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NVIDIA GTX 970 OWNERS THREAD

I just noticed something about my 2nd 970 Strix....can anyone else spot it?

Click for reveal:
0ulb.jpg

the fan shroud has two securing screws instead
of only one on the first card I purchased in November..
seems a strange and somewhat pointless hardware revision:confused:)

zulb.jpg
 
Let me guess...

the fan shroud has two securing screws instead
of only one on the first card I purchased in November..
seems a strange and somewhat pointless hardware revision)

?


:P
 
Run the games at your normal resolution and monitor GPU usage in something like MSI afterburner.

If both cards are constantly at 99% usage then your fine. If however during games the cards only have about 60-80% usage then your being CPU limited.

Only games will really show this

Generally speaking lower resolutions will create more of a CPU bottleneck than higher resolutions so for people running higher than 1440p, even with a 4690k, your GPUs may be showing 99% usage BUT performance might still be slower than if you had a 4790k.
 
Thanks, I'll get some testing done before buying.

Out of interest, why are lower resolutions more likely to bottleneck the CPU, I would have thought the higher the res the harder they work therefore the more chance of a bottleneck?
 
I had massive temp issues with the inno3D 970 I bought, +70 and throttling all the time, I then stupidly bought another one as I run 1440p and was getting less performance from a single 970 than I did from my SLI 770's (Derr!!), I wanted another Inno3D to match the existing although I knew the cooling sucked, so, I changed the coolers for Accelero Mono PLUS's and the associated little bitty heat sinks and stuff. This is a generic cooler to fit many cards so I had to improvise her and there but TBH I am soooo much happier. Whatever game or benchmark I have never throttled, never goes above 60c... I run a modest rig with an old [email protected] and... well it rocks...

Below is 6 minutes of Furmark burn in test(See timer). It doesn't trigger the 970 boost, but doesn't need to to test stability and temps. (Please forgive all the game icons on the desktop, took my PC to my GF's for Christmas and just downloaded loads of Steam stuff as her internet is ****e!)

OXsX3ab.jpg

6rx666B.jpg

I guess this is just a, yea some cards are worse than others, but its all cooling, I NEVER throttle any more, I stay at 1528 or whatever I have set at the time, always. So if you have a card that you feel is ****, and your temps are hitting 70c+, think about a new cooler. I love mine now. I'm no 34 in the OCUK FS Extreme bench with a ****** 2500k ;)
 
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JamesM said:
Run the games at your normal resolution and monitor GPU usage in something like MSI afterburner.

If both cards are constantly at 99% usage then your fine. If however during games the cards only have about 60-80% usage then your being CPU limited.

Only games will really show this

Generally speaking lower resolutions will create more of a CPU bottleneck than higher resolutions so for people running higher than 1440p, even with a 4690k, your GPUs may be showing 99% usage BUT performance might still be slower than if you had a 4790k.
Click to expand...

Thanks James, any way to test that or just need to google some benchmarks? (Like I said I'm running at 1440p)
 
That's weird. It used to say it in brackets in the memory type box. e.g GDDR5 (Samsung), but now it doesn't show.

Maybe it depends on the drivers you have installed. Or if your drivers are WHQL signed.
 
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Is anyone here running SLI (2 cards) and monitored the voltages of the two cards?

Seems the voltage bug is present on mine after watching them in GPUZ, followed the advice from another forum and worked out an offset between the two core clocks that syncs the two voltages and everything is running much smoother now. How it works I have no idea as it still ends up with the cards at the same clock in game, but the voltages are definately similar.

I had one at 1.225 and one at 1.108 before sorting it, surprised it didn't crash at stock!
 
String said:
Thanks, I'll get some testing done before buying.

Out of interest, why are lower resolutions more likely to bottleneck the CPU, I would have thought the higher the res the harder they work therefore the more chance of a bottleneck?
Click to expand...

It's hard to explain and tbh I don't really know why that's the case. I guess it's because with a higher resolution the GPUs do more of the work where as at 1080p they aren't pushed to their limit? I've also seen a benchmark that shows an AMD CPU matching and beating a X99 CPU with 4 GPUs at a 4K resolution which is crazy when you think about it but the numbers don't lie. The whole thing confuses me. For 1080p a single card is best, 1440 2 is better and for anything higher add as many cards as you like.

phate101101 said:
Thanks James, any way to test that or just need to google some benchmarks? (Like I said I'm running at 1440p)
Click to expand...

Benchmarks won't really show it, some may do. BF4 was always a good test for me and showed quite easily that my 670s would run less than 99% until I fitted a 4770k.

dessimpson said:
How do you tell which memory it has? GPU-Z tells me nothing.
Click to expand...

Download it and install it as a program rather than just running it. That works for me and has the added benefit of showing the PerfCap on the sensors to see if i'm hitting a card limit.

Guess if I want a 2nd card I had better buy second hand for Samsung memory :( which is a shame. One of the good things about the 970s was that the memory overclock was decent!
 
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