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GTX 980 / 970 Discussion

Soldato
Joined
10 Aug 2006
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5,207
I see that the Gigabyte GTX 980 G1 is available to pre-order now. Now I really am stuck on which card to buy. :(

Would a blower/reference cooler work better in a Corsair Graphite 780T case? I'm thinking of using that case in my new build, but not sure which cooler is best for it.
 
Soldato
Joined
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West Sussex
Well, someone who owned both the 970 and 780 confirmed that (with Heaven Bench) 970 at 1500MHz is just about to be on par/9 points behind with the 780 at 1240MHz, so looking beyond the power-efficiency, I think the 970's performance got hyped beyond what it really is...

The 970 is the sort of card that people buy though. IE - normal people, who are not serial upgraders/obsessed with having the latest tech etc etc.

And in that area the 970 is amazing for the money. It's basically 780 performance for around £250. It's the ideal replacement for a GTX 670 as an example, which nipped at the heels of the 680 for much less money also.

From what I've read it starts to fall off a little when you start cranking the res but then if you were running 4k you'd need something far more powerful any way.
 
Soldato
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UK.
Except perhaps the 8800GT - so 3 generations of rebranding the 970 incoming then? :p

Notice the word 'probably' the best in my comment :p, also consider inflation. The 970 launched at a cheaper comparative price than the old 8800GT back in the day, also offers whole new feature set and unrepresented power savings.

Overall I would say this is probably the best price VS performance card Nvidia ever launched..

The 970 is the sort of card that people buy though. IE - normal people, who are not serial upgraders/obsessed with having the latest tech etc etc.

And in that area the 970 is amazing for the money. It's basically 780 performance for around £250. It's the ideal replacement for a GTX 670 as an example, which nipped at the heels of the 680 for much less money also.

From what I've read it starts to fall off a little when you start cranking the res but then if you were running 4k you'd need something far more powerful any way.

+1

A GPU for everyone's budget, Nvidia will cater to the peeps with higher budgets / enthusiast etc as well, the GTX 980 being the first of it's ilk. We can expect people with big budgets to be going for the 980 Ti, 990, Titan etc..

What's good it is that we expect AMD to target the 970, aim to outperform it and under cut it on price. So if your a fanboy of either camp it's all good. Personally don't understand why people feel the need to pigeonhole themselves in either camp though, just buy whatever you like / can afford imho. Who cares what brand it is!?
 
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Soldato
Joined
15 Aug 2011
Posts
4,951
Guys.

Some advice needed please. I currently have 2 7950s in xfire. I am starting to get annoyed with the problems that some games have in xfire.

I normally play Arma, flight sims and on occasions the odd FPS/Any genre of game.

Are there any benchmarks that would show me any loss of going to the 970 or is it close enough to not notice any difference playing right now at 1080p, hopefully going ultra-wide after xmas.

Thanks
 
Caporegime
Joined
24 Sep 2008
Posts
38,280
Location
Essex innit!
Guys.

Some advice needed please. I currently have 2 7950s in xfire. I am starting to get annoyed with the problems that some games have in xfire.

I normally play Arma, flight sims and on occasions the odd FPS/Any genre of game.

Are there any benchmarks that would show me any loss of going to the 970 or is it close enough to not notice any difference playing right now at 1080p, hopefully going ultra-wide after xmas.

Thanks

Best I could find is a 7990 (2x7970s) and a 980.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1074?vs=1351
 
Associate
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This is a question for anyone who is willing to answer, my dilemma right now is i just recently upgrade early this month from gtx 680s sli to a r9 290 tri x oc xfire set up, and i was trying to hold up from doing that waiting on the 900 series but i just went for it especially reading all the rumors and info about how it would not be worth it to get the 9xx gpus etc etc. Now seeing the the new gpus in action im contemplating a dsr on 1 of the 290s and being 20% out of pocket from what i paid for it which was £259.99 + 8 p&p and selling the other 1 that i got from Amazon new for £210, if i was to do this i would probably get the 980 although the 970s sli are tempting.
what do you think?
 
Caporegime
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Essex innit!
Well the 980 was a pretty successful launch.

5aacc5ec8a7db99ebdbcee8afcd07689.jpg
 
Soldato
Joined
2 Jan 2012
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11,996
Location
UK.
This is a question for anyone who is willing to answer, my dilemma right now is i just recently upgrade early this month from gtx 680s sli to a r9 290 tri x oc xfire set up, and i was trying to hold up from doing that waiting on the 900 series but i just went for it especially reading all the rumors and info about how it would not be worth it to get the 9xx gpus etc etc. Now seeing the the new gpus in action im contemplating a dsr on 1 of the 290s and being 20% out of pocket from what i paid for it which was £259.99 + 8 p&p and selling the other 1 that i got from Amazon new for £210, if i was to do this i would probably get the 980 although the 970s sli are tempting.
what do you think?

The longer you keep the 290's the more their value will diminish, if you want to make the move do it now so you get the most value for your current cards back.

AMD are unveiling something on the 25th, this could further reduce the value of last gen cards. Others feel they get more value by keeping parts for years and years, but if you want to keep current it's always better to sell stuff before it loses to much value and move on to the next thing. That's my honest opinion.
 
Caporegime
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Essex innit!
Thanks Greg.

Absolutely nothing in it then, well nothing that I would notice I am sure. Added to the lower noise level and heat. it looks like a no brainer.

Thoughts?

Well you lose issues that you had with Crossfire and save money on power usage and create less heat. nVidia do have some nice features as well, so could be worth the jump?
 
Associate
Joined
7 Jan 2013
Posts
158
Trying to chose between 2x 970's and 2x 980's. But i'm running a 1440p monitor and kind of want to push as many frames as possible but it costs an extra 150-200 quid ontop from the 295x2 i'm returning, but the 970's save 100 quid.
 
Associate
Joined
2 Sep 2014
Posts
119
Location
West midlands
The longer you keep the 290's the more their value will diminish, if you want to make the move do it now so you get the most value for your current cards back.

AMD are unveiling something on the 25th, this could further reduce the value of last gen cards. Others feel they get more value by keeping parts for years and years, but if you want to keep current it's always better to sell stuff before it loses to much value and move on to the next thing. That's my honest opinion.

Yeah, your right i was thinking the same and i might have to go and do that now. Unless someone else has other suggestions.
Thanks for the reply Boomstick, Boomstick LOL ahh that brings back mems Army of darkness right?.
 
Soldato
Joined
16 Nov 2013
Posts
2,723
Trying to chose between 2x 970's and 2x 980's. But i'm running a 1440p monitor and kind of want to push as many frames as possible but it costs an extra 150-200 quid ontop from the 295x2 i'm returning, but the 970's save 100 quid.

If your motherboard supports it you could look at tri sli 970's instead of 2 980's
 
Soldato
Joined
2 Jan 2012
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11,996
Location
UK.
Well the 980 was a pretty successful launch.

5aacc5ec8a7db99ebdbcee8afcd07689.jpg

Their most successful launch ever?

Gibbo said sales on this launch were the best they ever had, lot's of places seem to have gone out of stock. Safe to say Nvidia did well on this one :)

Correct me if I'm wrong but every GPU launch I've ever seen (apart from Fermi) looked like that.

I had nightmares finding a 7970.

I dunno mate , that's why I asked the question. Gibbo said this was OCUK's most successful launch sales ever. I'm guessing Nvidia did pretty well on this one.
 
Soldato
Joined
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West Sussex
I dunno mate , that's why I asked the question. Gibbo said this was OCUK's most successful launch sales ever. I'm guessing Nvidia did pretty well on this one.

Too early to tell. Mind you, most of these GPUs are retired long before they should be any way.

The GTX 670 flew off the shelves too. Mostly because many were waiting for it and it was actually half decent. Apparently there were supposed to be no worries about these selling out as Nvidia had it in hand.
 
Soldato
Joined
2 Jan 2012
Posts
11,996
Location
UK.
Too early to tell. Mind you, most of these GPUs are retired long before they should be any way.

The GTX 670 flew off the shelves too. Mostly because many were waiting for it and it was actually half decent. Apparently there were supposed to be no worries about these selling out as Nvidia had it in hand.

Glad that AMD aren't sitting idle as well, announcement on the 25th is good shows they want a fight. Hopefully they target the 970 performance / price and beat it, and if they can beat the 980 on performance as well even if power consumption is relatively high in comparison it will still be a worthy card. AMD/ATI have never really disappointed me in GPU's, 25th should be interesting..
 
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