Is GTX 980 worth the upgrade from GTX 960

[Judd Lehmkuhl]

Hi guys, Help me please,

I have the "MSI GEFORCE® GTX 960 GAMING 100ME"
According to the website it offers the following:

Boost Clock / Base Clock
1304 MHz / 1241 MHz (OC Mode)

Now I am considering the "GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 980 4GB"
but according to their site it offers
"Boost:1354 MHz/ Base: 1253 MHz in OC Mode"

Is that 50 Mhz really worth the upgrade ? surely this cant be th eonly advantage ? besides for the extra 2gb memory ?

can anyone shed some light on why the GTX 980 is worth the upgrade ?

 

[Vetsku]

I wouldnt go for the GTX 980 anymore, go for the GTX 1070.

 

[ADrunkBunny]

It depends on how much the card cost and what games your planning on playing with the card. I wouldn't get a gtx 980 unless you got it for super cheap because the gtx 1060 offers similar performance with newer technology for around $250. Well I went for the gtx 980 ti instead of the 1070 because the 980ti has better overclock performance.

 

[Judd Lehmkuhl]

The only reason I am considering the GTX980 is that its on a 60% discount.. bringing it down to the same price i paid from my GTX 960 a year ago.
With the 1060, 1070 , 1080 coming out. one supplier has decided on massive discounts on the older GTX 980

but is it better then the gtx 960? 50 Mhz doesnt seem like much

 

[apk24]

Firstly, the gtx 980 is miles above the 960. In graphics cards, clock speed (while important) is not the most important metric for determining power. the GTX 980 is a little more than twice as powerful as the gtx 960.

Raw power of a GPU is measured in FLOPS, or Floating point operations per second. The 980 can perform ~4.6 TFLOPS (4.6*10^12 floating point operations per second) compared to the 960's 2.3 TFLOPS. However, as with many things RAW power isn't everything, and there is a whole host of things to consider when buying a new graphics card. Tom's hardware has a more or less up to date list for recommended graphics cards based on what gaimng experience you're looking for. It can be found Here. While I wouldn't say it's perfect, Tom' Hardware has a Graphics Card Hierarchy that is by and large, accurate. You can use that to help fill in the blanks between the recommended cards from the first link to get an idea of what each card can do.

Overall, if you're buying new, I wouldn't buy a GTX 980, as they are now old tech that perform significantly less than a (supposedly) cheaper GTX 1070.

 

[ADrunkBunny]

If you gaming on a 1080p monitor a gtx 980 would still be a good option for pretty much every game out there right now. The 980 will maybe last you another 1 or 2 years

 

[Judd Lehmkuhl]

Firstly, the gtx 980 is miles above the 960. In graphics cards, clock speed (while important) is not the most important metric for determining power. the GTX 980 is a little more than twice as powerful as the gtx 960.

Raw power of a GPU is measured in FLOPS, or Floating point operations per second. The 980 can perform ~4.6 TFLOPS (4.6*10^12 floating point operations per second) compared to the 960's 2.3 TFLOPS. However, as with many things RAW power isn't everything, and there is a whole host of things to consider when buying a new graphics card. Tom's hardware has a more or less up to date list for recommended graphics cards based on what gaimng experience you're looking for. It can be found Here. While I wouldn't say it's perfect, Tom' Hardware has a Graphics Card Hierarchy that is by and large, accurate. You can use that to help fill in the blanks between the recommended cards from the first link to get an idea of what each card can do.

Overall, if you're buying new, I wouldn't buy a GTX 980, as they are now old tech that perform significantly less than a (supposedly) cheaper GTX 1070.

Thank you @apk24

I cant afford the GTX 1060, never mind the 1070 and 1080.. but yes this GTX980 is cheaper then that...

But these are the two cards I am comparing

My current card
https://www.msi.com/Graphics-card/GTX-960-GAMING-100ME.html#hero-overview

The Upgrade...Maybe...
http://www.gigabyte.co.za/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5208#ov

you would think that the manufacturers would very clearly state the advantages of their cards.. but the specs looks very similar..

 

[ADrunkBunny]

Now that I think about it your cpu is a i3 550. Wouldn't the 980 bottleneck it

 

[George Phillips]

Don't get GTX 980, which is fast but last generation. If you want to get a new card, get either GTX 1070 or 1060. 1060 beats GTX 980 in almost every game and is below $300. GTX 1070 delivers crazy performance at about $400. It won't go wring with either card.

 

[Judd Lehmkuhl]

Don't get GTX 980, which is fast but last generation. If you want to get a new card, get either GTX 1070 or 1060. 1060 beats GTX 980 in almost every game and is below $300. GTX 1070 delivers crazy performance at about $400. It won't go wring with either card.

I am not really looking at any other card besides these two.
And the only reason I am looking at it at all is that its cheaper then any gtx 1060.. and cheaper then most gtx960's

but is it an worth it upgrade over my current card ?

My current card
https://www.msi.com/Graphics-card/GTX-960-GAMING-100ME.html#hero-specification

The Upgrade...Maybe...
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5208#sp

 

[apk24]

960 to 980, like I said, is a pretty significant upgrade. My current 960 runs most modern games adequately at 1080p. I am able to appreciate visual detail w/o low frame rates, and even turn up a some games to max settings. A 980 would allow you to turn everything up to max for 1080p and play 1440p pretty comfortably, in the medium to high settings range.

However, personally, I'd put that money in the bank until I can save up to buy an even bigger upgrade, or wait until my card isn't good enough for me anymore, and then buy the best I can with my saved up money. My philosophy is tech is always improving, and last gen parts are always going to be on sale. If what you have works, then why bother upgrading? The same 200 that you spend today, could net you something more powerful tomorrow.

 

[Judd Lehmkuhl]

Now that I think about it your cpu is a i3 550. Wouldn't the 980 bottleneck it

I should really get around to upgrading that at some stage.. the hold up is that I would have to get a CPU a MB and RAM.

 

[ADrunkBunny]

Personally I would keep the gpu until next year where nvidia will release vega hopefully. I would upgrade the cpu which can also increase your fps. Maybe get a i5 6600k and 8 gb of ram

 

[Judd Lehmkuhl]

960 to 980, like I said, is a pretty significant upgrade. My current 960 runs most modern games adequately at 1080p. I am able to appreciate visual detail w/o low frame rates, and even turn up a some games to max settings. A 980 would allow you to turn everything up to max for 1080p and play 1440p pretty comfortably, in the medium to high settings range.

However, personally, I'd put that money in the bank until I can save up to buy an even bigger upgrade, or wait until my card isn't good enough for me anymore, and then buy the best I can with my saved up money. My philosophy is tech is always improving, and last gen parts are always going to be on sale. If what you have works, then why bother upgrading? The same 200 that you spend today, could net you something more powerful tomorrow.

do you know where i could see a proper comparison between the two ?
because even sites like this http://gpuboss.com/gpus/MSI-GeForce-GTX-960-vs-GIGABYTE-GeForce-GTX-980
they seem to report the two cards very similar...

maybe you are right and i should save the money.. or put it towards a CPU and a MB upgrade instead..

 

[ADrunkBunny]

http://mygaming.co.za/news/hardware/71933-gtx-960-vs-970-vs-980-price-and-performance-comparison.html
If your running on 1080p and will stay using 1080p. I would just upgrade the cpu and ram

 

[Judd Lehmkuhl]

http://mygaming.co.za/news/hardware/71933-gtx-960-vs-970-vs-980-price-and-performance-comparison.html
If your running on 1080p and will stay using 1080p. I would just upgrade the cpu and ram

.co.za site ? ADrunkBunny are you South African? if so you know the pain of pc part prices 🙂
loot has the special on the gigabyte gtx 980 incase you wondering 🙂

 

[ADrunkBunny]

Ah no I just figure this was a great comparison between the cards. I live in New York City and already have a 980 ti.

 

[Judd Lehmkuhl]

Ah no I just figure this was a great comparison between the cards. I live in New York City and already have a 980 ti.

Ahh, its a good comparison I agree, but again the three cards looks very well matched.
only real difference I see is price and "Stream processors" then I read that Geforce doesn't use the term "Stream processors" and uses CUDA CORES instead .. that made me question the legitimacy of the article.

also they use different settings on the gtx960, but all in all "Crysis 3" seems to run at about 32 fps .

 

[ADrunkBunny]

Well I haven't actually read the article but I can vouch for you the a 980 will increase performance a lot but I would still upgrade the cpu and ram and wait for the new set of gpu's that's about to come. The gtx 960 would last for maybe 2 years if you lower the settings to medium

 

[apk24]

Here is a decent comparision: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2015-vga-charts/compare,3664.html?prod%5B7344%5D=on&prod%5B7381%5D=on

If you really are running an i3-550, forget about upgrading your GPU, spend that money on a new core system. If you want to go higher than a gtx 960, you need at least a i5-4650 and 8gb ram. I would recommend you try to save up for an i5-6500, an h110 mobo, and 8gb ram. That would cost $300 in the US, while I don't know what it would cost where you are, that's a little bit more than the list price on most GTX 1060 but less than GTX 1070.

 

[Judd Lehmkuhl]

http://www.gigabyte.co.za/products/comparison/list.aspx?ck=3&pids=5571,5208

another comparison i found .. says cards are basically the same ..
if the manufactures don't tell you why one is better then the other how are we to fine out ?

what should i be comparing ? doesnt any site list FLOPS or anything worth comparing ..

 

[apk24]

The tom's hardware benchmark comparision shows you fairly useful results, in their performance. The 980 achieves almost double the FPS at the same settings in all the tested games, and achives close to double performance in all the synthetic benchmarks. Here's Anandtech's comparision using their benchmark suite: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1442?vs=1596

Wikipedia has a list of the raw specs of all nVidia GPUs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#GeForce_900_Series

I honestly don't know what else you want to look at. By your logic, the new pascal Titan X is slower than a GTX 1060 because it's base clock is lower. Comparing GPUs isn't simple. You have to consider core count, clock speed, architecture, software optimizations, etc.

In any case, that i3-550 is going to prevent you from properly utilizing a GTX 980. Your next upgrade pretty much needs to be your CPU. The i3-550 is a 6 year old low end dual core CPU; it has no place in a modern mid range gaming build.