GTX 970 Reliable?

[elliot123]

I am in the process of building myself a mid range gaming pc. I have already decided on getting the GTX 970 for the graphics as it seems like a powerful card and it is right in my price range. I was almost going to buy it but I was reading the reviews and it seems that many people have experienced crashing with this Graphics card. Is this something that happens often? If I get one that crashes, if I sent it back and got a new one, would the new one fix the problems?

 

[basroil]

Despite what people say, it's a perfectly good product. I've had one for a year now and no real issues.

 

[Gam3r01]

The 970 itself is fine. Great card.

 

[photonboy]

Hi,
Reliability is based on the company making the card in general, not the GPU itself.

Some AMD cards were overheating statistically more than NVidia because the AMD GPU's ran hot, but in the end it was due to being pushed too hard which was a decision by the manufacturer.

*Look at customer feedback starting with pcpartpicker for specific models of GTX970 such as the Asus Strix, EVGA ACX 2.0 models..

 

[photonboy]

Top four cards IMO for reliability:

Asus Strix http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-video-card-strixgtx970dc2oc4gd5

Gigabyte http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-video-card-gvn970wf3oc4gd

MSI http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-video-card-gtx970gaming4g

EVGA http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-04gp42978kr

All are great, with differences such as aesthetics, size, noise, and max overclock.

Not sure if the Gigabyte supports fans turning off or not though even if not it should run pretty quiet in idle.

I might buy the Asus Strix if I was forced to make a decision after reading through various reviews of all cards. https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_970_STRIX_OC/30.html

 

[mamasan2000]

2 isssues I've heard of. Coil whine and 3.5 gigs of VRAM. The latter you can't do anything about. The former you can check around for manufacturers/brands who don't have it or RMA the card if you happen to get one with coil whine.

Example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffVqmYdfCCc

Can be extremely annoying, had a little coil whine on my GTX760.
Haven't had it on an AMD card. Maybe just luck.

 

[dudeman509]

All 970's coil whine in certain games where FPS go high. I can make mine do it on the loading screen to Titanfall if I alt-tab out of it, but I almost never hear it otherwise.

Mine's been a great card thus far, have owned it about 8 months. Only time it's crashed is when I push the overclock too high.

 

[basroil]

All 970's coil whine in certain games where FPS go high. I can make mine do it on the loading screen to Titanfall if I alt-tab out of it, but I almost never hear it otherwise.

Mine's been a great card thus far, have owned it about 8 months. Only time it's crashed is when I push the overclock too high.

All video cards have coil whine when paired with lower quality PSUs and high FPS. Some early 970 models had bad mechanical connections that caused some mechanical noise, but so did the Fury X.