LosOjos Posted January 22, 2015 Posted January 22, 2015 NVIDIA's newest GPU crams in Maxwell power without a hefty price Sounds like an amazing card for the cash, and makes 4K gaming at a budget seem like a real possibility for the next generation (1060?)
sonofsanta Posted January 22, 2015 Posted January 22, 2015 Looks like a winner: matches the 770 so it has the generational improvement it should have, but much more power efficient and quiet. Seems to compete with the R9 285 whilst being much more power efficient. A 4GB version could be a no-brainer at a certain price point.
LosOjos Posted January 22, 2015 Author Posted January 22, 2015 Looks like a winner: matches the 770 so it has the generational improvement it should have, but much more power efficient and quiet. Seems to compete with the R9 285 whilst being much more power efficient. A 4GB version could be a no-brainer at a certain price point. If they can get this to the £200 or below mark (like previous x60s) and 4GB, I'll buy one. EDIT: I know RRP is more than £200 on the 760, but you can find them easily for less
sonofsanta Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 Starting at around £160 for a 2GB version, which is very nice... so 4GB for under £200 seems likely.
LosOjos Posted January 23, 2015 Author Posted January 23, 2015 Starting at around £160 for a 2GB version, which is very nice... so 4GB for under £200 seems likely. Wow, that's cheaper than the 760 is now! Fingers crossed they do make a 4GB, still tempted by this anyway... or do I save the extra for a 970? [i'll probably actually buy neither, because life has a nasty habit of getting in the way of luxuries!]
sonofsanta Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 [i'll probably actually buy neither, because life has a nasty habit of getting in the way of luxuries!] Amen to that TBH I'd say 970 - comes with 4GB, and the memory bus is twice as wide, where memory bandwidth is the limiting factor on the 960; you can only overclock memory so far to bump your performance up on that, whereas the 970 can be massively OCed on the core to get near a 980. I reckon 960 is what I'd tell friends on a budget to get, but 970 is what I'd get for me
LosOjos Posted January 23, 2015 Author Posted January 23, 2015 Yeah for an extra £100, I may as well wait if I'm going to do it I suppose. By the time I have the money for a 970, there may well be a next gen card out! Have also given serious consideration to SLI'ing my 760, do I remember right that you have an SLI setup?
sonofsanta Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 I had a Crossfire set up - 2 x 5770 - and won't ever bother again, TBH. Even without the driver grief of new games (Witcher 2 had some interesting effects at launch; there's little I've done in my life as geeky as daily checking the Twitter of a GPU driver developer to see if there's a new CAP out yet), I spent more of my time fretting that my settings were at their best to get the most out of the GPUs than I did actually enjoying the game. I'd never just enjoy a game for looking pretty, as I'd always be wondering "could it be prettier?" I'm on a single 680 now, that I got cheap just before the 780 came out (about 15 months ago now) and it's a beauty. Asus DirectCUII cooler, mmmmm. Anyway, 760 to 960 wouldn't be a big enough improvement to warrant the move, I don't think; even nVidia are only pushing it as an upgrade for 460/560/660 users. Hexus have it within spitting distance in their benchmarks: Review: Asus Strix GTX 960 DirectCU II - Graphics - HEXUS.net - Page 5 I reckon there's no point in upgrading until you're going to get twice the performance, which is usually about three generations if you're buying the same class of card, and you can drop a generation for every class you move up. So a 660 should be doubled by the 1060, is already doubled by the 970, and was doubled by the 780. It's a rough rule of thumb, but it seems to hold up for now. All of which means you need a 980... but luckily an OC 970 gets close enough to a 980 if you can't wait 1
mac_shinobi Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 On facebook --> Find the Kitguru facebook page, like and subscribe to there page --> find the post ref the GTX 960 ( as kitguru and nvidia have paired together for a give away ) --> Make a comment on that post and they are picking 2 winners on Monday ( can't recall if this monday coming or 2nd of feb ) and 2 people will get / win a GTX 960
Gaz Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 I just upgraded from a 570 to a 970 and I just bought a second 970 today, its probably one of the best value for money SLI configs nvidia has ever done with the low price of the GPU and the MAXWELL's are super efficient. 1
LosOjos Posted January 23, 2015 Author Posted January 23, 2015 I just upgraded from a 570 to a 970 and I just bought a second 970 today, its probably one of the best value for money SLI configs nvidia has ever done with the low price of the GPU and the MAXWELL's are super efficient. Are you having similar issues with SLI as @sonofsanta had with crossfire? Got to be honest, I gave up on AMD cards because I was constantly plagued by driver issues so it doesn't surprise me that crossfire only adds to the issues, but is SLI any better? I'm not much of a "tweaker" with games - if it's a game I'm really in to I might tweak the settings to get the best I can (assuming the auto "ultra" setting is too high) but other than that, I'm happy to use the highest possible auto setting that runs smoothly.
Gaz Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 Well I will get the second card tomorrow. In my opinion nvidia is a far better GPU designer than AMD/ATI I have had 2 ATI cards, one was OK but lived a short life and the next was dead on arrival, I've just stopped buying them ever since their drivers are bloated and terrible, nvidia just works. I've had nvidia cards with my first being a Riva TNT2 right up to my current 970 and they just work and perform great with the only downside that they cost more than AMD/ATI but I'd rather pay more and get something that isn't going to give me grief. Most games should be designed out of the box to work fine with SLI despite most of them being console ports these days, always keep your drivers up to date for any fixes and the games patched. 2 games I'm looking forward to playing are evolve and dying light.
sonofsanta Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 All multi-GPU set ups can give you problems with microstutter as well: Multi-GPU micro-stuttering captured on video - The Tech Report I seem to recall nVidia saying something about smoothing out delivery and mitigating the issue, but I forget. Not everyone is bothered by the juddering effect, but it annoyed me. The idea of higher frame rates is to make everything feel smoother, and multi-GPU undoes that with microstutter. 1
LosOjos Posted January 23, 2015 Author Posted January 23, 2015 I seem to recall nVidia saying something about smoothing out delivery and mitigating the issue, but I forget. Not everyone is bothered by the juddering effect, but it annoyed me. The idea of higher frame rates is to make everything feel smoother, and multi-GPU undoes that with microstutter. That's a deal breaker for me - hitting that 60fps benchmark that appears to be the minimum for lots of enthusiasts doesn't bother me anywhere nearly as much as getting rid of stutter, even if it means playing at 30fps...
mac_shinobi Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 So maybe it is a bad idea to do multi gpu on AMD or Nvidia ?
sonofsanta Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 So maybe it is a bad idea to do multi gpu on AMD or Nvidia ? I know that was the advice three years ago, when all this came out in discussion first; not sure if the prevailing wisdom has changed but most of the review sites still recommend One GPU To Rule Them All rather than two in combination. 1
Gaz Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 Well for me the price is x2 970s vs a single 980 is worth it for the performance gain I like my games to look pretty and always stick everything on max settings 1080p x2 970s will run you about £500 if you shop around whereas a single 980 will be just over £400 for that extra £100 yes there will be more power consumption but also a massive FPS increase GeForce GTX 980 2 and 3-way SLI review - DX11: Metro - Last Light The difference between x2 980 and x2 970 is only a few frames per second less but a price difference of £300
Arthur Posted January 24, 2015 Posted January 24, 2015 GTX 970 Memory (VRAM) Allocation Bug Nvidia hasn't confirmed the bug yet, but it would be annoying if the GTX 960 had the same issue.
Arthur Posted January 24, 2015 Posted January 24, 2015 (edited) NVIDIA responds to GTX 970 3.5GB memory issue a.k.a Don't buy a GTX 970 (or 4GB 960 if one gets released) if your games use more than 3.5GB VRAM? Edited January 24, 2015 by Arthur 1
sonofsanta Posted January 27, 2015 Posted January 27, 2015 Report: 4GB of RAM coming to GTX 960 in March - The Tech Report 1
Arthur Posted January 27, 2015 Posted January 27, 2015 GeForce GTX 970: Correcting The Specs & Exploring Memory Allocation Bringing things to a close, I must admit I was a bit taken aback when NVIDIA first told us that they needed to correct the specifications for the GTX 970. We’ve had NVIDIA decline to disclose sensitive information before only to reveal it later, but they’ve never had to do something quite like this before. In retrospect these new specifications make more sense given the performance and device specs we’re seeing, but it certainly is going to leave egg on NVIDIA’s face as this never should have happened in the first place. As for the GTX 970’s underlying memory configuration and memory allocation techniques, this is going to be a more difficult matter to bring closure to. Without question the GTX 970’s unusual memory configuration introduces a layer of complexity that isn’t there with the GTX 980, and as a result it’s extremely difficult to quantify better and worse in this case. It’s worse than the GTX 980 – and it is a lower tier card after all – but how much worse is no longer an easy answer to provide. At its heart the GTX 970’s configuration is a compromise between GPU yields, card prices, and memory capacity. The easiest argument to make in that regard is that it should have shipped with a full 64 ROP configuration and skipped all of these complexities entirely. But on the whole and looking at the options for configurations without this additional complexity, a 3GB/48 ROP GTX 970 would have been underspeced, and with so much of the GTX 970’s success story being NVIDIA’s ability to launch the card at $329 I’m not sure if the other option is much better. At least on paper this looks like the best compromise NVIDIA could make. In the end while I am disappointed that these details haven’t come out until now, I am satisfied that we now finally have enough information in hand to truly understand what’s going on with the GTX 970 and what its strengths and weaknesses are as a result of memory segmentation. Meanwhile for real world performance, right now this is an ongoing test with the GTX 970. As the highest-profile card to use memory segmentation it’s the first time NVIDIA has been under the microscope like this, but it’s far from the first time they’ve used this technology. But so far with this new information we have been unable to break the GTX 970, which means NVIDIA is likely on the right track and the GTX 970 should still be considered as great a card now as it was at launch. In which case what has ultimately changed today is not the GTX 970, but rather our perception of it.
Gaz Posted January 27, 2015 Posted January 27, 2015 I've not hit the 970 memory allocation bug on my setup, the most graphically intense game I've got is Far Cry 4 and using ultra settings on 1080P the memory usage doesn't go high enough. 1440P users will be most effected by this and people wanting to do 4K stuff. I was worried about it at first but now I don't think its really an issue as I've gone from a 570 to 970 SLI the increase is massive for me.
mckev1993 Posted January 28, 2015 Posted January 28, 2015 Still rockin' a 3 year old GTX 660 but my next upgrade will be a 970, the 960 isn't worth it in my opinion.
flyinghaggis Posted January 30, 2015 Posted January 30, 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1422579428&v=spZJrsssPA0&x-yt-cl=85114404 2
simpsonj Posted February 6, 2015 Posted February 6, 2015 Dabs are selling it for £149.98 So very tempted...
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