GTX 970 v.s. 980 v.s. SLI 970

MutantMike

MutantMike

CAGiversary!
Getting a gaming PC had a few questions

FIrstly this is what I will have

-Intel® Core™ i7-5820K Processor (6-cores, 15MB Cache, Overclocked up to 3.8 GHz w/ Turbo Boost)

-8GB Dual Channel DDR4 at 2133MHz

-2 TB 7200 HDD

On the fence on Windows 7 or 8. More comfortably with 7 but 8 is cheaper....

Here is what I want

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 970 with 4GB GDDR5

If I get the NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 980 with 4GB GDDR5  it is   $250 extra

If I get the Dual NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 970 graphics with 8GB total (2x 4GB) GDDR5 - NVIDIA SLI   iEnabled it is   $350 extra

Thoughts?

 
Gtx 980. Better card. 2 x 970s in Sli doesn't actually give you 8Gb total. The 4Gb of vram is mirrored to both GPUs.
 
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I usually run middle of the road cards ala the gtx x70 cards and don't feel like I've ever really missed out on anything, graphics wise. Just go with what you can afford.

 
What games, resolutions and detail settings are you planning to run?  Aside for the incredibly un-optimized Assassin's Creed Unity, the 970 should be able to run just about anything out there @1080p high/ultra detail settings and can even squeeze out acceptable play in 1440p high detail settings.  Unless you have a 4K monitor or are running a triple monitor setup, I wouldn't think you'd need to spend more than the cost of the 970.

 
MutantMike said:
Getting a gaming PC had a few questions

FIrstly this is what I will have

-Intel® Core™ i7-5820K Processor (6-cores, 15MB Cache, Overclocked up to 3.8 GHz w/ Turbo Boost)

-8GB Dual Channel DDR4 at 2133MHz

-2 TB 7200 HDD

On the fence on Windows 7 or 8. More comfortably with 7 but 8 is cheaper....

Here is what I want

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 970 with 4GB GDDR5

If I get the NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 980 with 4GB GDDR5 it is $250 extra

If I get the Dual NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 970 graphics with 8GB total (2x 4GB) GDDR5 - NVIDIA SLI iEnabled it is $350 extra

Thoughts?
Click to expand...
why don't u use ssd?

 
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I agree with @hostyl1, the 970 would be more than sufficient enough for a 1080p monitor.  For 4K you would at least need to have some sort of SLI right now anyways so it's not really worth it. 

I would then use the extra money and buy a SSD of at least 256GB.  Currently there's a sale on the Crucial 512GB SSD for 179.99.  

Just get windows 8.1 now, and get the free Windows 10 upgrade when that's out later this year.

 
I am running a pair of 660's in SLI. The only game that's made them really sweat is Dragon Age: Inquisition. Witcher III and Star Citizen are the only two titles in the near future that I know of will give my cards runs for their money.

http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-980-vs-GeForce-GTX-970

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+980&id=2953 and 

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+970&id=2954

By these values, the 980 seems to run as quiet as the 970 under load. The benchmark difference of a half-score in GPUBoss or 1000+ in Passmark indicates that the 980 does have better performance. However, for price vs performance, the 970 is the better investment. If you want to trim some money, the 970's worth it right now over the 980. And that price difference equals a paid off OS, an SSD...a big storage HDD...whatever you want to play it out as.

The 970/980 represent the best you can get now. In another 3-5 years, when the standard for HD gaming jumps forward again, you can SLI in another 970 for far cheaper and get a performance boost. Just keep on top of your driver updates (even do vanilla installs from time to time to flush out bad settings), and ensure you have a good airflow in the case (/\ treat airflow in the case like this, where you have fans pushing air to the center, with fans at the top pulling air out) and overheating won't be too much of an issue.

If you also refer to Passmark's diagram of other video cards that have scored highly, the 780 Ti's got a higher rating than the 970 and lower than the 980, but the 970 is readily available. So don't be misled into thinking you lost out on getting a high end card for cheaper being an old generation. The prices on them are higher than they've ever been.

Overall, the 970 is worth the money. 980's not there yet.

 
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It's taking a while for 'Next Gen' to get here.  I can get Dying Light (probably the most next gen/poorly optimized game out on PC now) to run at 60ish fps at 1080p on my 770 only having to dial down shadow mapping to medium and draw distance detail (which is hardly noticeable) to 30% (on console I'm pretty sure it's at 0%).  That said, 970 is more than fine until you're ready to make the leap to 4k.

 
Wait, I'm kinda confused.  By 'next-gen' do you mean truly next gen or do you mean 'this gen'?  If you mean 'this gen' then it's already here for a while.  

 
It was more of a joke that the fabled 'Next Gen' isn't all that it's cracked up to be.  We can call the new Next Gen the Gen After Next Gen!

 
I've never been a fan of SLI: More power consumption, more heat, more driver/game issues and it doesn't actually double your performance. (plus weird allocation stuff and so on and so forth) It's just not all it's cracked-up to be and especially not in the face of an industry which will mostly be targeting 1080p for the next ~5-10 years due to the new consoles and, of course, the native resolution of most TVs.

 
970 and spend the $250 on an ssd drive, in my opinion the 980 has too much of the bleeding edge tax. Also SLI isn't a great option based on recent information I've found.
 
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