About to bite the bullet on a 970

Kelt · 10 Feb 2015 at 15:24

Personally I wouldn't be considering buying a gimped card. Unless it was a bargain price .

I'd go along with the recommendations to either buy a 290X or 980GTX, or wait and see what comes out in the next few months.

SDMilne · 10 Feb 2015 at 15:26

There's absolutely nothing wrong with a 970 if you plan to use it at 1080p. The fuss made on this forum has been nothing short of ridiculous. Dying Light for example runs flawlessly at 60fps with the 970.

Kelt · 10 Feb 2015 at 15:33

SDMilne said:
There's absolutely nothing wrong with a 970 if you plan to use it at 1080p. The fuss made on this forum has been nothing short of ridiculous. Dying Light for example runs flawlessly at 60fps with the 970.

Yes it's a good card, but it's still a gimped, good card.

fs123 · 10 Feb 2015 at 15:34

I moved from a 7950 vapor-x to a gtx970 and had stuttering and percieved lack of smoothness in many games. Luckily OCuk are accepting returns so I returned it and am back to using the 7950 again.From my experience I think the move to 970 was not as big as I initially thought.

I get 60fps solid on SoM at ultra settings on the 7950 while I got 85 fps on the 970 (both cards overclocked). Not a huge gap up like some think. I'm sticking with the 7950 now until the new AMD cards come out.

saintdefender · 10 Feb 2015 at 15:43

fs123 said:
I moved from a 7950 vapor-x to a gtx970 and had stuttering and percieved lack of smoothness in many games. Luckily OCuk are accepting returns so I returned it and am back to using the 7950 again.From my experience I think the move to 970 was not as big as I initially thought.

I get 60fps solid on SoM at ultra settings on the 7950 while I got 85 fps on the 970 (both cards overclocked). Not a huge gap up like some think. I'm sticking with the 7950 now until the new AMD cards come out.

Was you playing above 1080p for the stuttering to come across? Judging by the reports I have now read and replies to this thread, it appears to only happen when the games go above 3.5GB, which I am assuming is very hard to do at 1080p regardless of the game.

JamesM · 10 Feb 2015 at 15:49

Right OP, if you are gaming at 1080p, have no plans to change resolution in the future and don't mind dropping down game settings in order to stay under the 3500 mb VRAM limit, either now for certain games or in the future, then get the 970.

It still is a great performing card for the price.

If you will be increasing your resolution (including planning on going SLI for extra performance to make the most of this increase in resolution) or want to play every single game with max textures and AA then you have three choices:-

1. Buy the cheapest 980 at £419
2. Buy the 290x 4GB or 8GB if you don't mind going Crossfire in the future
3. Sit and wait to see what the next generation cards bring to the table

For comparison I have a 970 with a 4690k and have only encountered issues on certain games when using highest detail settings. BF4 with medium/high settings runs fine, COH2 started to stutter once I hit the 3500mb VRAM limit with everything set to high/ultra.

saintdefender · 10 Feb 2015 at 15:56

JamesM said:
Right OP, if you are gaming at 1080p, have no plans to change resolution in the future and don't mind dropping down game settings in order to stay under the 3500 mb VRAM limit, either now for certain games or in the future, then get the 970.

It still is a great performing card for the price.

If you will be increasing your resolution (including planning on going SLI for extra performance to make the most of this increase in resolution) or want to play every single game with max textures and AA then you have three choices:-

1. Buy the cheapest 980 at £419
2. Buy the 290x 4GB or 8GB if you don't mind going Crossfire in the future
3. Sit and wait to see what the next generation cards bring to the table

For comparison I have a 970 with a 4690k and have only encountered issues on certain games when using high details. BF4 with medium/high settings runs fine, COH2 started to stutter once I hit the 3500mb VRAM limit.

You can't even run Battlefield 4 with high settings without stuttering? I am assuming this is not at 1080p because my 7950 can handle that game fairly well and has only 3GB VRAM.

arc@css · 10 Feb 2015 at 15:56

JamesM said:
Right OP, if you are gaming at 1080p, have no plans to change resolution in the future and don't mind dropping down game settings in order to stay under the 3500 mb VRAM limit, either now for certain games or in the future, then get the 970.

It still is a great performing card for the price.

If you will be increasing your resolution (including planning on going SLI for extra performance to make the most of this increase in resolution) or want to play every single game with max textures and AA then you have three choices:-

1. Buy the cheapest 980 at £419
2. Buy the 290x 4GB or 8GB if you don't mind going Crossfire in the future
3. Sit and wait to see what the next generation cards bring to the table

For comparison I have a 970 with a 4690k and have only encountered issues on certain games when using high details. BF4 with medium/high settings runs fine, COH2 started to stutter once I hit the 3500mb VRAM limit.

+1

JamesM · 10 Feb 2015 at 15:57

saintdefender said:
You can't even run Battlefield 4 with high settings without stuttering? I am assuming this is not at 1080p because my 7950 can handle that game fairly well and has only 3GB VRAM.

I prefer higher FPS compared to graphic detail on FPS games, always have but that's my personal preference.

I was just implying that at those settings I have no stuttering but I can't comment on what the situation would be if running purely high or ultra settings in BF4.

ICEx21 · 10 Feb 2015 at 16:01

SDMilne said:
There's absolutely nothing wrong with a 970 if you plan to use it at 1080p. The fuss made on this forum has been nothing short of ridiculous. Dying Light for example runs flawlessly at 60fps with the 970.

No it hasn't been ridiculous. What's been ridiculous is the amount of people that haven't noticed the problems for one reason or another, dismissing those that are genuinely having issues with their card.

If you're happy with your card then good for you, but don't dismiss those that have legitimate problems as that's just retarded.

Also congratulations on missing the problem completely, the issue isn't the fps it's the stuttering due to accessing the slower part of the vram.

Neil79 · 10 Feb 2015 at 16:04

saintdefender said:
You can't even run Battlefield 4 with high settings without stuttering? I am assuming this is not at 1080p because my 7950 can handle that game fairly well and has only 3GB VRAM.

Yes but the game thinks the card has 4GB Vram, when in fact the performance is in the 3.5GB range. Your card is a 3GB

fs123 · 10 Feb 2015 at 16:05

JamesM said:
I prefer higher FPS compared to graphic detail on FPS games, always have but that's my personal preference.

I was just implying that at those settings I have no stuttering but I can't comment on what the situation would be if running purely high or ultra settings in BF4.

For the price the gtx 970 is going for, at 1080p you would expect to run at ultra settings on the majority of current games. If not then maybe the card is not worth it don't you think? If you have to turn down settings now then it will be a sad situation in 6-12 months from now.

no_1_dave · 10 Feb 2015 at 16:06

The 3.5GB issue is massively over exaggerated
People are struggling to recreate the issue with slowdowns when over 3.5GB. Most people will go up to 4GB with no problems at all. Even at 4GB vram most games run faster then on the 290.

The 970 is still a fantastic card and @ 1080p you will never experience problems

JamesM · 10 Feb 2015 at 16:12

fs123 said:
For the price the gtx 970 is going for, at 1080p you would expect to run at ultra settings on the majority of current games. If not then maybe the card is not worth it don't you think? If you have to turn down settings now then it will be a sad situation in 6-12 months from now.

Sadly what is what is. I doubt the price will drop, Gibbo has said the price probably will not drop so that's it really.

I agree that this whole situation has been blown out of proportion and people really do need to look at their individual needs before purchasing as there are so many "no problems here" and "the 970 is awful" posts filling this forum at the moment it's hard to decide for some people what to do.

It all comes down to price and requirements.

The 980 is what, £140 more than the 970 but offers no where near £140 worth of extra performance. The 290x is the better bang for buck choice but not everybody want's t go down the AMD route.

At 1080p the 970 is extremely hard to beat but how long it will last who knows because lets face it, more and more games are going to be using more and more VRAM where possible in the future.

ICEx21 · 10 Feb 2015 at 16:19

no_1_dave said:
The 3.5GB issue is massively over exaggerated
People are struggling to recreate the issue with slowdowns when over 3.5GB. Most people will go up to 4GB with no problems at all. Even at 4GB vram most games run faster then on the 290.

The 970 is still a fantastic card and @ 1080p you will never experience problems

Agreed if you get it cheap and if you're at 1080p you should hopefully not experience any problems.

I have 2 of the 970s and have had no problem at all in recreating the issues and I've been talking about these issues before it became an issue on these forums.

"Even at 4GB vram most games run faster then on the 290."
Not a fair assessment at all. Some games run faster others don't. In my experience having owned both cards the games I currently play Dragon Age, BF4 and Shadows of Mordor all run better on the 290 than they do on a 970.

xLegendary · 10 Feb 2015 at 16:34

Personally I would either go for 290X or wait for May for the 300 series.
4K gaming is here and 970 seems to be more limited each day

(3.5Gb)

Stanners · 10 Feb 2015 at 16:45

xLegendary said:
Personally I would either go for 290X or wait for May for the 300 series.
4K gaming is here and 970 seems to be more limited each day (3.5Gb)

Unfortunately we are still a way off single card 4k gaming.

xLegendary · 10 Feb 2015 at 16:47

Stanners said:
Unfortunately we are still a way off single card 4k gaming.

If you compare the 2 which one you think are most capable of future titles?

JamesM · 10 Feb 2015 at 16:53

xLegendary said:
If you compare the 2 which one you think are most capable of future titles?

The 980

Frenzy · 10 Feb 2015 at 17:56

Wait for the clearence 970s to appear then see if the 290s drop in price.

Go with price after that.

If you are going to game above 1080 now or in the future and intend to stick with the card then get a 290x 8GB or a 980 but I think the 290x is better value.

I play BF4
1920x1080
ULTRA
110% scaling
POST AA OFF
4xMSAA
DOF OFF
Motion blur off

Primarily TDM maps I get over 100fps consistently.

Personally I'm going to upgrade to the new 390x once it hits.

edit:

Actually maybe the 290s won't drop much, they'll want to shift those clearance cards....