Gpu, upgrade, 970 SLI or 980

[kowashie]

Hey there, well the title pretty much says it all. I need to know in your opinion which is better? a single GTX 980 or GTX 970 SLI. Also how much of a boost in performance will i see from my current 7870 Crossfire setup.
(the GTX 970 i'm looking at) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487076&cm_re=gtx_970-_-14-487-076-_-Product
(the GTX 980) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121905&cm_re=gtx_980-_-14-121-905-_-Product

whole system
Fx 8350 OC 4.5GHZ (212 evo)
8gb ddr3 1600 ram
ASUS M5A99FX PRO R2.0
7870 crossfire
1tb WDB
250GB crucial SSD
850W b2 EVGA
cm- storm stryker ( im not worried about clearance issues. )
Thanks!

 

[emdea22]

980

 

[Thaisnang]

970 SLI no doubt. You'll see a huge performance improvement with it.
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_970_sli_review,12.html

 

[rmpumper]

Neither. Get a single 970. Even the one GPU will be bottlenecked by 8350. If you have the cash you throw at SLI970s, you should just get 4690K or 4790K.

 

[Thaisnang]

Neither. Get a single 970. Even the one GPU will be bottlenecked by 8350. If you have the cash you throw at SLI970s, you should just get 4690K or 4790K.

Overclocked 8350 will not bottleneck.

 

[rmpumper]

Neither. Get a single 970. Even the one GPU will be bottlenecked by 8350. If you have the cash you throw at SLI970s, you should just get 4690K or 4790K.

Overclocked 8350 will not bottleneck.

In CPU intensive games it will (it bottlenecks a single 7970).

Here's a few examples (8350 at 5GHz can't even beat i3 in some cases):
Civ 5
World of Tanks
Skyrim
Starcraft 2

Can't even beat Phenom X4 at 4GHz:
Dirt Showdown

 

[Thaisnang]

When phenom surpasses 8350 then something is clearly wrong. I think something went wrong with their test.

 

[davidarad02]

get a 4690k or a 4790k with a new mobo if you dont want to bottleneck your gpu's. with this upgrade, get a single 970, and later on get another one. if you NEED a single 980 or 970 sli, get the 970 sli setup. it will CRUSH the 980 in any game.
Hope this helps

 

[kowashie]

Is the bottleneck really that noticeable? are we talking about like 10%? or greater...

 

[Guinibee]

I actually have a 970 sli and I'm debating going to a single 980 evga classy instead. Reason is that I'm finding more and more games are having sli issues lately...with all the new big games that came out this winter, it seems that they all have a ton of bugs (looking at Far Cry 4 and Dragon Age Inquisition). Supposedly running without SLI is better for a lot of games right now and with SLI there is no DSR or MFAA yet either 🙁.

Support for SLI looks bad lately...

 

[Thaisnang]

Is the bottleneck really that noticeable? are we talking about like 10%? or greater...

You may get bottleneck only in some CPU intensive games. Other than that it is totally fine. And no one can say how much that would be.

 

[TheMagicalWallaby]

Neither. Get a single 970. Even the one GPU will be bottlenecked by 8350. If you have the cash you throw at SLI970s, you should just get 4690K or 4790K.

Overclocked 8350 will not bottleneck.

In CPU intensive games it will (it bottlenecks a single 7970).

Here's a few examples (8350 at 5GHz can't even beat i3 in some cases):
Civ 5
World of Tanks
Skyrim
Starcraft 2

Can't even beat Phenom X4 at 4GHz:
Dirt Showdown

That is not what a bottleneck is.

 

[TheMagicalWallaby]

I prefer a single more powerful card, and then doing SLI before the new series launches.

 

[Guinibee]

I may actually swap 970s with EVGA's revision on the GTX 970 FTW with the FTW+. They made a lot of fixes...looks interesting.

http://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/78613-evga-launching-new-improved-geforce-gtx-970-ssc-card/

at least this until big max finally shows up