I'm planning to upgrade from my trusty HD7850 in a month or two. Would I be able to run a GTX 970 on a 500W OCZ SXSII PSU? My current setup: Asus Z97-Pro, i7 4790k, Crucial MX100 256gb SSD and a WD Caviar Blue 1TB HDD.
I want to buy a single 970 before the end of the year and add another one in a year or so (I'll buy a new PSU then, of course;p). Does it make any sense in the long run? My GPU has really served me well and still has some juice left in it, I can play Dead Rising 3 and virtually every game bar Crysis 3/Watch Dogs almost maxed quite comfortably (though WD is hovering around 30 fps on ultra, so practically playable;p) so maybe I should wait for an announcement from AMD just to see what they come up with?
I was pondering waiting for 20nm offerings from Nvidia/AMD but from what I've read there's significant likelihood of both companies skipping 20nm altogether.
And the final dilemma is... MSI or Asus?
Asus looks really premium with its metal shroud and sturdy backplate but is supplied with virtually no accessories (the box is almost empty, they didn't even care to throw in a 8-pin molex adaptor which I wouldn't mind having since my PSU doesn't have any 8-pin connectors).
MSI is plastic and comes without a backplate (bummer) but it's likely to clock a wee bit better and be slightly cheaper. Sadly, it requires 8-pin + 6-pin power connectors compared to only one 8-pin on the Asus (the less cables the better, especially on my PSU).
Sorry for the lengthy post, haven't upgraded my GPU in a while and figured it'd be best to ask people who already have a 970.
Cheers!