Nvidia GTX 970

[tempest501]

I am about to order a PC and I have just been reading that there is a problem with coil whine (does this reduce the life of the card?) and them not being able to push past 3.5gb without stuttering and artifacting. Doe anybody know if this is still the case? as i was intending on getting one of these.

I found this qoute from google

"Digging deeper and putting some numbers on these bones, the folks over at Lazygamer.net have shown that after approximately 3.3GB of usage the memory bandwidth of the GTX 970 tails off magnificently, from 150GB/s down to as low as 20GB/s - see the below image for more details."

Wondering if its safer to go with the 960 and upgrade later?

 

[nokiddingboss]

its a lot safer to go with amd these days.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Nope get the 970.

 

[RCFProd]

its a lot safer to go with amd these days.

nah

 

[Guest]

just look at the benchmarks for gta v , 970 way better than 290x , so it just show nvidia can use 256 bit bus and 3.5 gig vram and still beat them

 

[Guest]

oh and if you got an amd 8 core cpu you might want to upgrade to a i3 for more preformance

 

[Entomber]

I am about to order a PC and I have just been reading that there is a problem with coil whine (does this reduce the life of the card?) and them not being able to push past 3.5gb without stuttering and artifacting. Doe anybody know if this is still the case? as i was intending on getting one of these.

I found this qoute from google

"Digging deeper and putting some numbers on these bones, the folks over at Lazygamer.net have shown that after approximately 3.3GB of usage the memory bandwidth of the GTX 970 tails off magnificently, from 150GB/s down to as low as 20GB/s - see the below image for more details."

Wondering if its safer to go with the 960 and upgrade later?

1. coil whine does not reduce lifespan of a card, but it can be annoying if it's loud enough.
2. GTX 970s have 3.5GB of "fast" VRAM and 0.5 GB of "slow" VRAM. This quirk only affects the GTX 970 model, but is not a significant issue in terms of real world performance.

 

[RCFProd]

just look at the benchmarks for gta v , 970 way better than 290x , so it just show nvidia can use 256 bit bus and 3.5 gig vram and still beat them

oh and if you got an amd 8 core cpu you might want to upgrade to a i3 for more preformance

I don't believe the R9 290X is a lot slower, they're almost the same. GTX 970 is just a lot more efficient which seals the deal.

Switching from an FX-8350 to a Haswell Intel i3 would almost be pointless. Why was this mention necessary?

 

[nokiddingboss]

its a lot safer to go with amd these days.

nah

just look at the benchmarks for gta v , 970 way better than 290x , so it just show nvidia can use 256 bit bus and 3.5 gig vram and still beat them

actually the r9 290x is better than the 970 in gta v - http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/gta_v_pc_graphics_performance_review,5.html

you might have read the pre-15.4 beta drivers benchies.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

The 960 is a dog ....it's the 1st nvidia x60 card that in SLI can't beat the x80. The 970 is the story of this generation of 9xx cards, the 960 / 980 no where near as much. Two 970s outperform the 980 by 50% and can cost as little as %50 more). The 290 and 280 are the more relevant cards or AMD.

The 970 memory thing is a "fake rage" issue. The only real beef is that nvidia did not disclose that the 4.0 GB of RAM was divided into two segments of 3.5 and 0.5 GB. The card still performs exactly as it always had performed and reviewers you really have to go thru convoluted series of steps to **create** a problem and most reviewers have trouble doing so.

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor-geforce-gtx-970-vram-stress-test.html

Overall you will have a hard time pushing any card over 3.5 GB of graphics memory usage with any game unless you do some freaky stuff. The ones that do pass 3.5 GB mostly are poor console ports or situations where you game in Ultra HD or DSR Ultra HD rendering. In that situation I cannot guarantee that your overall experience will be trouble free, however we have a hard time detecting and replicating the stuttering issues some people have mentioned.

Ifv this was a real issue, one would expect sales to be significantly impacted. However, since the story broke, the 970 has outsold all AMD R9 / R7 series cards combines by a factor of 3.3 to 1.

In that time, the 970s market share has increased by 0.66%.... all AMD R7s and R9's combined have increased their market share by 0.20%.

I'm not saying that performance wise, there's anything wrong with the AMD cards.....

the AMD 290x loses by just 3% to the 970 overall in TPUs gaming test suite "outta the box" (1080p) ...with both overclocked, that lead grows a bit

the AMD 290x wins by 3% compared to the 970 overall in TPUs gaming test suite "outta the box" (1440p) ...with both overclocked, that lead disappears and it's close to a wash w/ a hair of a lead by the 970

the AMD 290x wins by 5% compared to the 970 overall in TPUs gaming test suite "outta the box" (4k) ...with both overclocked, that lead remains with hair of a lead over the 970.

With those small differences and current pricing, what it will come down to is what special attributes of each family matter to you ?

-Shadowplay, G-Sync, PhysX versus Mantle, Freesync
-An extra 200 watts of PSU needed for the 290xin CF versus SLI 970s (100 watts w/ single card) affects PSU and electric costs
-An extra 200 watts of heat produced for the 290x (100 watts single card) affects cost of case cooling and room temps

 

[tempest501]

That sure is alot to think about but thank you I had not even considered AMD to be honest (purely because I have always used nvidia).

At least i know the 970 will be fine

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Historically, I have used mostly nVidia at the higher end, x60 ($200) and up (tho 650 Ti Boost was a **great** card) and AMD at the lower end ($150 and under) ....

 

[Brian Blair]

I have been a AMD fan and still am a huge AMD fan, But AMD is just not what they used to be in the past! I have owned a 8800 GTS, A 9800 GTX+ A AMD 4870, AMD 5850, GTX 650 Ti And a R9 270, And now a GTX 970. I noticed the AMD drivers going way down hill during the last days of using my 5850, And after I upgraded my 650 Ti to the R9 270 I noticed a huge difference in the drivers, The textures with AMD is off compared to Nvidia's and you get artifacts in many games unless you do some major tweaking or use a different driver version. Like in Mafia 2 most AMD drivers would artifact, Driver 14.4 and the previous drivers would be fine in Mafia 2. It was not until driver version 14.9 that I could use a newer driver with Mafia 2. It is those type of hit and miss things with AMD drivers that can really be irritating, and ruin a gaming experience! However you can still make a AMD card work, But it can be annoying sometimes, Some people will never notice this if they only play certain games that are not affected. But I like games, So I have many of them and I play many of them, And I like to just have a GPU that I know will just work with all my games without a headache. However when a AMD GPU is working right the colors and quality is actually a bit better than Nvidia. But unfortunately that is not very often! AMD really needs to address this problem, And look into fixing this problem. I would say that is the very reason they are loosing money. Because they do make a great GPU, But they have nobody that can properly code driver software. So in all honesty, I would have to say you are best off paying the extra for the Nvidia GPU. In the long run the extra money is worth not having to deal with un-stable driver software. And the annoyance of AMD and AMD fan-boys pretending this problem does not exist. That is another reason it never gets fixed. But if AMD does a 360 and solves the driver problem? I will gladly go back my next upgrade. But hopefully my 970 will last 4 years.

Oh and I want to add this, I refuse to fall for the stupid 4k ripoff! It looks no better than 1080p, Some may claim it does, But it does not. And no GPU today can handle 4K at ultra settings either! So I find no point in it. But I am sure you could use the card with at'least a 2K resolution and not hit over the 3.5 limit. Since I use a 1600x900 I will probably only hit around 2.5gb at the most. So the 3.5 I feel is still a issue, and it was a very shady thing for Nvidia to do, And honestly they should have lowered the 970's price to around $280. But I chose the 970 anyway since it is still powerful, And of'course the better drivers. And the fact I will never have to worry about the V-Ram issue. But it does still anger me that Nvidia sold them at first as a 4GB, and still advertises this card as a 4GB gpu. That is wrong in so many ways!