The GTX 970 - Why would you NOT buy this card?

[oweneades]

The only thing stopping me jumping on a 970 is the ~£230 780. At my Surround resolution both cards will perform basically the same with a similar % OC yet the 780 is quite a bit cheaper. The 290 doesn't even get a look in for me due to the Eyefinity issues I have had in the past.

Very tempted by a 970 all things considered though.

 

[555BUK]

I think that 28nm has shown more incremental GPU improvements than any other process. 7900's, GTX 670/680's, GTX 780's, 290's and now 970/980's have all seen good gains in performance, efficiency and max clock speeds. 28nm could well go down as a golden generation.

 

[Nocky24]

Agreed. My PCS+ runs cooler than most 970's from what I've seen and power draw is the least of my worries. Plus I need mantle for Star Citizen and all of the Frostbite engine games.

I think 'need' is too strong a word considering you've got a decent cpu

 

[Ayahuasca]

Agreed. My PCS+ runs cooler than most 970's from what I've seen

That's a pretty bold statement lol, most of my games run below 60c on my 970 that's heavily overclocked.

 

[Marine-RX179]

What number in the table are these results? Can't seem to find them. There's only two 970's in the single card Heaven table.

It's not on the Heaven Bench thread, but on the 970 owner thread I think it was.

 

[rolypolyman]

That's a pretty bold statement lol, most of my games run below 60c on my 970 that's heavily overclocked.

Great temps there mate and glad you like your 970. No doubt its a really good card.

 

[MOOGLEYS]

970 & 980 are great cards. When Nvidia add the 1/3 of it they have chopped out and saved for later it will be a superb card.

Bet no one goes on about power saving when a full fat 980 turns up sucking 250w..

 

[ubersonic]

The puny 256bit is the one thing that puts me off of the 970, but somehow NVidia have bent the normal laws of bandwidth bottle-necking and this doesn't appear to slow performance (even at 4K).

Nvidia say it's HW compression makes its 224GB/s bandwidth at stock an effective 300GB/s, if true that's higher than a stock GTX780.

I think 'need' is too strong a word considering you've got a decent cpu

And considering he's talking about a PhysX title

Bet no one goes on about power saving when a full fat 980 turns up sucking 250w..

Well considering it would be proberbly be facerolling a 295X2 at half the power draw...

 

[Nelly]

970 & 980 are great cards. When Nvidia add the 1/3 of it they have chopped out and saved for later it will be a superb card.

Bet no one goes on about power saving when a full fat 980 turns up sucking 250w..

Haha when the 980Ti is released, people will be saying buy this card, don't go 970 SLI because you can then buy another 980Ti at a later date.

A year passes and Nvidia will do the exact same thing as this year and the previous year, and milk everyone with mid range cards, that aren't much of a performance boost from the previous year.

If AMD released a card that was just as good as say a 980Ti 2 month ago for £450, we would most likely have the 980Ti released now and the other cards would be cheaper still.

 

[gareth170]

That's a pretty bold statement lol, most of my games run below 60c on my 970 that's heavily overclocked.

if i remove one of my powercolor 290x pcs+ cards so there's only one in the temp doesn't go over 61c even with a good overclock.

 

[setter]

Still rocking 780 sli here, don't care about power use as I run an oc'd cpu. After all this isn't the Greenpeace forum. Once you oc all tiny power saving go's out the window.

 

[kaku]

I don't get why people are still doing top trumps with '512bit' vs '256bit' when the performance numbers are right there in front of them. It doesn't make a difference.

 

[easyrider]

Haha when the 980Ti is released, people will be saying buy this card, don't go 970 SLI because you can then buy another 980Ti at a later date.

A year passes and Nvidia will do the exact same thing as this year and the previous year, and milk everyone with mid range cards, that aren't much of a performance boost from the previous year.

If AMD released a card that was just as good as say a 980Ti 2 month ago for £450, we would most likely have the 980Ti released now and the other cards would be cheaper still.

I'm not sure I understand your logic

I can buy a 970 now for just over 250 quid that beats a 780 and runs at 70c max load....

Smart folk ditch the 780 loose 50 quid while they can and buy the so called mid range 970

780 owners moan...as they spent 400 quid just a few months ago...

 

[MOOGLEYS]

I don't get why people are still doing top trumps with '512bit' vs '256bit' when the performance numbers are right there in front of them. It doesn't make a difference.

I think I'm detecting a bit of "bus size" envy here.

 

[easyrider]

Still rocking 780 sli here, don't care about power use as I run an oc'd cpu. After all this isn't the Greenpeace forum. Once you oc all tiny power saving go's out the window.

You know you want to go sli 970

I would and ditch those 780's while you still can.

In a couple of weeks they will be worth 150 quid each 300 per pair...do it now FFS...don't procrastinate!

 

[Nelly]

Haha when the 980Ti is released, people will be saying buy this card, don't go 970 SLI because you can then buy another 980Ti at a later date.

A year passes and Nvidia will do the exact same thing as this year and the previous year, and milk everyone with mid range cards, that aren't much of a performance boost from the previous year.

If AMD released a card that was just as good as say a 980Ti 2 month ago for £450, we would most likely have the 980Ti released now and the other cards would be cheaper still.

I'm not sure I understand your logic

I can buy a 970 now for just over 250 quid that beats a 780 and runs at 70c max load....

Smart folk ditch the 780 loose 50 quid while they can and buy the so called mid range 970

780 owners moan...as they spent 400 quid just a few months ago...

I ditched my 2nd GTX 780 months ago although I paid £500 for my first one as I bought on release date just like lots buying 980's now, but win win now, I'm looking at 970 SLI to for <£250> each.

I'm just annoyed AMD didn't bring out cards sooner, because it just means Nvidia have yet again launched mid range cards at a premium i.e GTX 980.

I wanted AMD to launch a 980Ti beatable card prior to Nvidia's launch, just to put a spanner in Nvidia's grand scheme, and force them to launch the 980Ti now, I reckon the prices would have been £50 cheaper down the lines.

980 cards at £499, it will be the same as last year, in another few month GTX 980Ti at the same price lol.

 

[humbug]

I ditched my 2nd GTX 780 months ago although I paid £500 for my first one as I bought on release date just like lots buying 980's now, but win win now, I'm looking at 970 SLI to for <£250> each.

I'm just annoyed AMD didn't bring out cards sooner, because it just means Nvidia have yet again launched mid range cards at a premium i.e GTX 980.

I wanted AMD to launch a 980Ti beatable card prior to Nvidia's launch, just to put a spanner in Nvidia's grand scheme, and force them to launch the 980Ti now, I reckon the prices would have been £50 cheaper down the lines.

980 cards at £499, it will be the same as last year, in another few month GTX 980Ti at the same price lol.

Don't blame AMD for Nvidia's pricing structure, blame Nvidia.

 

[Nelly]

Don't blame AMD for Nvidia's pricing structure, blame Nvidia.

I'm just a skinflint i.e. tight! I like to save as much money as I can, where ever I can, oh that reminds me forgot all about topcashback, now whose gonna give me the best discount... h'mm.

It's not very often AMD or Nvidia price things cheap when they have superior cards, but AMD do usually lower the price more competitively when their is competition.

 

[Spook187]

Seriously though, if your budget was around the £250 to £280 mark, why wouldn't you?

Well you didn't as you still have the 7950 in your sig

 

[FoxEye]

Because there's no cheap 2nd hand cards yet And I am the most penny-pinching person in Tight Town.