GTX 970 for 2016 gaming (is it enough 3.5 VRAM for Full HD ?)

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STRIKER_RU

STRIKER_RU

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Apr 17, 2015
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Hello dear experts! I've just sold my gtx 770 (2Gb) and have GTX 970 Asus STRIX card. In my gaming rig I have OC core I5 2500k with 8Gb of RAM. So my budget was limited for a graphics card and I decided to invest in GTX 970. Normally I play on Full HD monitor. My question is - is it enough 3.5 Gb of VRAM om ny GTX 970 for gaming in 2016 or this will be not enough and I will be experiencing stuttering when games will use more than 3.5 Gb of vram (like it was with my GTX 770)?

I know that maybe it wasn't a smart decision to switch from gtx 770 (2gb) to GTX 970 at he end of 2015 but by this moment I am very satisfied with GTX 970. Many of you suggested me to buy GTX 980 to use it full 4gb of VRAM but as I mentioned above my budget was limited and I was tired of 2gb VRAM limiting factor on my GTX 770 so finally I've decided to buy 970 (optimal price and performance for me). GTX 980 is still expensive in my opinion.

All answers and comments are very much appreciated.
 
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Truthfully, yes. Yes it is. The following is purely opinion, don't take it as gospel, take it as what it is, an opinion. My specs are an i7 4790k @ 4.4Ghz, ASUS Z97A USB 3.1 Motherboard, 8GB DDR3 1600 Mhz 9-9-9-27 1T, EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SSC.

I just recently purchased the EVGA GTX970 SSC and tested a few games out with it; Namely Fallout 4 and GTA V since those seem to be the most graphically demanding games I have on hand and with GTA V I was able to set everything to Ultra/Long Shadows and Extended Shadows both sliders in advanced graphics set to 50% also have MSAA set to 2x and TXAA on along with FXAA and just running around in the city I was sitting pretty at around 65+ FPS, mind you this is @ 1080. My VRAM usage for that game hit...
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Games that bottleneck by 3.5 gb problem only at 4k:

Shadows of Mordor
<3.5GB setting = 2688x1512 Very High 72fps 60fps
>3.5GB setting = 3456x1944 55fps (-24%) 45fps (-25%)
Battlefield 4
<3.5GB setting = 3840x2160 2xMSAA 36fps 30fps
>3.5GB setting = 3840x2160 135% res 19fps (-47%) 15fps (-50%)
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
<3.5GB setting = 3840x2160 FSMAA T2x, Supersampling off 82fps 71fps
>3.5GB setting = 3840x2160 FSMAA T2x, Supersampling on (-44%)

You should be fine with 1080p or 1440p many people are even more than satisfied by their 2gb 950 and 960 cards you should be fine too many people have pushed their 970s to the max at hd and no bottlenecks seen.

Just chill and be proud of that u own a 970 :)
 
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The gtx 970 is a good card, but I however think the r9 390 is a better deal right now and more future proof. With 8 gigs of ram, and true async compute it tends to bode well for directx12. If you're interested in certain games, you might want to look into async compute. AMD does async compute and Nvidia fakes it. (Async might not matter for the games you play, it has to be supported)
 
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So if any game will use more than 3.5 Gb in 1080 p I will be ok with my GTX 970? Because I've heard that when a game uses above 3.5 Gb in this scenario GTX 970 trying to use more slow sector of 512 memory and it causes stuttering and performance downgrade. Am I wrong?
 
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GTX 970 is a solid card, also for 2016.

I've actually ordered myself one for my new i7 6700-K rig with DDR4 3000Mhz as I felt the GTX 980 Ti was way too expensive atm (Christmas is near).

So decided to go with GTX 970, save up money and wait for a next-gen card to put into :)

I even took the Asus STRIX DC2OC version myself, as after much research, those seem to be the best.
Just hope I wont get one with coil whine x)

FYI, I'm also coming from a 2GB VRAM HD 7850 card so I'll def see improvements! Rly can't wait till new rig is set to go :)
 
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Sounds like, "Come on drink the cool aid. Don't ask what is in it or if something else might be better. Drink the cool aid."

There is no compelling reason to go with a gtx 970 over an r9 390 right now.

Price equal, or the 390 is cheaper. (As it is here in Canada)

Ram 8gb > 3.5 + 0.5 . Someone posted specs above of the performance dip when the ram usage gets above 3.5 . Yes you can do this at 1080p, in Shadows of Mordor, in a modded skyrim, in GTA V.

Here are some benchmarks to compare the 970 to the r9 390. Note that at 1080p they are very close. However, past 1080p the gtx 970 is beat, and the 390 is closer to the gtx 980.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-amd-radeon-r9-390-8gb-review
http://www.eteknix.com/sapphire-nitro-r9-390-8gb-graphics-card-review/5/

1440/4k Monitors are quickly becoming affordable, I wouldn't get a graphics card strickly for 1080p right now anyways.

Also AMD supports async compute and better context switching. Context switching will affect VR latency quite a bit and async compute is a directX12 feature that if implemented can improve performance a lot. Ashes of singularity an upcoming RTS is already using it.
http://wccftech.com/preemption-context-switching-allegedly-best-amd-pretty-good-intel-catastrophic-nvidia/
http://wccftech.com/amd-nvidias-maxwell-is-utterly-incapable-of-performing-async-compute/

Amd has played the long game with their GCN architecture and now directx12 is coming out, we will see that.

 
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Thanks, I feel that my soul can finally find peace. I was confused about getting r9 390 instead of my 970 card. Because it has 8 gb or vram onboard (just in case I will need it sometime). But I've heard that it is a quite old graphics chip and it is a way too hot on par with a huge power consumption. So finally I've decided to get Asus STRIX GTX 970.
 
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I dont own a 970. I have a 980Ti Gigabyte G1 Gaming 6GB. But why you asking? A friend of me having 970 MSI Gaming and... Its good GPU for the money. You can overclock over 150+ MHz with issues at all... :S
 
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To be honest, I own 970 and i can say that using more than 4gb is really easy and the micro stuttering is real.... i would totally sell it and get 960 sli for future upgrade... really dissapointed with nvidia 970.... please do consider switching to AMD
 
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For now I'm considering of buying second GTX 970 for SLI, or should I do it with 960 (4GB)? I think that GTX 970 SLI will be more futureproof solution. So tell me please why GTX 960 for SLI from your perspective?

Thanks!
 
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Good point! Thanks! Now I will try to save some money for the second GTX 970 to have an SLI , or should I get two 960 (4gb) instead? I've heard they fully utilize 4GB of memory but obviously they are weaker GPUs.
 
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I got a 970 STRIX card as a temporary card so I could use my 660 in the theater. With some tweaking (and bios tweaks), I was able to get it up to 1533MHz on the core and 8000MHZ on the memory, in which case it generally outperforms a stock 980 by a small margin.

With the exception of a few unoptimized games, I can say that the card runs like a full 4GB card. I almost never notice stutters when the card sees the full 4GB being used. The drivers seem to do a good job at putting lesser-accessed data in that last 512MB spot.

And for any decently optimized game that uses more than that, the 970 or 390 won't have the horsepower to be worth the extra RAM, anyway.

However, we don't play all "optimized" games. If you are playing minecraft with a 512x512 texture pack and "very far" rendering distance, I've seen 7GB of VRAM on the 390 be used easily. I use all 4GB of VRAM easily with a 256x256 texture pack and shaders.

In Assassin's Creed: Unity, I generally have to disable TXAA to keep the framerate up, with it using over 4GB fairly quickly at 1080p.


If anything, I might recommend just holding out for a bit since the 970 is already a year old, and a few major game-changers are about to come out. For instance, Pascal is rumored to have 16GB of VRAM on gaming models and 32GB of VRAM on Titan/Compute models. So I would expect to see at least 8GB in Nvidia's next lineup, and you won't have to worry about crazy debates about the whole 3.5GB issue in the first place.
 
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Futureproof yea right. Buy another 970 and don't go for 960 SLI. 960 is underthrottling. That means that the card cant deliver as much as power needs for the system to run, stable, and outputing extra fps just in case.
 
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Hey,
Let me make it very simple for you.
Now a days some games are getting VRAM hungry such as ~ (Shadow of Mordor) but still 3.5 GB is enough for 1080p gaming in 2016 !
New Titles coming out such as Fallout 4, Assassins Creed Syndicate etc will also give you good fps with High settings so there is no need to worry about your Graphics Card man. Enjoy ;-)
 
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In all this discussion I've made a conclusion that the ideal scenario for me to wait Pascal release date and go for a new single card with at least 6Gb of vram or to buy a second GTX 970 for reduced price. But honestly I'm glad that I have so many answers, now I'm calm and relaxed. We will see what will happen in 2016 but at present moment I am happy that I did the right choice and have GTX 970. I think it would be enough for 1080p gaming at high presets for a year or so.
 
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I think so to, I´ve got the GTX 970 and Im running at 1080p and the only time i get over 3.5vram is when I play GTAV. Im sticking with the 970 until next generation and when it have been out for a while. I got the 970 before the 390 came out but the 970 is still a good card for 1080p. Thats my oppinion. (sorry my english is pritty bad)😛
 
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