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Buy a GTX 970 now or wait for Pascal?

Cern

Cern

Cern

Soldato
Joined
3 Jul 2008
Posts
3,796
Location
London
I've been looking at this bundle currently on offer:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

The CPU I would be adding to the bundle would be a i7-6700k.

I currently game at 1600x1200 using a GTX 660. But I want to step up to 1440p or perhaps 4k in the future. I typically play games like Witcher 3, ME3, DA:I, Skyrim, Borderlands 2, ESO, SWTOR, Total War, Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen.

Is the GTX 970 still good value for money or would I be better off sitting on my GTX 660 for now and waiting for Pascal? My maximum budget for a GPU is £300 (preferably nearer £275).
 
I would wait if I was you. Saying that I bought a 980Ti only a few weeks ago. With your desire to step up to 1440 or 4K tho I am sure pascal will be better suited to those resolutions then the 970.

Just my 2 cents

But then saying that, does anyone even have a time frame on pascal?
 
A 970 won't be able to cut it at 4K but at 1440p it's an effective and popular card and I would get it now and upgrade to an EOL Pascal card in 18months time.

If your serious about 4k your talking about 980Ti's in SLI or Fury X in XFire but that's going to set you back a kings ransom i.e. a lot more then a modest GTX970 or a Radeon 390 would. 1440p is IMO the sweet spot for PC gamers at the moment, crisp resolution fast responses times and refresh rates are available and you can drive those monitors using semi affordable hardware.
 
I'd not want to try a 970 on a 4K screen, but on the other hand 1440p is likely to be the most viable resolution for some time to come. The 970 will be fine on older games and ok on newer games at that resolution.
 
mulpsmebeauty said:
I'd not want to try a 970 on a 4K screen, but on the other hand 1440p is likely to be the most viable resolution for some time to come. The 970 will be fine on older games and ok on newer games at that resolution.
Click to expand...

My GTX970 with Asus ROG G-Sync 1440p runs all games very well. Since pascal is close I would wait, but if you really have to upgrade now then do it. 970 is a nice card.
 
Thanks for the advice everyone. Since I'm not planning to upgrade my monitor to 1440p or 4k until later in the year, I think I'll wait on Pascal and see what it brings. At my GPU budget point (sub £300) I doubt even Pascal will bring anything that will allow smooth 4k gaming, but who knows.

In the meantime, my GTX 660 should be able to handle most things at 1600x1200 once I've sorted out my CPU bottleneck (an old Q6600) with a Z170 upgrade.
 
Cern said:
Thanks for the advice everyone. Since I'm not planning to upgrade my monitor to 1440p or 4k until later in the year, I think I'll wait on Pascal and see what it brings. At my GPU budget point (sub £300) I doubt even Pascal will bring anything that will allow smooth 4k gaming, but who knows.

In the meantime, my GTX 660 should be able to handle most things at 1600x1200 once I've sorted out my CPU bottleneck (an old Q6600) with a Z170 upgrade.
Click to expand...

A 970 would be a huge upgrade from a GTX 660 50% at least
 
I wouldn't buy any Maxwell now.
As soon as Pascal arrives with async capability nvidia will push that everywhere, and Maxwell won't age well.
Also the 970 is not fast enough, and don't have enough vram to run 1440p too well. Especially in newer games, it does well at 1080p then lost out on 1440p. Just check the latest Division benches. It falls back next to the 380x on 1440p.

Or Rise of Tomb Raider for example. The 390 loses around 20% going from 1080p to 1440, the 970 loses 33%.
 
Last edited:
Mtom said:
Also the 970 is not fast enough, and don't have enough vram to run 1440p too well. Especially in newer games, it does well at 1080p then lost out on 1440p. Just check the latest Division benches. It falls back next to the 380x on 1440p.

Or Rise of Tomb Raider for example. The 390 loses around 20% going from 1080p to 1440, the 970 loses 33%.
Click to expand...

I beg to differ mate. My GTX 970 is doing great at 1440p and the new tomb raider I'm getting 50fps at least and g-sync smoothed that right out. Don't care what your "benches say"
 
I'M WITH MTOM, LOOK AT FAR CRY PRIMAL BENCHES @ 1440/4K, THE 970 GETS A GOOD KICKING AND THIS WILL GET WORSE DUE TO ITS DODGY THREE-AND-A-BIT GB OF VRAM...COME ON THE RED TEAM!
 
turbot1984 said:
I'M WITH MTOM, LOOK AT FAR CRY PRIMAL BENCHES @ 1440/4K, THE 970 GETS A GOOD KICKING AND THIS WILL GET WORSE DUE TO ITS DODGY THREE-AND-A-BIT GB OF VRAM...COME ON THE RED TEAM!
Click to expand...

Calm down, calm down. We don't want yet another troll war in these GFX threads.:rolleyes:

Well I would say wait for Pascal/Polaris, but if you think it's too long to wait then you do have a few options. You could get a GTX970/R9 390 now and get another for 4K when you need it. Or you could sell the card (970/390) and get a new Pascal/Polaris card when they emerge sometime hopefully this year. From your budget of around £300 then you should see a card that suits that budget sometime this summer or just after. Bigger cards are early next year I am lead to believe.
:)
 
I would go for it myself,if gaming at 1080p the 970 will serve you well for quite a long time imo then when pascal is released etc decide if you really want/need to upgrade which like I said for 1080p gaming I'm sure you wont

edit; just seen you game at higher resolution than 1080p so maybe it would be worth you waiting,
 
Wait. Loads of tech conventions coming up in March and April and no doubt we will have new on the next gen soon.
 
Cern said:
I've been looking at this bundle currently on offer:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

The CPU I would be adding to the bundle would be a i7-6700k.

I currently game at 1600x1200 using a GTX 660. But I want to step up to 1440p or perhaps 4k in the future. I typically play games like Witcher 3, ME3, DA:I, Skyrim, Borderlands 2, ESO, SWTOR, Total War, Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen.

Is the GTX 970 still good value for money or would I be better off sitting on my GTX 660 for now and waiting for Pascal? My maximum budget for a GPU is £300 (preferably nearer £275).
Click to expand...

If you want right now, R9 390X for that budget. Beats the crap out of the 970.
Or else wait for summer months, when AMD Polaris is also out. Do not rush to buy Pascal in a months time...
 
Thanks for the great advice everyone.

In the end I didn't get the bundle with the GTX 970. I did however take the plunge with the Asus Z170 Pro Gaming, i7-6700k, 32GB DDR4, Corsair RMi850, Noctua Cooler, R5 case and some other gubbins to build my new system (finally!).

I'll put my GTX 660 into the new build for now and see what the summer brings regarding Pascal, Polaris and monitors.
 
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