Will the GTX 970 work with my plans and system?

mrdrzj

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Nov 23, 2014
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I am planning on getting the MSI GTX 970 GAMING 4G, a Cooler Master GX II - 650W 80 PLUS Bronze Power Supply, and a Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-01 Mid Tower Gaming Case.

I was wondering if this would all work with my current system and if the i5-3330 will pose a bottleneck?:
ASRock H61M-VG3
Intel i5-3330 Quad Core (3.0ghz) Ivy Bridge
1TB HDD
8GB DDR3 RAM (Will plan on 16GB in the future)

Thanks.
 
Solution
You may miss out on 10-15% more frames if you were running an i5 4690K overclocked to 4.4Ghz in CPU-intensive games but in most games you shouldn't be bottlenecked. In the future (as early as next year) this might not be the case so the GTX 970 would be a good upgrade option now if you plan to upgrade CPU later.
You may miss out on 10-15% more frames if you were running an i5 4690K overclocked to 4.4Ghz in CPU-intensive games but in most games you shouldn't be bottlenecked. In the future (as early as next year) this might not be the case so the GTX 970 would be a good upgrade option now if you plan to upgrade CPU later.
 
Solution

Ok, so basically once I buy this upgrades around next week and get them, my PC will be good but next year depending on the new games I might be losing out on some frames?
I do plan to upgrade my CPU around next year or so but not sure when (will have to upgrade mobo too).
So for now will the upgrades I'm getting be compatible with the PSU, mobo, etc?
Oh, also, is the GTX 980 actually worth it? I'll be playing 1080p and don't plan to upgrade and the price difference is really high ($200 more or so).

 
Poorly optimized games (Ubisoft) or games that are just natively CPU-intensive (MMOs, Total War Games) will be limited by CPU but you should still get a comfortable 60fps. Would matter more if you intended on using a 120/144Hz monitor. If you find yourself bottlenecked by CPU you can turn up the graphics settings even higher till you find GPU bottleneck (Max AA, filtering, textures, shadows, tessellation etc)

Personally I would choose a EVGA Supernova 650W 80+ Gold PSU or equivalent by XFX as these have a great reputation. CM PSUs generally have mixed reviews.

GTX 970 will be compatible with everything, you need a 500W PSU minimum although I've seen one running on a 330W PSU in the Alienware X51!
GTX 980 is just not worth it at 1080p, even at 4K you only gain 10-15% more frames. GTX 970 SLI is a better option than GTX 980 imo. This leaves you open to a further upgrade by adding another GTX 970 in the future!

 


Thanks a lot for your help! Will be getting the EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 650G 80 Plus Gold Certified you say and the MSI GTX 970 like I stated in the original post, case should fit fine so I'm ready for my upgrades! I can later upgrade my CPU/Motherboard and even RAM if I needed to and like you said, there is the SLI option.