GTX 970 SLI or single 980 for 1440p gaming

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Maineiac12

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I'm planning on getting a 27" 2560x1440 monitor (ROG swift or other G-Sync capable screen) soon.

I'm wondering if dual 970s in SLI or a single 980 would be the best option? I play BF4, WoW, SC2, Arma 3 as my main games. Obviously dual 980s is best but I can't really afford that. ;)
 
for that kind of high FPS at 2560x1440 you need as much GPU and CPU power as possible.. the best bang for the buck as you know its dual GTX 970 and for me, the best option for the money.. but do not forget to also pair it with a very good CPU..
 
I'm running an i7-4770k with 16 GB of RAM and an 840 EVO SSD on an ASUS VI Hero board so I think I'm good for everything but the GPU at this point.
 
970's are the cheaper &faster choice, but then you can run into SLI issues. If you have the money and just want reliability, go for a 980.
 
Go with the 980. I have one and have no problem running 1440p at ultra. A single card solution is always better. Also going with the single 980 leaves you with the option of getting a second one down the road when you need it.
 
Does the g-sync really make things smoother if your frames drop below 60? If my FPS looks and feels like 60 I don't care what fraps says it is. :D
 
You want a single 980. I play nothing but bf4 and just got the ROG Swift 2 weeks ago not even for it! At 1080 yeah 970 is all ull need but 1440 u want 980 or 980 sli.

I got high 80s and it will dip down around 40ish in big time gun fights with the game set at ultra. I had 8 GB 1600mhz ram and just upgraded the ram last night to 16gb 2400mhz and played and it was awesome! Frame rate range went up to around 100+ and only dropped in the 70-80 in those gun fights.. also moved the game to a samsung 850 evo 500GB drive. Was on an old 7200rpm hdd.

All that seemed to really help keep me from buying another 980 card!

Yes the g-sync is awesome! And I still can't get over how nice and large my new ROG Swift 27" 1440 monitor is!

If one is buying a new card today, stay away from the 970 for 1440. I'm sure we will run into that 3.5+.5 slow memory issue with the 970.

P.S. need to mention I'm runing a Intel i7 4790k at default and the card is Overclocked to 1550/8000 1.2v air cooled gigabyte 980 G1. Awesome card!

Gona be overclocking the cpu which is on water cooling shortly.. moving the system into my new thermaltake core 9x case today! :)
 
Forgot to mention When it dips into the low 40s you'll know even with g-sync.. it's still smoother with it but u want to keep the frame rate above 60. You can just drop a setting or 2 from ultra to keep it smooth if needed.. though who wants to do that! Hehe
 
noob talk here... but...

If you have room for SLIs, and intend for high-end 1440p gaming... I would go with the 980s.

The 970 SLIs running 1440p will likely find that 3.5gb threshold in the couple years, at which point you would need a complete upgrade to keep up.

The 980 imo is more future proof, as in a year or two you will likely be able to find a second 980 on ebay for much cheaper than they are now, and the 4GB wouldnt limit you until the current generation of console games/ports finish.

Personally im taking my 970 refund (I intended for SLIs down the line) and hoping for a 980 8GB soon... With future SLI intentions, I think 980s in 8GB will last for a VERY long time....
 
The 980 is what, about 20% faster than a 970? I'd go with dual 970's and reap the rewards of being able to kick the shit out of a single 980 for not much added cost. SLI support and scaling is excellent, plus NVidia has been really good about getting new SLI profiles added for freshly released games lately. And it's only going to get better when DX12 comes along.
 
970 is a gimped card with .500MB turtle/slow old man driving in the right lane memory. Once u get passed the 3.5-3.7 your frame rate will be studdering.

If that wasnt the case I'd be 970 sli'ing right now.
 
I'm inclined to go with eclypse's suggestion and get the single 980 for now. Our setups are very similar and he seems to be having good results. I intend to keep the monitor and card for a while and the 980 would probably be the better long term investment. And like he said, grabbing another 980 in the future would be cheaper than getting them both now if future games ever demand it.
 
I'm on the single GPU side of things. I've seen enough SLI non-sense to stay the hell away. The 980 seems to do well at 1440P, I know since I DSR to that approximate resolution.

It's almost a personal preference - if you don't mind waiting for SLI to get fixed then get SLI 970s. If you want everything to work with no nonsense then single 980. Even large launches like FC4 it took them a month or two to fix the SLI issues. I'd rather just not bother.

I've also seen it on BF4 where SLI/xfire was working for months and they released a patch that mauled SLI/XFire it for almost a month. IIRC no textures were showing.... you can blame it on the developer, but to me it's no difference. Multi-GPU wasn't working.
 
Dayaks said:
Even large launches like FC4 it took them a month or two to fix the SLI issues. I'd rather just not bother.

I've also seen it on BF4 where SLI/xfire was working for months and they released a patch that mauled SLI/XFire it for almost a month. IIRC no textures were showing.... you can blame it on the developer, but to me it's no difference. Multi-GPU wasn't working.
Click to expand...

Even at that, my point still stands: 970 is about 20% slower than the 980, which may be a livable deficit. But when an SLI profile gets released/optimized, then the power of two 970s over a single 980 is realized and is by far the preferred setup.

Granted, the 3.5GB VRAM limitation may very well be a deterrent for going the 970 route...if it is that big of a turn-off, then I'd recommend going with a single 980 now and look to go multi-GPU in the future when Pascal is released, then not have to worry about upgrading again when whatever successive gen single-GPU can match or exceed the performance of the 970/980 SLI setup (because I doubt Pascal will be that powerful, but I could be wrong...it may be another 8800GTX/Ultra performance jump...always a roll of the dice when it comes to GPUs).
 
If you are obsessed with VRAM, and if your choice is between two 970's or 980, skip this generation. if 3.5GB is going to be a problem now, it will be 4GB's problem fairly soon (I personally feel it'll happen sooner than 980 fall in price), so you may end up getting a complete upgrade anyway when that time comes.

The difference between 970's and 980 in that case? 970's are plenty playable if VRAM is kept at 3.5GB, a single 980 would require a lot more turning down of details before it is playable.

So my opinion is, either 970's now, 980's now, or wait until next gen, single 980 now, at 1440p, is something I definitely would not do.

(This post assumes that there is absolutely nothing special about the VRAM between 3.5GB ~ 4GB).
 
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