming 4g. I love it.

In a fractal case. I cannot hear it. The fan controller is great, etc.
 
sk3tch said:
Call them - they gave me a $25 GC. Can't hurt. Just act like you don't expect anything - don't be a dick. Worked for me!
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Unfortunately I ordered it from Amazon on Saturday. If I waited until Monday I would have gotten a $15 rebate AND the free backplate if I ordered from Newegg. Oh well I'm still happy with it.
 
cicatriz63 said:
Unfortunately I ordered it from Amazon on Saturday. If I waited until Monday I would have gotten a $15 rebate AND the free backplate if I ordered from Newegg. Oh well I'm still happy with it.
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Or people could order cards that come with back plates if you wanted a back plate :p
 
ocellaris said:
Or people could order cards that come with back plates if you wanted a back plate :p
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True, the backplate wasn't a deciding factor when I bought it, so I'm not sweatin it, but free is always nice :D especially when they should all come with one at this price point...
 
ocellaris said:
Or people could order cards that come with back plates if you wanted a back plate :p
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Ha yup...but the SSC versus FTW+ is a big gap in price for a measly ~20MHz factory OC. When I was shopping it was $45 more for FTW+ over SSC and only $20 for the backplate. So I bought the SSC with backplate and installed it myself. Saved $25. Took 5 minutes.
 
I picked up a pair of EVGA SSCs at best buy (i know, i know) and they have the new cooler on them. Silver base with no visible heatpipes touching the chip, and straight pipes the length of the card. paid a few bucks more than newegg, but i had them same-day.

I had some coil whine the first day or two, but it seems to have gone away as the cards broke in.

OC'd like a champ, well above FTW speeds and they both run cool. Top card is 3-5c hotter than the bottom in my antec three hundred.

Grabbed a pair of backplates from newegg, later on, and saw a 2-3c drop in temps for both cards.

I have been an EVGA customer since the 8800gtx. After the GTX280, I played for the red team a little. EVGA has brought me back and I don't regret it at all.
 
Currently i'm rocking a 7870XT, which after an easy OC = a 7950, and am getting vram limited in gta v at 1080p. The GPU is fast enough but i have mental problems when I cant max out a game. Looking to upgrade to 4GB for GTA V and get some extra oomph for The Witcher 3. Ive no preference AMD v nvidia but have had amd for the past 5 years and looking to switch this time around.

With all the controversy surrounding the 970 with the 3.5GB ram and coil whine, is the card still worth getting???

Does the 970 OC well? is it worth getting the higher binned/pre-OCed models over reference? With Witcher 3 coming free with most of the cards i'd be able to cancel my pre-order and save $40, making the effective cost ~$270-310.
 
Somnambulator said:
Currently i'm rocking a 7870XT, which after an easy OC = a 7950, and am getting vram limited in gta v at 1080p. The GPU is fast enough but i have mental problems when I cant max out a game. Looking to upgrade to 4GB for GTA V and get some extra oomph for The Witcher 3. Ive no preference AMD v nvidia but have had amd for the past 5 years and looking to switch this time around.

With all the controversy surrounding the 970 with the 3.5GB ram and coil whine, is the card still worth getting???

Does the 970 OC well? is it worth getting the higher binned/pre-OCed models over reference? With Witcher 3 coming free with most of the cards i'd be able to cancel my pre-order and save $40, making the effective cost ~$270-310.
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The 970 is still worth it. Most games are keeping the framebuffer in the fast portion of the memory. I have not run into many VRAM-related problems with my setup. It usually just means I can't run MSAA at 1440p, and I prefer a solution that affects temporal aliasing anyway, like SMAA. In fact, the only game where I experienced VRAM issues was with Shadows of Mordor and textures on Ultra, so I just lowered the textures to high. I have a pair of STRIX in SLI, by the way.

The 970 overclocks very well. Most models will be able to hit 1500 MHz Boost, easily. The more expensive 970s, like the EVGA FTW+ and Gigabyte G1, can go even higher due to better power phases and VRM cooling. I've seen the Gigabyte hit 1600 MHz Boost on air as described by many an [H] forum member. Memory overclocks will vary greatly, though. ASUS cards can typically only go to 1900-1950 MHz, while other models will hit 2000 MHz with no issues.

Full disclosure: I am looking to switch to a single TITAN X or 980 Ti (if not a rumour) as to not have to deal with SLI-related issues anymore. The extra VRAM is just a bonus.
 
basically the early evga cards were a beta test.

The proper ones are the SSC and FTW+. The SSC has no backplate tho.

All the other 970 evga cards dont supply enough power so the card has to throttle.

Regarding clocks 'i disagree with the above post tho.

We have access to over 50 970s here and only 4 are stable above 1500, the rest will launch games/benchmarks but the nvidia driver crashes with such high clocks.

My own personal FTW, was going up to 1405 turbo out the box by itself, but I could only push it further by another 20mhz without stability issues.

In addition with the evga power throttle issues, even if you managed 1500 it would definitely throttle before hitting 100% gpu usage.
 
chrcoluk said:
basically the early evga cards were a beta test.

The proper ones are the SSC and FTW+. The SSC has no backplate tho.

All the other 970 evga cards dont supply enough power so the card has to throttle.

Regarding clocks 'i disagree with the above post tho.

We have access to over 50 970s here and only 4 are stable above 1500, the rest will launch games/benchmarks but the nvidia driver crashes with such high clocks.

My own personal FTW, was going up to 1405 turbo out the box by itself, but I could only push it further by another 20mhz without stability issues.

In addition with the evga power throttle issues, even if you managed 1500 it would definitely throttle before hitting 100% gpu usage.
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Interesting. Is this with the newest driver? I've heard of a lot of issues with the newest driver. That said, I am still rocking my 970s at 1468/1900 24/7. If it wasn't for the voltage issue in SLI I could run the core at 1500-1520 even with the lower power ceiling of the STRIX. I am running a custom fan curve, though, since the fan seems to not want to go above 60% with the default profile.

Forgot to add that after a 3 hour gaming session I never saw the Boost clock dip once in the historical graph. Both cards held steady at 1468 the entire time.
 
GTA V will use as much VRAM as you got. Im only running 1080p and im over 2050MB with just FXAA (instead of MSAA), low pop variety, and all "advanced" settings off. it's easy to hit 3.5GB even at 1080p.
 
gta5 uses over 3000 here and thats only at 1050p.

Shame on the big name reviewers who were only recently claiming the 2 gig 960 is fine for 1080p gaming.
 
chrcoluk said:
gta5 uses over 3000 here and thats only at 1050p.

Shame on the big name reviewers who were only recently claiming the 2 gig 960 is fine for 1080p gaming.
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Ha. Because it is. Just because you can find a few games out of hundreds of thousands of available PC titles that challenge 2GB VRAM doesn't mean it is not enough.

If you're running a card like a 960 you have to make compromises. That's one of them.
 
sk3tch said:
Ha. Because it is. Just because you can find a few games out of hundreds of thousands of available PC titles that challenge 2GB VRAM doesn't mean it is not enough.

If you're running a card like a 960 you have to make compromises. That's one of them.
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normally i'd agree with you, but out of the "hundreds" of games out there, many people that bought GTA will be playing ONLY, or almost only, GTA for the foreseeable future. It's basically an MMO.

Also ordered an Asus Strix 970 last night. Will be here tomorrow. Thanks PRIME! The evga cards werent available for prime shipping and the MSI GAME 4G 970 was shown as shipping delayed and i wanted it now dammit. Newegg wanted $15 to maybe ship one to me by monday or possibly tuesday and since the asus comes with a backplate already i decided to skip the SSC and go with the asus. I also considered the gigabyte GAMER G1 but have some brand loyalty to asus and went with that.
 
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sk3tch said:
Ha. Because it is. Just because you can find a few games out of hundreds of thousands of available PC titles that challenge 2GB VRAM doesn't mean it is not enough.

If you're running a card like a 960 you have to make compromises. That's one of them.
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ok perhaps I can rephrase?

the 2 gig 960 is fine as long as you only play games made before 2014 and in newer games you prepared to turn things down at a significant amount.

happy?

I consider that very different tho to saying its fine for 1080p, as most people would assume fine to mean can play at max settings.
 
chrcoluk said:
ok perhaps I can rephrase?

the 2 gig 960 is fine as long as you only play games made before 2014 and in newer games you prepared to turn things down at a significant amount.

happy?

I consider that very different tho to saying its fine for 1080p, as most people would assume fine to mean can play at max settings.
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[H] shows usage not hugely over 2GB with much higher resolutions than 1080p in GTAV...
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/04/20/grand_theft_auto_v_video_card_performance_preview/4#.VTkg0SFVgvk

From their conclusion:
We haven't got to 1080p testing yet, but we are going to make an educated guess that 3GB may be required there for maximum in-game settings. This actually may be the first game where a 4GB video card would feel more comfortable at 1080p, and a 6GB video card at 1440p. Of course, you can always lower settings to remove those bottlenecks, but we are talking about what is needed to run this game at the highest possible graphics settings at a given resolution.
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Again - if you buy a 960 - you're not going to be able to run the highest in-game settings anyway. So the 2GB versus 4GB issue is moot.
 
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I am talking about 1050p not 1440p.

The fact is at 1050p my vram usage is over 3gig, and I dont have everything maxed out.
 
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