Should i buy a new gtx 970?

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paliovouna

paliovouna

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Jul 15, 2011
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Hello.

Some time ago i made thread about my gpu suddenly dying, and yes, it did die. Poor old 590 may rest in piece, served me well for several years. :sad:

It is, however, almost summertime and i'll be done with school in a couple of weeks, so im planning on buying a new graphics card.


I'm willing to spend about 350€ (give or take). Did some research, saw great things about the 970.
What do you guys think? Is the 970 worth its money? Would you recommend me another gpu at the same price range, AMD maybe?


I play games(like BF4 and GTA V of course, will be playing witcher 3), never use editing software (video/image editing and the likes). I play on a 1080p 120hz monitor. I like to turn the graphics up as long as i get over 40fps in single player games and around 60 on reaction based online shooters. Occasional frame drops don't bother me (they do if they occur like every 10 seconds).


My other specs are: i5 2500k stock, 8GB corsair vengeance, asrock z68 extreme3 gen3(got pcie 3.0 x16 i believe).
Currently using win7 after a recent format, will be updating to win 8.1 soon.

Also, should i buy more RAM? I personally haven't seen any game use 8gigs of ram. You tell me.

In addition, will the 970 bottleneck my cpu?

One last thing, if i go for the 970 which brand should i buy?(leaning towards evga or the g1 gaming version). Am i right to expect at least high settings at 1080p with a decent framerate?


Thank you.
 
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Yes, you should buy GTX 970. True that it did have some discrepancies among the customers about the VRAM issue and customers going haywire about it, which to repeat again is just 3.5GB + 512 MB and not 4GB as we thought all those times, yet it provides unprecedented performance/watt ratio and performance/dollar ratio that exceeds the similar performing R9 290X. One of my friends use a MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G @ FHD and experiences rare stutterings on Shadow of Mordor at Ultra settings. But that's just it, he's very happy about it, and having very good experience.

About brands, I'd prefer EVGA, ASUS or MSI. Well, you can pretty much buy any brand card and OC them similarly to get similar performance, so brand's no big deal. Just look for customer service. As to my opinion, MSI and EVGA provides one of the best services.
 
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970 is your best bet as of now.. that card will do excellent in 1080.. u will stay above 50 fps in most games.. no need for extra ram 8gb is fine for now.. no bottlenecks on either side.. msi asus gigabyte any of these three which suits your taste.. u can except good results in 1080p gaming..
 
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I appreciate your replies, sounds like the 970 is one beautiful piece of hardware.

This whole thing about the brands, though, seems to confuse me. There are so many brands, some even offer different models of the same card. EVGA for example, has like 6 different models of the 970 (normal, superclocked, ftw, ftw+, etc..)

Is there a profound difference between all these brands? I mean it's the same card after all. Are specific brands known for better cooling solutions or overclocking/performance?

Please do enlighten me on this if you have the time to spare.
Thanks.
 
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EVGA, ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte are all reliable brands.

Normal should be the reference specifications. Reference 970 coolers are somewhat hard to find depending on your location. They share the PCB and cooler of the GTX980.

Superclock (SC) Super Superclock (SSC) generally just indicate a higher level of factory overclock. The Base and Boost values for the GPU frequency.

FTW, FTW+ etc are generally custom printed circuit boards. In general they offer better voltage regulation that allow for higher overclocks beyond the already set factory overclocks.
 
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I don't plan on overclocking the card myself(say the card is defective and it blows up 3 days later, if i have overclocked it myself they'll tell me warranty doesn't cover it).

I can find an evga superclocked 970 (at 1165mhz), the supersc version (at 1190mhz) and the g1 gaming (at 1178mhz). The price difference between these is negligible. Which one would you suggest i go with? Does one of them have a better cooler or something?

 
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go for the evga FTW if u dont over clock.. but if u wish to take your time and play aropund.. go for g1 as it has an enormous cooling system .. but b4 u buy anything.. make sure it fits in your cpu..
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487077
u get batman and witcher 3 (XD) for free..

 
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Hands down the g1 has the best heat dispersal, Regarding OC the 970 actually has a built in limit that in theory prevents anyone from blowing it, you can breach it with solder, or just blain a bad card ( it happens) you could take your time and go up slowly to be safest . at the very least you could make it equal the evga perfectly safely ( a bump of 12 mhz? srs?) and it will run cooler as long as it fits.
The differences is in the coolers, i believe the evga is 2fan. and leaves the vrm's exposed whereas the g1's heatsink has 4 contacts, and a third fan that circulates over the vrm's, most likely going to be the longest lasting as it cools the whole card, but it hasnt been out long enough to prove my hunch 😛
Also g1 and one of the msi cards (gold edition i think) have back plates that strengthen the card preventing droop.

When i was buying, MSI was particularly known for the highest rate of coil whine.

However MSI and asus (dont know about evga, anyone else?) Both have stop start fans, so it runs silent (if you got no whine) till the card hits around 50-55 degrees if i remember right?

coil whine is an issue in all the brands, and i think the difference between the best and worst was only about 10% of cards.
If its bad enough it is considered a recognised flaw and can be RMA'd in an attempt to get a silent one.
 
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I don't think i really mind the coil whine.

I wanted to ask another thing. If you were to get a new gpu and had a 400€ budget, like me, would you get a 970 or a r9 290x?
 
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I've seen that this windows index thing isn't really the best indicator when it comes down to coil whining. I would like to test the card by playing a demanding title and see whether it screams that loud or not.

Normally i woudln't mind, as i have a headset and i turn the volume up. If it is so severe that it transmits through it, i can always return it and get another card.

Looked around a little bit more. I will, most likely, be going with the 970, g1 gaming version. Let's hope that thing fits in my haf 932.
 
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No it isnt the best indicator, that was just the most aggressive audio i could find. the threads account some harrowing noises though 😛

the g1 gaming measures L=312mm, W=129mm, H=43mm

its the biggst of the 970's, if you can fit that then you can pick freely between them all.
 
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Bloody hell, this thing is massive! My old 590 was 280mm long and it was considered huge. I just looked at my case, i believe there's enough room for it. That big cooler better get me the finest temperatures fans can bring. :lol:
 
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well i OC'd mine... gets 1544mhz core boost and 1965mhz mem clock .... almost 8gb effective and max temp hits 73 after a few hours of maxing out witcher 3.

I'd say the cooler is solid.... in fact its the in built power limit thats capping my OC's not the temps.... fans still only hit the 70% usage in my fan curve profile.
 
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Yep, going with the 970.

Just fyi, "free" has been officially declassified as a word here in Greece :lol:
Newegg or nvidia themselves might give you a free copy of witcher or the batman game, but here in my country there are no such luxuries :no: I really don't mind paying for a game as long as the content pays off.
 
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well thats interesting. seeing as it is supposed to be with any sale of a 970 or 980 or one game with a 960.... the retailer submits the sale record and nvidia give you the game..... I wonder if theres a trade agreement being broken somewhere.
 
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You can buy it from MSystems in Greece to get the free games:
http://www.msystems.gr/index.php?page=122
http://www.geforce.co.uk/witcher-3-batman-ak-bundle
 
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That's true, but it costs 440€ with the game. Go to http://www.skroutz.gr/

It's basically a website than lists the products of a wide number of shops in Greece. Search for gtx 970 g1 gaming and you'll see that the lowest price available is 391€. That's like 50€ difference. With 50€ i can buy the witcher 3 myself 😛

It's the same either way.
 
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Oh i just noticed. I thought only the witcher game came with the card. My bad, i see now.

Thanks a lot for the link dude. Will be definitely getting it. 😀
 
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