GTX 970 sli or GTX 980 ti for High Framerate Gaming at 1080p?

[MoonDoggy-X]

I currently wield dual EVGA GTX 90 SSC in sli, and for a only $400 config, their beasts. I usually have no problem pumping out 90-100fps+ with completely maxed out settings at 1080p. Then I downloaded my free copy of Witcher 3 and bought Dragon Age: Inquisition and am getting about 50-60fps in these games. I know its only 2 games, but this bothers me because I play more RPGs than anything else, and these are the 2 most recent games in my library. If my performance in these game are what I can expect from future titles, then apparently an upgrade is in order.

If course, I've scoured the internet before asking for help and have narrowed down my options. Right now, I'm torn between the 970 in sli, or the 980ti. At $1,000+ the titan and 980 in sli are out of the question. The additional $300+ isn't worth it because I don't need the 12gb of vram the titan offers at 1080p, and the 980 sli doesn't seem to scale to well at 1080p. Both the 970 sli and 980 ti are about $700, so price isn't a factor. I have a 1080p/120hz display, so I'm not worried about how they perform at higher resolutions, just 1080p. Also, I'm probably going to upgrade in a couple of years when the next generation of cards is at about this point in their cycle, so I'm not concerned with "future-proofing". Which do you guys think is better?

 

[geofelt]

What is your cpu?
Games such as sims, mmo and strategy games depend most on a single fast master core.

Figuring out which apps or games can effectively use multi cores can be difficult.
Just because you see activity on all cores does not mean that a app is multithreaded.
It may just be Windows spreading out the activity over all available threads.
In fact if the activity is the same, it is a strong indication of a single thread app.
One way to tell would be to experiment with removing one core. You can do this in the windows msconfig boot advanced options option. set the number of processors to less than you have.
This will tell you how sensitive your games are to the benefits of many cores.
Here is one of the few articles researching that.
Skip the ad to get to the report:
http://www.dsogaming.com/editorial/report-despite-claims-most-pc-games-are-still-unable-to-take-advantage-of-more-than-4-cpu-cores/

 

[GlenicoNico]

Go with the single 980Ti. It's better to use one high end card than two lower end ones, because there is less heat output, if you need more power in the future, you can get another 980Ti with a lower price than what you pay today, and SLI/CrossFire is not always stable.

 

[MoonDoggy-X]

What is your cpu?
Games such as sims, mmo and strategy games depend most on a single fast master core.

Figuring out which apps or games can effectively use multi cores can be difficult.
Just because you see activity on all cores does not mean that a app is multithreaded.
It may just be Windows spreading out the activity over all available threads.
In fact if the activity is the same, it is a strong indication of a single thread app.
One way to tell would be to experiment with removing one core. You can do this in the windows msconfig boot advanced options option. set the number of processors to less than you have.
This will tell you how sensitive your games are to the benefits of many cores.
Here is one of the few articles researching that.
Skip the ad to get to the report:
http://www.dsogaming.com/editorial/report-despite-claims-most-pc-games-are-still-unable-to-take-advantage-of-more-than-4-cpu-cores/

Thanks for the link! Here's my current setup... CPU: Intel Core i7 4790k @ 4.6ghz, Cooling: NZXT Kraken x61(Push/Pull), MOBO: EVGA Z97 FTW, OS: Windows 10, RAM: 16gb EVGA SuperSC DDR3 2400, Storage: Samsung 850 Evo 250gb + 500gb SSD, WD Black 1tb HDD, PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 1000w G1, Case: NZXT Phantom 530, GPU: 2x EVGA GTX 960 SuperSC, Monitor: Seiki 39 inch, 1080p @ 120hz, 4k @ 30hz

 

[MoonDoggy-X]

Go with the single 980Ti. It's better to use one high end card than two lower end ones, because there is less heat output, if you need more power in the future, you can get another 980Ti with a lower price than what you pay today, and SLI/CrossFire is not always stable.

Thanks for the suggestion. If they truly perform similarly, then the 980 ti is the obvious choice. The problem is finding 1080p benchmarks for the 980 ti. I've seen plenty at 1440p and 4k, but few and far between for 1080p. Know any goos sources?

 

[GlenicoNico]

Go with the single 980Ti. It's better to use one high end card than two lower end ones, because there is less heat output, if you need more power in the future, you can get another 980Ti with a lower price than what you pay today, and SLI/CrossFire is not always stable.

Thanks for the suggestion. If they truly perform similarly, then the 980 ti is the obvious choice. The problem is finding 1080p benchmarks for the 980 ti. I've seen plenty at 1440p and 4k, but few and far between for 1080p. Know any goos sources?

Here's some of my recommendations, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G5oe-Cc994 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShtDFdmmAlU , http://www.maximumpc.com/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti-review/ .

I hope that helps

 

[MoonDoggy-X]

Go with the single 980Ti. It's better to use one high end card than two lower end ones, because there is less heat output, if you need more power in the future, you can get another 980Ti with a lower price than what you pay today, and SLI/CrossFire is not always stable.

Thanks for the suggestion. If they truly perform similarly, then the 980 ti is the obvious choice. The problem is finding 1080p benchmarks for the 980 ti. I've seen plenty at 1440p and 4k, but few and far between for 1080p. Know any goos sources?

Here's some of my recommendations, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G5oe-Cc994 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShtDFdmmAlU , http://www.maximumpc.com/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti-review/ .

I hope that helps

WOW! So, newer games just suck with the various details and filters cranked no matter the resolution. The 980 ti only did about 20fps better than my current set up in Witcher 3 with the same settings. Definitely helped.

 

[GlenicoNico]

Go with the single 980Ti. It's better to use one high end card than two lower end ones, because there is less heat output, if you need more power in the future, you can get another 980Ti with a lower price than what you pay today, and SLI/CrossFire is not always stable.

Thanks for the suggestion. If they truly perform similarly, then the 980 ti is the obvious choice. The problem is finding 1080p benchmarks for the 980 ti. I've seen plenty at 1440p and 4k, but few and far between for 1080p. Know any goos sources?

Here's some of my recommendations, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G5oe-Cc994 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShtDFdmmAlU , http://www.maximumpc.com/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti-review/ .

I hope that helps

WOW! So, newer games just suck with the various details and filters cranked no matter the resolution. The 980 ti only did about 20fps better than my current set up in Witcher 3 with the same settings. Definitely helped.

Pick as solution maybe?