Upgrade from 970 SLI?

[RatmanGB]

Hi,

I've been out of the loop since I bought my Vega 64 (the coil whine is so bad it actually drove me away from PC gaming) but I'm looking at upgrading my other half's long neglected PC since it's going to get a lot more use all of a sudden.

It's currently running an unmatched pair of 970s in SLI on a P67 chipset board with an i5-3470 overclocked to 3.8GHz and 16Gb of 1600MHz DDR3. So quite old. PSU is a Cooler Master Real Power Pro 850 so power shouldn't be a problem.

What would you recommend to replace the 970s, as SLI doesn't seem to get much support these days? There may be a monitor upgrade happening too but she won't be playing in more than 1920x1080 or possibly 2560x1080.

It has to be Nvidia as that's what she wants. Also - and I know this is a risk with any card - are any manufacturers either less susceptible to coil whine or have good RMA policies for it?

Thanks for any ideas.

 

[RatmanGB]

Well, that's disappointing but not wholly unexpected. Thanks for the replies!

How about a slightly different question, since a full system upgrade isn't an option right now (I've just bought her that monitor I mentioned and I still need to get rid of that Vega 64!):

What single Nvidia card would deliver equivalent performance to 970 SLI, in games where it actually works? For what she uses the PC for, the performance is more than adequate when SLI is supported.

Thanks again!

 

[RatmanGB]

Rep support and UK RMA sound good.

Is the 2060 Super worth considering? At 1080p it seems close to the 2070?

 

[RatmanGB]

For those with RTX 20x0 cards...

What's the coil whine situation like?

 

[RatmanGB]

Did you ever investigate the issue with the Vega 64? I'm just asking on the off chance that it's been running silly high frame rates which would cause that.

It whines at normal in game frame rates unfortunately - if I lock it to 60 it's OK ish but much above that and it's very noticeable (from inside a Silent Base 801 with the solid side panel...). I could induce coil whine on the MSI 970 I had before, but only when it was rendering at crazy rates on a black screen.

I've tried other cards in this PC and they don't whine and this card in another PC and it still whines - at this point I'm pretty sure it is the card.

In any case, this card will be for that other PC that doesn't whine with the two 970s, I just don't want two PCs that whine if I can help it.

 

[RatmanGB]

Sounds like you've tried your best to solve it, very frustrating for you I'll bet. I've only had one card in the past that was bad for it but I managed to get it RMA'd in time.

OCUK didn't consider it bad enough - which is OK, noise is a subjective thing and I didn't really have the best recording equipment - but I was slightly miffed not to get a response of any kind from PowerColor themselves.

Just trying to avoid a repeat performance, these things aren't exactly cheap!