SLI GTX 970 vs GTX 1070

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Trenton_2

Commendable
May 23, 2016
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So here is my shitty situation, I bought a 970 in February. I know pascal was coming but I thought it was gonna be over hyped, I was wrong. So everyone that fucked up like me is selling their 970 to put it for a 1070. That means they'll be cheap. So.... should I join them OR buy another 970 and sli it. Even possibly 3 (maybe not don't answer depending on 3 way sli).
 
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bicycle_repair_man
A single, powerful GPU is almost always a better option. You don't have to deal with SLI profiles or heat and the gains from SLI can vary wildly, with some games not supporting it at all.

You also need a reasonably beefy PSU and the second PCIe slot on your motherboard must be PCIe 2.0 x8 at least.
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A single, powerful GPU is almost always a better option. You don't have to deal with SLI profiles or heat and the gains from SLI can vary wildly, with some games not supporting it at all.

You also need a reasonably beefy PSU and the second PCIe slot on your motherboard must be PCIe 2.0 x8 at least.
 
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Yeah. but what is more cost effective? Because I calculated I lose $150 upgrading to the 1070 if i sell it now. And a second 970 will come down to around $150. So is there any bencmarks on 2 970s vs a 1070?
 
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Yeah GPUs don't generally drop off in price like that. Once the 1070 comes out 970s will stop being produced and eventually prices for that card may end up higher than they are now (retail). You might be able to get a used one on ebay for that price if your lucky.
 
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Hi Trenton,

The theories behind Pascal are not bad in any way, however it is fair to say that the new Nvidia cards are overhyped. What we saw at the Nvidia press event was NOT what we are getting on the shelves. 60c, 2100+mhz core and special benefits of 'Founders Edition' are not a reality.

Meanwhile the AIB/third party vendors have already published details about their own aftermarket GTX 1080/1070, which are offering a better solution for less money.

Having said that, the GTX 970 (especially if overclocked), is still stronger in SLI than a single GTX 1080. The 1080 cannot hold 96fps or higher at 1440p in many cases, nor 60fps at 2160p.

If you are desperate for a single card solution, I would wait till the 1080/1070 launches and then buy a used 980TI. Then when the 1080TI launches next year, replace your 980.

Otherwise, I would get another 970 in a month or two from now.
 
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Techpowerup has done testing on GTX 970 SLI vs. GTX 1070.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1070/
When SLI works, the 970 SLI setup is faster than GTX 1070. When it does not work the 970 SLI setup is actually slower than a single 970.
 
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Honestly I have a 970 in sli and have had now problems with it and it runs most games pretty well. I honestly would recommend going for another 970 over the 1070. The 1070 is a really good card not disputing that however with how they are big priced now (not including the price scalpers) I would steer clear of it for now.
 
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I also faced a similar dilema and actually went for the SLI solution. Let me elaborate why:

Now that the benches are out, it looks like in the real world, 2x GTX SLI and 1070 are very close with the SLI solution outperforming by a significant margin in supported games like witcher3 and underperforming in non optimized games.
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1070/24.html

You can get a GTX970 for around 200$ used. So 400$ for something that performs better but with all the headaches associated with SLI as mentionned above and second hand headaches.

If the games you are playing support SLI, it doesn't look that bad. If you have the money, avoid the headaches and go for the 1070 but the perf/$ ratio will be worse. It s kind of normal since we are comparing a new vs second hand alternative.
I only play witcher 3 so I bought an additional gtx970 for 200$ and am happily enjoying my SLI solution.
Hopefully when the GTX11xx series is out, I ll be able to sell my gtx970 for around 130$ each and then I ll upgrade to the 1170.
 
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The 970's are significantly more powerful than one 1070 hands down, unless it doesn't support sli. Most stuff does support SLI, if not it will shortly after launch. I've tested it and the 1070 is going back to the store.
 
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Did you see the benchmarks verybigfurrymonster posted? 1070 is superior to 970 in nearly all cases:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1070/24.html
perfrel_1920_1080.png


perfrel_2560_1440.png
 
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That s because it s the average, if you check the article in details you will see that for games that don't support SLI, performance of the SLI solution is obviously very bad and similar to single GTX 970 which is around 40% slower but for those games that support it, it s up to 30% higher.

So it s really like : for games that support SLI, 2x GTX 970 is much better but some games don't support it. Most AAA games support it though.

Nvidia quietly doesn't advertise this fact as they want you to buy new cards and not used ones. They might even gimp SLI support for the 970.
2x GTX 1060 would also be much better than a single 1080 at around the same cost but this time they already thought about it and removed SLI support.



 
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No , I ran benchmarks of my own. One 1070 IS better than one 970. However the claim that one 1070 is better than 2 970's in SLI is total BS. Unless like everyone is saying you are running something without SLI support then yes of course that will be better. I get twice the FPS with the two 970's than i did with the one 1070. I'm guessing the 1080 is overrated as well. The only case that the 1070 could put out twice the performance would be in VR. You can throw out all the graphs and spreadsheets you like I am just reporting the results that I was able to come up with.
 
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no you didn't fuck up for buying the gtx 970 , I bought a gtx 980 ti prior to going to a gtx 1080 ,,,,,,saying they are as fast as 2 gtx 980s in sli but wasn't true the 1080 killed my frame rates down below 80 where i'm used to getting 144 fps with 2 gtx 970s the pascal is over hyped , not as good as others claimed it to be
 
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So I already have a GTX 970, would it be more cost effective getting another 970 or should i spend the extra £200ish? I dont really want to but i dont know if i should just wait and save up.
 
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I have GTX 970 SLI and i think this is a good choice.
Why ?, the price is now very good
The performance is better than 1070 over 10-15%

And very important think.
Some of you have GTX 970 and think about buying GTX 1070. !!!!!! So you have this GPU less than 2 years !!!
And this is freak.
Many of you think, that if you buy GTX 1070 you will have calm fot many years - Bullshit
Becaus of what, of 8GB ???
Next Year will com Nvidia Volta, you will have GTX 1070 less than 1 year and you will ask if you should buy GTX 1170 ???? Super !!!!

Forgot about this, that GTX 1070 will be a good GPU for many years !!!
It is impossible

VRAM is not everything !!!
Now you have on market GPU with 2-3GB and they are faster than 4GB - for example 1060 or RX 470 480

and anyway i have windows 10 DX 12 and i see that i have also 8GB * (gtx 970 SLi)
 
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yes , a 970 in SLI is more powerful than a single 1070 like in gtx 1070 in SLI is more powerful than a single 1080 and so on , 1 of the reasons why others SLI cards b/c it's cheaper than going out and buying a latest card every yr or every other yr but like in a lot here talking about frame rates ,

you will need to SLI cards to achieve the 144 frame rate limit like I had a 2k 144 hz monitor and with a single 1080 couldn't get 70 FPS but the cost for another 1080 to SLI wasn't any justification for any improvement you'll get SLI doesn't mean you'll get double the performance but a more faster cards , the best path was to take is returning the gtx 1080 and getting 2 gtx 1070s
I got a additional 30 % increase of power over a single gtx 1080
 
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well chances are now that you have made your decision, but i have two 970s and they do out perform a single 1070 but they do have alot lower vram, if you are gaming at 1080p i would go for the second 970, not only is sli support on the rise but its fun to learn how to use sli, and it looks really sexy if you have a window in your case.
 
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