GTX 970, GTX 980, or GTX 980Ti for 1080p gaming (with possible upgrades in the future)?

[Vladimir Sabado]

Hey guys,

As the title says. I have a 1080p television that I use for gaming. Sometimes I use my monitors, but not very often. Which GPU would you guys recommend for this level of gaming? I may consider upgrading the resolution on my tv and monitors in the future but it will be verrrrry costly so it's highly unlikely. I would just like to run everything on high and still be relatively "future proof." What GPU do you guys recommend?

 

[senseijtitus]

Possible future SLO option if your motherboard supports it would be a GTX980Ti. GTX 980 and 970 are also good. But the performance of the GTX980Ti as per reviews I have seen yet are very good. Price is a little over the top but. If you can afford the top most, go for GTX980Ti.

 

[hamzahfelix]

The 980ti is the best gpu you can get as close as the Titan X performance at a lower price. But for 1080p gaming, it's just overkill even for aaa titles. So unless you're getting a new1440p 144Hz monitor at least, it will not be worth your while.

The 970 can pretty much run anything at 1080p ultra settings like a dream, and for a really long time. And should you wish to step up, you can always sli the 970. It also cost so much less than a 980, that two of them will only cost 20% more than a 980, while out performing the 980 by a large margin.

 

[maxtex]

970 in the only good option, higher than that is stupid. Even a 960 would be fine for now on a 1080p screen, although a 970 is more futureproof.
And then, in a year or 2, when you wanna upgrade to a 4K screen, there will already be much better cards out than the current 980Ti, so it's a bit of a waste now buying that card for your 1080p screen. The 980 isn't worth it either, on 1080p the 970 can max out everything as well and it's cheaper. And the 3.5GB of (fast) vram it has is plenty for 1080p for a while to come.

 

[rcald2000]

I agree with everyone; the 970 is the way to go. I just purchased one for my 1080p @ 60 Hz gaming, and I have no problems. I plan on upgrading from ultra settings to "uber" settings soon. I may or may not turn off Hairworks, but that's no big deal. By the way, wait until tomorrow to purchase because it's E3 and AMD will announce their new cards. May or may not affect the prices you pay for the 970 but it's only one day, so why not wait.

Nvidia suggests the following settings for each GTX 900 Series card.

1920×1080, Low settings GTX 960
1920×1080, Medium settings GTX 960
1920×1080, High settings GTX 960
1920×1080, Uber settings GTX 970
1920×1080, Uber settings w/ GameWorks GTX 980
2560×1440, Uber settings GTX 980
2560×1440, Uber settings w/ GameWorks GTX TITAN X, or 2-Way SLI GTX 970
3840×2160, Uber settings GTX TITAN X, or 2-Way SLI GTX 980
3840×2160, Uber settings w/ GameWorks 2-Way SLI GTX 980 or GTX TITAN X

 

[Vladimir Sabado]

Great answers guys, thank you! I think I will grab a 970 and sli it should I need to further upgrade

 

[maxtex]

I agree with everyone; the 970 is the way to go. I just purchased one for my 1080p @ 60 Hz gaming, and I have no problems. I plan on upgrading from ultra settings to "uber" settings soon. I may or may not turn off Hairworks, but that's no big deal. By the way, wait until tomorrow to purchase because it's E3 and AMD will announce their new cards. May or may not affect the prices you pay for the 970 but it's only one day, so why not wait.

Nvidia suggests the following settings for each GTX 900 Series card.

1920×1080, Low settings GTX 960
1920×1080, Medium settings GTX 960
1920×1080, High settings GTX 960
1920×1080, Uber settings GTX 970
1920×1080, Uber settings w/ GameWorks GTX 980
2560×1440, Uber settings GTX 980
2560×1440, Uber settings w/ GameWorks GTX TITAN X, or 2-Way SLI GTX 970
3840×2160, Uber settings GTX TITAN X, or 2-Way SLI GTX 980
3840×2160, Uber settings w/ GameWorks 2-Way SLI GTX 980 or GTX TITAN X

Yeah never bad to wait if it's just a few days, although seeing they're gonna be rebrands (we'll see), I doubt much will change in the prices.

And funny that Nvidia actually has a suggestion for low settings at 1080p, like anyone would ever suggest someone to play games at 1080 low settings lol. And then they even suggest a 960 lol... You'd think they put a 750 Ti there, it can handle even medium settings in pretty much all games.

 

[Sanosuke Sagara]

Well 980Ti is indeed a really powerful card, basically a Titan-X with 1/2 the memory so yes it is futureproof and will max out everything to date on 1080p. However as I've read in newsletters, nVidia has the next gen in the works so a cheaper/more powerful card will come sometime next year. I guess waiting is the best option. I use a GTX770 OC/4GB and I'm pretty satisfied with its performance since 2013 when I got it. Besides with all my rigs I upgrade the GPU every 3 generations. 😀