GTX970 /960 or what GPU suggestions please
- Thread starter oshb5ems
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If you have less than £200 then the GTX 960 is your best option, anything above that then pony up for the 970, it is a much better card & comes highly recommended at 1080p
Deleted member 110222
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Anyone run two 4GB 960's in SLI?
I'd like to know what they make of that setup.
I'd like to know what they make of that setup.
3.5 vram vs 4gb true vram. more cuda cores 770 classified dual with acx cooler, pre-overclocked. not a basic 770, $529 new vs what is a 970 nowadays? $270?
This ^^
And avoid radeon cards at all costs, poor performance in Elite combined with terrible driver support and the fact they run so hot you can cook breakfast on them!*
If you get the 970, you can OC it easily to match or exceed stock gtx980 performance.
*This mostly just applies to Elite, a fair few games actually run better on equivalent radeon cards than nvidia stuff. That being said they do cook your system and draw more power than the entire northern hemisphere.
Deleted member 110222
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Power consumption & heat generation.
Guessing these are the two areas where NVIDIA is stronger?
Those are pretty much the two most important factors in a card to me.
Yep, looking at an r9 390 vs a gtx970 the amd card draws 275 watts the nvidia draws 145. AMD also do tend to run a fair bit hotter.
If power consumption and heat really are a concern then the green team edge ahead.
I second suggestions to a) wait for Nvidia announcements regarding Pascal and b) choose the 970 over the 960. I have the 970 myself and ED runs fine. For VR FDev suggests the 980 but the 970 should be ok with slightly reduced settings (I hope) if you wanted VR in the future.
An upgrade path I was considering for my system was to get another 970 for VR in an SLI setup but to really benefit the game needs to support NVidia's GameWork's VR framework where each card is used to render each eye concurrently. There is no word from FDev though (afaik) if this is going to be supported. At the same time I suspect that a single Pascal GPU will outperform two 970s in the not too distant future at a reasonable price.
So for me, I'm in no hurry to replace the 970. I'll just sit and wait to see what Nvidia has to offer with Pascal and then probably wait a bit longer for the price to drop.
An upgrade path I was considering for my system was to get another 970 for VR in an SLI setup but to really benefit the game needs to support NVidia's GameWork's VR framework where each card is used to render each eye concurrently. There is no word from FDev though (afaik) if this is going to be supported. At the same time I suspect that a single Pascal GPU will outperform two 970s in the not too distant future at a reasonable price.
So for me, I'm in no hurry to replace the 970. I'll just sit and wait to see what Nvidia has to offer with Pascal and then probably wait a bit longer for the price to drop.
I had one MSI 970, and added a second later (£229.98 last August).
I haven't had any problems with either the single card or the pair at all. Although as I couldn't get Horizons to work with SLi that's not enabled for E: D (unless anyone knows any better?)
As a single card I had to turn down some ultra settings in GTAV and BF4 or the FPS would suffer. (2560x1440)
Together, both with and without SLi, they run all the major titles pretty flawlessly on high and ultra (GTAV, Far Cry versions, BF4, etc.)
System map still takes an age to load tho
I haven't had any problems with either the single card or the pair at all. Although as I couldn't get Horizons to work with SLi that's not enabled for E: D (unless anyone knows any better?)
As a single card I had to turn down some ultra settings in GTAV and BF4 or the FPS would suffer. (2560x1440)
Together, both with and without SLi, they run all the major titles pretty flawlessly on high and ultra (GTAV, Far Cry versions, BF4, etc.)
System map still takes an age to load tho
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This is a myth. They both comsume similar amounts of energy under load. The difference is that AMD is more truthfull in their specs than Nvidia. 145W is no where near close the max. usage if the card runs at its limits. The AMD number is closer to that comsumption. Also, 8 GB DDR5 vs. 3,5 GB DDR5 + 512 MB slower RAM.
Btw.: My own system runs Nvidia because the system before was incompatible and it was cheaper to buy a 2nd GTX 770 than buy a new card that could outperform the SLI-Combo. The motherboard i have now is both speced for Xfire and SLI, so i will not have any problem to get me a new AMD card once they release the new generation.
And as i allready was wise enough to get me an overclocked 4GB card in the first place when i replaced the old GTX 560 Ti there was little point in upgrading. I might even wait until next year with a new card as currently i am not hoppping onto the VR-Hypetrain. I am perfectly fine with my 3x 21' Full HD Monitors.
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I'm sorry but that's not correct. I have both cards and have seen the power draw from both. With the 390 I had to fit another case fan and it topped out my total system power draw at ~510W while at 99% load. With the 970 installed, my system only pulls ~405W from the wall under the same load. My 970 probably draws a bit more than the reference 970s since I've upped the power limit when I overclocked it.
*The load test used was ED Horizons while parked on Mercury about 2km from Erlich city (spelling?). Frame rates on both cards were locked 60. Both cards were at 99-100% gpu usage as reported by gpu-z.
was resolved with a amd driver update
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I run a R9 390 8GB and pull around 220-230w when running elite. Temps never get higher that 71C but my case is really well ventilated. Prior to this I was running a R9 280x was pull more power and ran hotter 85c.
The 970 is fine. It runs Horizons with plenty of horsepower left over for whatever graphics upgrades are coming this season, and very probably the next. It will still be running in five years' time Here's what I use, no complaints, nice and quiet, job's a good 'un: https://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb...r5-gpu-1140mhz-boost-1279mhz-cores-1664-dp-hd
Spending more gives you slightly higher clock speeds, and sometimes more/better connection options on the back. That's rarely going to be useful in practice, unless you're getting clever with multiple displays and 4k whatnot. And you're not - if you were, then you wouldn't be contemplating a 960 under any circumstances. You might as well go for the particular card that looks nicest with the rest of your gear, provided the reviews hold up.
Don't worry about the 3.5GB vs 4GB issue. It was a big embarrassment for nVidia but it's not a problem in practice; games and (more importantly) drivers are written with the card's limitations in mind. Games work on the 970, they have high framerates, and you won't be disappointed. But any purchase you make today is going to be worse than the one you wait for. Without a doubt, the best advice in this thread is to wait for nVidia to announce the new model. Prices will very definitely fall, and soon. The £300 you're tempted to blow will get you a hell of a lot more in June than in March.
Spending more gives you slightly higher clock speeds, and sometimes more/better connection options on the back. That's rarely going to be useful in practice, unless you're getting clever with multiple displays and 4k whatnot. And you're not - if you were, then you wouldn't be contemplating a 960 under any circumstances. You might as well go for the particular card that looks nicest with the rest of your gear, provided the reviews hold up.
Don't worry about the 3.5GB vs 4GB issue. It was a big embarrassment for nVidia but it's not a problem in practice; games and (more importantly) drivers are written with the card's limitations in mind. Games work on the 970, they have high framerates, and you won't be disappointed. But any purchase you make today is going to be worse than the one you wait for. Without a doubt, the best advice in this thread is to wait for nVidia to announce the new model. Prices will very definitely fall, and soon. The £300 you're tempted to blow will get you a hell of a lot more in June than in March.
there is only a little bit of exaggeration above
...the performance issue in super cruise was a driver issue that has been resolved by AMD a few months ago and my R9 390 runs around 70c. Driver support is times better than it was although I do agree it was bad for a time.Something is not right here. Horizon should get your cards to the limits in that way. It also depends on the rest of your system (my previous CPu as an AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE with 125W as opposed tp the i7 with 88W), also, background programms, additional stuff pluged into your PC, etc.
In space i currently have less than 50% GPU load, about 3.3 GB VRam usage and i run DSR (2715x1527). Even with SLI, the GTX 770 is 2 Generations behind the GTX 970 (in fact it is a GTX 680 on steroids).
As SLI didnt work on times i had to deactivae it with Horizons and even than i didnt get 100% GPU load, so something is not right with your setup or your method of getting these values.
Temperature wise i get 60°C on both cards, CPU heat jumps between 35 and 43°C. But i also have a nice old Aplus Monolize 2 Case with 2 200mm side fans that draw air in and a 120mm fan that blows the air out behind the CPU-Fan.
I will do another landing and see what GPU-Z says than, but since the recent driver and game upgrades Horizon no longer melts cards. And the AMD Driver Issue was also fixed a while ago.
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On either card is seems about the same, 35-40% usage in space. As soon as I go planetside the usage jumps to pretty much 100%. *edit* I should mention that both times I tested was in horizons beta version 4. Things may have changed in subsequent patches.
When I did the test, the supercruise bug was still there, I know it's now been fixed so things may have changed. I initially built my rig with the 390 in mind, but jumped to the 970 when the supercruise bug popped up (both cards are the msi versions). Rest of system is i74790 w 16Gb ddr3 ram, 512gb ssd and 2Tb Hdd and win10.
In defense of the 390, the extra side case fan will have added to the power draw too, I have quite a cramped case.
Although if it is just my rig then I feel bad I've been giving out poor advice based on my own bad experience with the 390.
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I use a 960, and I run it at max graphics. the extra 80pounds wouldn't do anything for your experience.Hi
Iv been looking at GPUs and think (im not fully sure) that im sort of sort of looking at the GTX970 Well as with everything else there is a huge price difference. Iv seen this one for instance
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Palit-Nvidi...d=1458916762&ref_=sr_1_24&s=computers&sr=1-24
But it says there is a newer model for about £12 which is this one
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Palit-GeFor...=1458916762&ref_=sr_ob_24&s=computers&sr=1-24
But there are others going right up to £300+ And I was wondering other than the price what was the difference.
Also is the GTX970 a good GPU to go for seeing as im only building this PC to play Elite and the other thing it will do is do some downloads from the internet via my seedbox and thats all. Originally I had looked at the GTX960 4Gb so there was that one and I just wondered if anyone else could come up with any othersuggestions for a GPU other than the GTX970 or (^) and with what I have said I want to use the PC for I just wondered if the extra £80 on the 970 will make that much of a difference to if I just went with the 960 Or as I have asked can anyone give any other suggestions and price. Thank you
Regards Os
If you were to use that machine to run another game, like say Fallout 4 or something even newer then it would be affected, but not with Elite Dangerous.
You can easily run Elite Dangerous on Ultra settings using a GTX 560, as I did that when I first got it.
When I first heard that Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen were coming out, I went and built a new gaming rig from scratch with the best, fastest components at that time (2013)...4770k CPU, Gigabyte GTX770OC.
I foolishly thought that'd be ok for years...whilst it still plays ED fine, I'm now lusting after something better to play at higher resolution. At present I'd love a 980Ti but simply can't bring myself to spend NZ$1000+ on a decent one. Maybe after June they'll come down in price...but NZ is a cut throat market and superseded models go off the shelves pretty quick.
As for Star Citizen...it ain't out yet, so I can't comment.
Clicker
I foolishly thought that'd be ok for years...whilst it still plays ED fine, I'm now lusting after something better to play at higher resolution. At present I'd love a 980Ti but simply can't bring myself to spend NZ$1000+ on a decent one. Maybe after June they'll come down in price...but NZ is a cut throat market and superseded models go off the shelves pretty quick.
As for Star Citizen...it ain't out yet, so I can't comment.
Clicker
My top of the line gaming PC from 2011 runs Elite Dangerous on Ultra just fine, so I don't see what the problem with your stronger parts was. (I ran it at the same resolution as well, 1000x1680, and I'm looking to get a 4K monitor for my PC)