Which is the "sweet spot" 970?

[Mr Badger]

Aside from having my head turned by the latest 290X deals, I'm seriously tempted to get a GTX 970 - especially having just upsized to a 2560 x 1440 monitor. My question is which one represents the best trade off between price and quality? I'm not worried about extreme clocking to get the highest benchmarks, but I passed on the cheap Halloween deal on the Inno3D because they seem a bit too "budget" with (at least some users) reporting them as running hot and noisy.

I was thinking the £269.99 MSI 970 (having initially had some great reviews) was the answer, although it's reputation seems to have become a bit tarnished with complaints about coil wine and the 100% fan speed issue.

For £6 more there are the Gigabyte WindForce OC, Palit Jetstream and EVGA SC ACX 2.0 - are any of these a "better" purchase than the MSI and if so why?

Also, for a fair bit less money there are the GALAX EX OC and the Zotac Gaming Edition. Aside from slight differences in the factory clock speeds, are these actually any worse? Zotac appear to be offering a 5 year warranty, which would suggest they have some confidence in the quality of their product.

Or am I being a fool and are the more expensive G1/AMP/Strix etc. cards really a wiser purchase for normal usage?

Card size is not an issue as I have a huge case

 

[thefogo]

I'd go with the Inno3D, the one with the silly name.
Though if you plan on going SLI eventually a dual slot cooler would be better. Possibly the Gigabyte for that.

 

[Robzere31]

Having just upgraded to a 1440p monitor as well, I felt the need to change from my 290 to something with a bit more umph.

I can't comment on the other brands but having just installed 2 gigabyte 970 G1's all I can say is they are worth every penny.
Run cool & quiet, nice build quality & they just work!

Not used Nvidia for many years, but these are definitely keepers.

 

[Rroff]

I've never regretted buying a gigabyte GPU personally - there has been the odd time when they've had bad batches mind but if you get a properly working one (which you should) they are great cards and IMO worth every penny as above.

The only time I'd make an exception to that really is if I was looking to set a world record overclock or something as while they usually have the highest boosting cards out the box they often fall a bit short of some of the extreme cards like EVGA's classifieds when it comes to max OC potential.

 

[~>Dg<~]

got a gigabyte myself and on offer at moment. overclocked to 980gtx spec dont go above 60c and quiet and on stock voltage

 

[africanos23]

First time Galax buyer here and I am super impressed to be honest.

Galax GTX970 EXOC (Grey editions) in SLI

I think I can get a monster OC on these but didnt have a lot of time to play around, I just put the GPU core to +250mhz and +100mhz on the mem (1405/7412) and they only hit 68c max temps gaming for a few hours with no issues whatsoever.

They are super silent and the second fans only start working when the cards hit 50c. The GTX970s are small cards btw compared to my MSI Gaming R9-290s 4S OCs and a lot less power hungry.

Build quality is pretty solid but the heatsinks seem really really thin (not that you actually touch them at all unless you stick your finger in it)

 

[Mr Badger]

So no love for the Zotac? From an unrelated thread about the OcUK reference 970:

They are built by PC Partner for us, using NVIDIA BGA board, Samsung memory so all NVIDIA spec components.

PC partner build Sapphire, Zotac, PNY, Manli, Inno3D so are probably the worlds biggest manufacturer of cards.