Nvidia's Board Partners: GTX 980 And 970 Card Roundup

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StintheBeast

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The Asus strix 980 and 970 are supposedly going to be available today. Right now, only the strix 970 is listed but out of stock on newegg and amazon. Will be buying the strix 980 as soon as it's available.
 
I'm an MSI guy from way back and have yet to be disappointed. MSI offers what is arguably the very best aftermarket cooling solution available in their "TwinFrozr" design as well as some of the highest overclocks around. Style and design are also top notch.
 
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From the few reviews I've seen, the 970 looks like the real winner out of the 2, especially at it's price point. It is slightly slower than a 780TI while it appears almost identical in performance to the 780, while the 980 is slightly faster than the 780TI, but is also extremely expensive, double what the 970 costs. Also, it looks like the 980 has higher frame time variances at times than the 780 TI, but puts out higher frame rates. If I were buying a single card now, I'd get the 970. The 980 doesn't offer enough of a boost over it for the $300 extra it costs.
 


Where do you see a $300 cost difference between the 980 and 970? At most, it's maybe $220. Is it worth it? Not really, but I'm certain that some clearly will seeing as it's still cheaper than a competing 780Ti.

 

educalifa

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Wonder what the hardware difference is between the 970 SC and FTW, if any... Then again, I'm yet to see a FTW for sale anywhere which sucks a lot since that's the one I'm more interested in atm, followed close by the MSi
 

solkeher

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I was thinking of selling my R9 290 and get the 970... But is it worth it? I like the lower TDP but as far as performance, is the 970 more powerful?
 

educalifa

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Just check the reviews that are out there... the GTX 970 will not only outperform the R9 290 as it will also outperform the much more expensive 290X most of the time!

If you're stuck between these two cards or your budget is around the $350 mark, this is a no brainer really. 970 all the way!
 

SessouXFX

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,,,,Evga's GTX 980.

Cue the 70's Porn music.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't shocked at the performance, when you consider the fact, there was no die shrink involved, and these 900's are kick ass, And it's efficient too. Looks like my 6870's will have to retire now... I'll miss them.
 
GTX980 vs GTX970:
The Techpowerup reviews are awesome as they use an average of about 20 games. If you look at the theoretical maximum performance the GTX980 is perhaps 23% faster (2048/1664) but BENCHMARKS are the only way to really compare.

The AVERAGE difference drops to about 15% difference at best depending on the games you choose. A few will approach 20% better on the GTX980 but that's about it. The GTX980 is however about 67% more expensive!

Then there is SLI which has been improving. While it's not perfect you can consider the worst-case scenario as no support at all and the best about 80% over a single GTX970.

That works out to getting roughly somewhere between 80% and 150% the performance of a GTX980 for only 20% more money if we use $660 (2x$330) versus $550.

In some cases it might be better to assign the 2nd GTX970 to PhysX thus running the main game on the 1st GTX970 (like Batman Arkham Origins). You'd have to test both ways and compare the frame rates as well as smoothness.

(I still love my Asus GTX680 TOP so as much as I love following technology and think NVidia's new GPU's are simply awesome I'm going to pass for another year. Several of the games I'm currently playing already run at 60FPS at Ultra settings. A G-Sync monitors is also a future purchase consideration. Perhaps a 4K IPS with low refresh once that's sorted...)
 

wtfxxxgp

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Evga's GTX 980

Looks like my 6870's will have to retire now... I WON'T miss them.

Fixed that for ya! lol
And these cards, especially the 970, are very impressive. I went and read the comments section of the first post about the specs of these 2 new cards and how people were complaining about the specs. Guess they are all doing a double-take now! hahaha
 
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Yea, I saw an estimated MSRP price (Probably for an Asus model or the like) before I wrote that, now I see it's around $550 for the 980. Still, I'd go for the 970 over it. The 780TI vs 980 is a closer one though. Price to performance is the most important thing to me personally, and the 970 kills in that department! Hell it'll run whatever you want at maxed or near maxed settings @ 1080P for below $350. It's about time Nvidia prices new cards aggressively like this. AMD has it's hands full going after this one.
 


Agreed. While I doubt I'll ever bother with resolutions above 1080P (thought I DO like the sharpness of 4K), the pricing scheme for what you're getting is absolutely stupendous with both cards but certainly more so on the 970 end. For what could amount to a shade more than $100 for the cost of one 980, you could run a pair of 970s in SLI and it would smoke that single card. That's just outrageous. It's definitely got my interest piqued way up. Despite that, I'll be waiting for a while to see what else comes out (Ti cards, mind you) over the span of the next couple of months.

And you're right in your statement that AMD now has a lot of catching up to do if they even hope to level the playing field at all. While I love their CPUs, I'm not keen nor have I ever been with their GPUs no matter what cost savings there may be. For me, it's AMD CPUs and Nvidia GPUs.
 

educalifa

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I'd say that even at 1440 the 970 holds its own nicely... especially with some overclock. Lots of reports of ppl running them at 1600Hz with stock voltage and putting it almost on pair with a reference 980. And once you've played at 1440, 1080 is just not the same unfortunately.
 

-TR- Claw

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Recently purchased a pair of GTX 980's to replace my old GTX 770. I have them paired in SLI(because it would be a crime not to)

http://

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My cable management isn't great at moment,however it will be remedied within the next few days.

Below is my basic clean setup:

http://
 

cypeq

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970 from gigabyte is getting windforce x3 well if I decide on upgrade with nvidia that will be most likely my choice.
This coolers are very decent. Asus is rolling its Direct CU... which is good but imho this 0 db is a gimmick... who needs that if my gpu is iddling or doing low workliads I can't hear it over stock intel cpu fan... This is great option for someone wanting to have card with a punch yet run 0 db pc when doing everything else beside gaming. I see how some audio engineers would find this useful. For me idling fans are far from disturbing sound.
 

MEC-777

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Just a few things they didn't mention about the MSI Gaming 4G 970/980 - Just like the Strix, the fans are shut off when the GPU is at less than 60 degrees +/-. The fans are also controlled independently, so if you're overclocking and the VRMs are getting a little warmer than the GPU, it'll ramp up the appropriate fan as necessary.

High tech legion was able to reach 1500mhz stable on the MSI without having to increase voltage.

While the MSI has one of the higher price tags, IMO it's the best 970/980 thus far, considering features, noise and performance.
 

OutlawzGR

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Its funny to see the 970 strix for a 339$ price here and at my country (eu) the price is 409 euro! which is529 dollars!!
Plz is there any shop in Europe that sales that gpu in a normal price?
 
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Same here, I'm perfectly happy with 1080 for now. To move higher would cost more than it's worth to me lol. Yes this particular architecture is one that has actually grabbed my attention, normally I don't pay much attention to new GPU's as gains year to year are not really that impressive. But these ones really did step up the game over their predecessors. I've been back and forth between AMD cards and Nvidia ones, currently have a 280X which has been great, but that 970 sure is tempting! It will be interesting to see what happens after the move to 20nm for sure! I have a feeling AMD is waiting for that to fire back at the top spot again. And also it will be interesting to see how AMD responds to the 970, that is gonna take business away from them readily. Although anything below $300 AMD still holds the advantage on for now.


 
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