Reason not to get a GTX 970?

[DJ12]

I'm finally going to be building a new PC and was going to buy a Sapphire Vapor-X 290x, but the 970 is just better in all benchmarks, especially the EVGA FTW+ which is what I intent to purchase, but I've heard the internet uproar about the usable 3.5 gb of memory, not 4gb as advertised. I've read that the driver only reports 3.5 gb to games, although it's possible to target the slower ram in some benchmarks.

I am going to be 1080p gaming, nothing higher so is there a reason I shouldn't get the 970?

So my question is, will the issue bother me in the short to medium term?

I have no problem upgrading the GPU in a couple of years so a similar priced card.

The PC will be based on Core i7 4790k and will be reasonable kitted out with an SSD, few TBs of HDDs and 16gb ram.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I'm finally going to be building a new PC and was going to buy a Sapphire Vapor-X 290x, but the 970 is just better in all benchmarks, especially the EVGA FTW+ which is what I intent to purchase, but I've heard the internet uproar about the usable 3.5 gb of memory, not 4gb as advertised. I've read that the driver only reports 3.5 gb to games, although it's possible to target the slower ram in some benchmarks.

I am going to be 1080p gaming, nothing higher so is there a reason I shouldn't get the 970?

So my question is, will the issue bother me in the short to medium term?

I have no problem upgrading the GPU in a couple of years so a similar priced card.

The PC will be based on Core i7 4790k and will be reasonable kitted out with an SSD, few TBs of HDDs and 16gb ram.

Personally I wouldn't be concerned about the memory issue, especially if you'd be happy to upgrade in a couple of years. However with the announcement of AMD's next gen seemingly just around the corner I'd be seriously tempted to wait a month or two to see what happens. I image a 390 (non-X) will handily beat the 970, likely for a similar price and will feature the full 4GB of (HBM) memory.

 

[homerdog]

I have a GTX970 and it is freaking fantastic. I've gone through quite a few graphics cards in my days but I think this is my favorite GPU of all time. It is super quiet and super, super fast. Overclocks like crazy but that's not even necessary given the stock performance. Oh yeah and DSR rules. I use it in almost all games (I have a 1080p monitor as well).

The NVIDIA drivers are all around really solid, and they basically always release a new driver before a big game is released. One of my other PCs has an HD7950 and while it is a great card the AMD drivers typically lag behind NVIDIA, especially when it comes to new releases. Not to say the AMD drivers are bad, but the NVIDIA drivers are extremely good and updated more frequently.

 

[DJ12]

I'm going water cooled cpu (Via an AIO unit corsair h110i which is silent in default mode) so I've kind ruled out amd as they always run hotter and the ftw fans don't even turn on until it hits 60c so will more than likely not even operate unless I'm gaming when I won't care as I'll have my headphones on.

I'm not anti amd the last 3 cards I've had have all been from them, but I feel like a change to be honest.

Out of interest homerdog, what are your system specs and what fps do you get at 1080p on average?

 

[silent_guy]

In practice, the differences between GPUs of different brands are very minor. Nvidia is currently ahead in terms of techno geek aspects (perf/mm, perf/W, DX12), but none of that should materially impact your game play.
And since AMD is in a price war with seemingly only itself, their perf/$ is very good.
If I were to buy a GPU today, it'd be a GTX970, but I'm an Nvidia fan and I'm willing to pay a few dollars more, but there are a million happy owners of an R9 290.
It's hard to go wrong with either GPU.

And, yes, I wouldn't worry about the 3.5GB.

 

[Malo]

I'm on a 2560x1080 monitor and regularly use DSR. I love my 970 for all the reasons homerdog stated.

 

[homerdog]

Out of interest homerdog, what are your system specs and what fps do you get at 1080p on average?

Nothing special. i7-3770K stock, 16GB 1600MHz, couple of Intel SSDs (no RAID). I get constant 60+FPS in all games that I've played unless I go crazy on the DSR. Even with moderate (1.5-2x) DSR I get 60+FPS in almost all games. My monitor doesn't go higher than 60Hz so I don't pay attention to anything higher than that

 

[DJ12]

Thanks for the advice. I've gone ahead and ordered my new components and the evga 970 ftw+ hopefully they all come soon as I'm an exited as a child on xmas morning lol

 

[Deleted member 13524]

It's a terrible time to buy a new graphics card. Wait a couple of weeks to see what's coming up from AMD, and then enjoy either a better product from AMD at the same price or a substantially cheaper GTX970 from nVidia.

 

[DJ12]

Well, I had money burning a hole in my bank account so went ahead with it. Never really had a good nvidia card before, so decided to give them a try this time. (Had a couple AMD ones in the past - 4790 & 7870) I think the last nvidia card I had was a geforce 2 TI.

Could've had the 980 but after reading up it seemed like just throwing money down the drain for a few extra (unneeded) fps. Lowest framerate I've seen so far was 52 in the benchmark for Hitman Absolution, so all very playable.

I've overclocked it by more than 200mhz and it ran stable, so if I start hitting the wall I can always increase the clock (although I'm running it standard now as everything is playable)