[SOLVED] Upgrading from a Nvidia 970

[VPplaya]

Hey everyone-

I've been looking to upgrade my PC built in 2015 to be able to play at a 60 fps on my 1080p 60hrz monitor. Currently I have a 970 installed, but I am looking for something more on a budget. I was thinking the 2060, but are those prices really accurate? It has been a long time since I really did any kind of research into upgrading my PC so all of my knowledge is pretty out of date. Ultimately, I am not looking to get a more powerful monitor; I just want to continue playing my PC games (WoW, FFXIV, Genshin Impact, etc.) at a smooth 60fps at 1080p.

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz 4.00 GHz
Ram: 16 GB
PSU: TS XFX 750w Bronze
GPU: Nvidia 970

Thanks.

 

[JWNoctis]

Current graphic card prices are...volatile, and still several times more expensive than it should be.

I'd wait for a while longer, and get a 3060 instead when it's time.

 

[dugt]

In the meantime, you could get a second GTX 970 and run them SLI. That is what I do and I get 60 FPS on my 1440 monitor and high or ultra settings on Far Cry 5, for example.

 

[Joseph_138]

In the meantime, you could get a second GTX 970 and run them SLI. That is what I do and I get 60 FPS on my 1440 monitor and high or ultra settings on Far Cry 5, for example.

It doesn't matter what he buys, he's still going to get ripped off. He's better off waiting for GPU prices to come down. SLi is a bad investment now, anyway, since nobody is supporting it anymore.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Forget about sli. Surprising sli works in far cry 5, but sli was killed off a few years ago by nvidia. So you’d have less games moving forward supporting sli.

Add to that, a gtx 970 is going to run you about 150-175 plus shipping/taxes. I know because I just sold mine the other day on eBay, the final price was $153.00. So I guess I’d suggest either saving more money to put towards a gpu or towards upgrading the cpu, board and ram

 

[dugt]

The OP just wants faster FPS while playing his current favorite games. SLI is still supported for all of his current favorite games. "I just want to continue playing my PC games (WoW, FFXIV, Genshin Impact, etc.) at a smooth 60fps at 1080p."

JWNoctis, did you try turning down the game performance settings a little to improve the FPS? Sometimes that can make a big improvement.

Paying $160 for a used GTX970 is a lot less than the premium that the OP would have to pay for a new overpriced GPU. $160 is a relatively cheap way to get good performance for his current games. In a year he could sell both of his 970's and buy new GPU at a much more reasonable price if he wants to play a new game.

SLI isn't dead, at least not yet. The RTX 3090 still has the SLI connector. nVidia isn't supporting SLI via their latest drivers but game developers can still support it.

"With the emergence of low level graphics APIs such as DirectX 12 and Vulkan, game developers are able to implement SLI support natively within the game itself instead of relying upon a SLI driver profile. "

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Although, what might be a good idea, is to purchase a card like a GTX 1070 such as this.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/284377138369?hash=item423632c4c1:g:LQUAAOSw1hlg9Zpu&LH_BIN=1

Then sell the 970 the op has. I recently sold my GTX 970 that I had for 153. Looks like some are going for 200. So if he can get a 1070 or 1080, that would be simplier, probably more power efficient as well, and maybe better performance.

Man, I'd just bought a 1070 on July 4th to upgrade from the 970 I had. If I'd waited lol....

 

[dugt]

Hey everyone-

I've been looking to upgrade my PC built in 2015 to be able to play at a 60 fps on my 1080p 60hrz monitor. Currently I have a 970 installed, but I am looking for something more on a budget. I was thinking the 2060, but are those prices really accurate? It has been a long time since I really did any kind of research into upgrading my PC so all of my knowledge is pretty out of date. Ultimately, I am not looking to get a more powerful monitor; I just want to continue playing my PC games (WoW, FFXIV, Genshin Impact, etc.) at a smooth 60fps at 1080p.

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz 4.00 GHz
Ram: 16 GB
PSU: TS XFX 750w Bronze
GPU: Nvidia 970

Thanks.

Maybe your GPU is getting too warm. My computer is very similar to yours and I built it in 2015 too. Last month I noticed that my 2nd (daughter) GPU was running 10 C higher than the mother GPU. It used to run 10 C cooler than the mother GPU . I changed the thermal paste and then it ran 20 C cooler total and 10C cooler than the mother GPU. That is a huge difference! Then I changed the thermal paste of the Main GPU and that reduced its temp by 10 C. Thermal management may have been slowing down my GPUs. (My GPUs are MSI GTX 970 gaming.) Your GPU is the same vintage so you should check its temp.

After that I overclocked both GPU's using MSI Afterburner and it made a big improvement in gaming performance. That is your cheapest road to improvement.

By the way, changing the thermal paste on my GPU's was very easy, much easier than a CPU.

 

[logainofhades]

Given how CPU bound WoW and FFXIV are, and the current state of the GPU market, I would recommend a CPU upgrade instead, that will better prepare you for a future GPU upgrade, once prices stabilize/go back to normal. Even when I was still using my RTX 2060, I saw a performance boost, in minimum FPS, in WoW, when I replaced my 3700x with a 5800x. I never thought to try it, with my GTX 970. In outdoor world boss/bigger raids, CPU matters quite a bit. A more budget friendly option vs Ryzen 5000, would be an i5 11400/f. Had an upgrade, for a friend of a friend, that went with an 11400f, and paired it with his already decent RX 5600xt, and playing around a bit, with it, it did well, even at 1440p, in WoW. I fear a 4970k may hold you back in such CPU bound titles.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i5-11400F 2.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($184.01 @ Adorama)
Motherboard: ASRock B560M Pro4 Micro ATX LGA1200 Motherboard ($112.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($71.98 @ Amazon)
Total: $368.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-07-21 13:20 EDT-0400

 

[Joseph_138]

The OP just wants faster FPS while playing his current favorite games. SLI is still supported for all of his current favorite games. "I just want to continue playing my PC games (WoW, FFXIV, Genshin Impact, etc.) at a smooth 60fps at 1080p."

JWNoctis, did you try turning down the game performance settings a little to improve the FPS? Sometimes that can make a big improvement.

Paying $160 for a used GTX970 is a lot less than the premium that the OP would have to pay for a new overpriced GPU. $160 is a relatively cheap way to get good performance for his current games. In a year he could sell both of his 970's and buy new GPU at a much more reasonable price if he wants to play a new game.

SLI isn't dead, at least not yet. The RTX 3090 still has the SLI connector. nVidia isn't supporting SLI via their latest drivers but game developers can still support it.

"With the emergence of low level graphics APIs such as DirectX 12 and Vulkan, game developers are able to implement SLI support natively within the game itself instead of relying upon a SLI driver profile. "

It's not SLi, it's NVLink. Different thing entirely. With NVLink, you can unify the RAM on all the cards as though they were a single card. So two 3090's, can be considered a single 40gb card, because they can access each others RAM. Two 970's are still going to function as two 4gb cards, not a single 8gb card. NVLink is also 100x faster than SLi. NVLink was never intended to be used for gaming, so nobody supports it in that application. It's designed for GPU compute applications.

 

[dugt]

It's not SLi, it's NVLink. Different thing entirely. With NVLink, you can unify the RAM on all the cards as though they were a single card. So two 3090's, can be considered a single 40gb card, because they can access each others RAM. Two 970's are still going to function as two 4gb cards, not a single 8gb card. NVLink is also 100x faster than SLi. NVLink was never intended to be used for gaming, so nobody supports it in that application. It's designed for GPU compute applications.

Thanks for explaining and setting me straight.

 

[VPplaya]

Given how CPU bound WoW and FFXIV are, and the current state of the GPU market, I would recommend a CPU upgrade instead, that will better prepare you for a future GPU upgrade, once prices stabilize/go back to normal. Even when I was still using my RTX 2060, I saw a performance boost, in minimum FPS, in WoW, when I replaced my 3700x with a 5800x. I never thought to try it, with my GTX 970. In outdoor world boss/bigger raids, CPU matters quite a bit. A more budget friendly option vs Ryzen 5000, would be an i5 11400/f. Had an upgrade, for a friend of a friend, that went with an 11400f, and paired it with his already decent RX 5600xt, and playing around a bit, with it, it did well, even at 1440p, in WoW. I fear a 4970k may hold you back in such CPU bound titles.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i5-11400F 2.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($184.01 @ Adorama)
Motherboard: ASRock B560M Pro4 Micro ATX LGA1200 Motherboard ($112.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($71.98 @ Amazon)
Total: $368.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-07-21 13:20 EDT-0400

I appreciate the advice, but I would really like to avoid messing around with the CPU and getting a new Motherboard. I'm pretty tech challenged and it was a miracle I got this computer up and running, lol. Before I just started looking at cards I was considering just buying a completely new PC in maybe a year or two.

Can someone explain was SLi is? And yes, I am not looking to get a top of the line PC setup going; I am primarily a console gamer there are just a handful of games I play often on PC. I've started to lower certain graphical settings across all 3 games to get to 60 fps consistently, but ideally I would like to avoid that. I think for now it maybe I should just wait and see if the prices come down, because I am not about to drop $500-600+ on a card right now.

 

[logainofhades]

SLI is two Nvidia cards, of the exact same model, running together to improve performance. It is no longer supported, by Nvidia. To my knowledge SLI never has worked properly with WoW. Even back when SLI was more prominent, it didn't work. I had a 9800GX2, back in the day, and only one GPU ever did anything.