Worth upgrading to 960 or 970?

B

Brando457

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Aug 11, 2003
Messages
1,232
Current System:

CPU: I5-3570K @ 3.4 GHz w/ H100I for cooling
MOBO: Asus Sabertooth Z77 TUF LGA 1155
GFX: EVGA GTX670 FTW 2048MB
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4 x 4GB DDR3 PC3 15000 )
PSU: Corsair HX 850 WATT
HD: Samsung 840 PRO 128 GB

I primary am playing GTA V, Payday 2, and Far Cry 4.

Right now I use Geforce Experience to set the optimal settings in the games as I'm not sure the best to select.

Is it worth upgrading to a 960 or 970 card?

Thanks!
 
Well the new cards haven't even been speculated upon for a release date. But if I were in your shoes and I had waited this long, I can certainly wait a bit longer for Nvidia's Pascal / AMD's Greenland GPUs to come out. Both camps will feature a die shrink that will allow for a theoretical substantial boost to speed and lower power usage. Also to this point Nvidia's current cards are an unknown when it comes to DX12. Thus I would definitely want the next generation.

If you have a hole burning in your pocket, I would get a GTX 970 or R9 390 / 290. Getting anything less would be doing yourself a disservice as a gamer. The games that you play are very demanding and something like a 960 will be a disappointment.
 
970 would be a good jump in performance. Nothing earth shattering, but noticeable.
 
I guess you have done no research at all or you would know a 960 is not really an upgrade. That means of course that a 970 or better is the only thing that is an upgrade.
 
CruisD64 said:
970 would be a good jump in performance. Nothing earth shattering, but noticeable.
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A 970 is about 70% faster than a 670 overall and in most newer games its even further ahead. Plus the 970 has more ocing headroom. In the end a 970 is 80-100% faster when both are oced and playing new titles. I would consider that more than just "noticeable".

Here even at stock to stock, a 970 is literally twice as fast as the 670.


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With the new generation of cards coming out would the other components of my system still be able to perform well or would I be looking at a full system upgrade.
 
Brando457 said:
With the new generation of cards coming out would the other components of my system still be able to perform well or would I be looking at a full system upgrade.
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You have a really good system now. Just oc that cpu and get a 970.
 
misterbobby said:
A 970 is about 70% faster than a 670 overall and in most newer games its even further ahead. Plus the 970 has more ocing headroom. In the end a 970 is 80-100% faster when both are oced and playing new titles. I would consider that more than just "noticeable".

Here even at stock to stock, a 970 is literally twice as fast as the 670.


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Wow. I didn't realize it was that big of a jump. I would've guessed 40% or so.
 
CruisD64 said:
Wow. I didn't realize it was that big of a jump. I would've guessed 40% or so.
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Witcher 3 is probably about the best case scenario as its one of a few games that Kepler does poor in. Again though it will easily be nearly 80% faster overall across a wide range of games.
 
Yeah your system is solid. A 970 is a good fit for it. It'll be balanced/hold you over the two years or so to see Pascal's full lineup.
 
noobthegreat why the question marks?

So looks like Ill continue trying to find a 970 used if I can or might just bite the bullet and buy new.
 
Brando457 said:
noobthegreat why the question marks?

So looks like Ill continue trying to find a 970 used if I can or might just bite the bullet and buy new.
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hes wondering why running stock clocks on a K processor with water cooling
 
Brando457 said:
Honestly not really sure how to overclock it.
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I'm sure there are guides out there, but normally I adjust the turbo to use all 4 cores and set the turbo multiplier to whatever I find my max OC to be through testing. Could probably set it right to a 40 multiplier and not even touch the voltage though.
 
misterbobby said:
A 970 is about 70% faster than a 670 overall and in most newer games its even further ahead. Plus the 970 has more ocing headroom. In the end a 970 is 80-100% faster when both are oced and playing new titles. I would consider that more than just "noticeable".

Here even at stock to stock, a 970 is literally twice as fast as the 670.


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I'm sorry, but you're way overselling the difference.

In the majority of games the difference is less than 60%:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_970_Gaming/27.html

Even at 1440p there's no massive increase.

There are outliers like Shadow of Mordor, but it really depends on the games he's playing whether the upgrade is worth it:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_970_Gaming/20.html

If the GTX 970 is too expensive, you'll have to wait until next year for the price to drop. Nvidia and AMD seem to have pushed the capability of 28nm as cheap as it can go.
 
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What is your monitor setup? Do you plan to upgrade in resolution or multiple displays?
 
DISPLAY: BenQ XL2420T

I do not plan on upgrading to multiple displays. I'd want to keep this for a few years since it was $$$
 
Brando457 said:
DISPLAY: BenQ XL2420T

I do not plan on upgrading to multiple displays. I'd want to keep this for a few years since it was $$$
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I don't think you need to upgrade TODAY for those games:

Compare to GTX 950, which should be about the same speed (GTX 680 = GTX 960 in most games, GTX 670 = GTX 950).

You'll handle Far Cry 4 at 1080p with ease:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_950_SSC/17.html

And You can handle GTA V pretty smoothly as well at 1080p:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_950_SSC/18.html

And if you turn off one or two of those maxed-out settings, you'll break 50fps, which the gods here at [H] agree is "playable."

Save your money until Pascal comers out early next year. You're set for now :D
 
GTX 970 4 Gaming was a big upgrade, especially for high end titles. It was certainly worth it over my MSI GTX 670 PE/OC. I further OCed it.
 
Flogger23m said:
GTX 970 4 Gaming was a big upgrade, especially for high end titles. It was certainly worth it over my MSI GTX 670 PE/OC. I further OCed it.
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Sure it is. But I'm simply pointing out that he can get more than playable frame rates from his games NOW without spending a dime.

Also, what's your resolution?
 
defaultluser said:
I don't think you need to upgrade TODAY for those games:

Compare to GTX 950, which should be about the same speed (GTX 680 = GTX 960 in most games, GTX 670 = GTX 950).

You'll handle Far Cry 4 at 1080p with ease:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_950_SSC/17.html

And You can handle GTA V pretty smoothly as well at 1080p:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_950_SSC/18.html

And if you turn off one or two of those maxed-out settings, you'll break 50fps, which the gods here at [H] agree is "playable."

Save your money until Pascal comers out early next year. You're set for now :D
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I honestly have no clue what the best settings to pick are in the games.
 
Brando457 said:
I honestly have no clue what the best settings to pick are in the games.
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That's okay, Geforce Experience already takes care fo that for you. As logn as you're satisfied with how the games you currently play look and feel, then you don't need to upgrade.

And most games have quick select options that you don't have to know anything about the settings to select - normally a global low, medium, high, ultra settings option. Start with High and work your way down. If your current settings makes the game slow down tpoo much, just choose a loser setting.
 
Thanks defaultluser.

I need to figure out why my system will randomly restart at points. I checked my system log with no reports. Literally some times it will work fine for a few hours then bam restart. Sometimes it will work for like 10 minutes then bam restart.

I checked temperature, everything is fine. Reinstalled windows still happens. Checked drivers and no issues there. Idk what else to consider.
 
misterbobby said:
A 970 is about 70% faster than a 670 overall and in most newer games its even further ahead. Plus the 970 has more ocing headroom. In the end a 970 is 80-100% faster when both are oced and playing new titles. I would consider that more than just "noticeable".

Here even at stock to stock, a 970 is literally twice as fast as the 670.


upload png
Click to expand...

What I find jaw dropping with that Witcher 3 benchmark is the 290x as it was released to combat the 780GTX and Titan.. it has left the building on those two video cards.
 
fanboy said:
What I find jaw dropping with that Witcher 3 benchmark is the 290x as it was released to combat the 780GTX and Titan.. it has left the building on those two video cards.
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It's those 'terrible' amd drivers at fault again...

Same things happened for the 7970, started off pretty even then took off as time went on and optimisations happened.
Those terrible amd drivers again..

Wouldn't be surprised if the same happened with the Fury.
 
N4CR said:
It's those 'terrible' amd drivers at fault again...

Same things happened for the 7970, started off pretty even then took off as time went on and optimisations happened.
Those terrible amd drivers again..

Wouldn't be surprised if the same happened with the Fury.
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Well that and it looks like Nvidia does not optimize Kepler for crap on gameworks games.
 
All I've read is small changes and frothing of the mouth from both families of fanboys. Obviously there was something seriously wrong with Kepler in TW3 at launch, but that seems to be much better now, no?

There are a number of reasons why GCN might still be progressing with driver improvements while Kepler is effectively flatlining that requires no maliciousness/incompetence on NVidia's behalf (including, you know, newer games/Gameworks suite being designed to towards the compute strengths of Maxwell (and GCN is along for the ride) vs Kepler's architecture). And/or AMD's limited resources meant the release drivers sucked and they are continually finding new tweaks on older hardware that is still in full production.

The whole discussion is honestly ridiculous. None of these reviews can actually tease out what's going on without including these 10,000 confounding variables.
 
I just got a used 970 for 270 from amazon. had gtx 660 for longest time. its pretty sweet.
 
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