GPU Advice: GTX 670 SLI vs GTX 980

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Woznet

Woznet

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Jul 15, 2011
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I have an EVGA GeForce GTX 670 FTW 2GB graphics card, which has worked great for the past 2.5 years. With the release of Middle-Earth: Shadows of Mordor I have come to start to notice that this game in particular is not running as nice as I could like it to. I also will be purchasing Dragon Age: Inquisition, and chances are that game will not do any better then Shadows of Mordor on my current GPU.

Focusing on Shadows of Mordor and Dragon Age: Inquisition, would getting a second EVGA GTX 670 FTX 2GB card for SLI be enough to run these games on High settings around 50-60fps? I have been thinking that a GTX 980 would be a good investment, however I would like to see a card with more vram. I know 8gb vram is not "needed" however with Shadows of Mordor Ultra DLC suggesting 6gb vram to use the Ultra settings, an 8gb card seems like good future proofing to me.

 
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unknownofprob

unknownofprob

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Oct 3, 2013
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You already have one GTX 670 and I wouldn't just scrap it yet. I would wait for the meantime, I don't suggest you buy another GTX 670 as that is not a worthwhile investment and scrapping the GTX 670 is also not the best of options. I would advise buying a card later on, possibly even Nvidia's next card series.

"Shadows of Mordor Ultra DLC suggesting 6gb vram to use the Ultra settings"

I have seen this but it isn't needed.
 
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H

HKILLER

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Jan 8, 2013
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Middle-Earth: Shadows of Mordor is badly coded.that's all there is to it they will fix it later on they are just saying this cuz it's probably rushed and through patches it will get fixed...the game doesn't look like it would actually need that much vRAM...i would say a 970 does good...
 
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Woznet

Woznet

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Jul 15, 2011
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Thanks for all the responses. Personally I have been thinking of holding off till the next release of nvidia cards, while I like the GTX 980 and the price is tempting I think the next card is going to be well worth the wait.

While I agree that gtx 670 sli vs 980 - the 980 is the better choice, however if I can spend $100 to get the games to a good enough quality/fps to keep me happy, opposed to spending $550 I think the $100 is a better option. Especially since I plan on getting the next card when I change my system a bit, I would like to go with water cooling, and I need larger SSD's 240gb is not enough.

What kind of performance could I expect from adding a second gtx 670?
With SLI how important is it to have the both gpu's be the exact same? Would using a gtx 680 or better with the 670 be better?

What should I worry about when purchasing a used GPU? Should I avoid buying a used GPU altogether?

With regards to water cooling the gpu, are closed loop liquid cooling worth looking at or am I better off using/building a more traditional system?
 
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mfeele01

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Feb 20, 2013
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I know I'm a little late to the convo but I have 2 gtx 670's in sli. I purchased these maybe 2 years ago I think. I built my own computer and put premium parts in it so there would be no bottlenecks during high demand times like playing games. I had a budget so I could go crazy but I did get an i7-3770k, a 1200 watt power supply (I know total overkill), and 16gb ram.

Shadow of mordor runs great with just a few graphics settings off of ultra.

Dragon Age Inquisition runs well but definitely not on all ultra stats. I play on 2460x1440 res and have dialed back a good number of graphics settings but a lot of these are going from ultra to high (not a huge visual difference but a noticeable increase in consistently good fps). On 1920x1080 it runs even better but I still can't do all ultra settings without frequent fps drops. Also I'm getting texture flickering which is a known issue with sli and that game. I'm not sure if it's just an issue with my cards or any card in sli. I also get jittery panning like if I'm looking along the horizon with dragon age. But look it still looks awesome and I am picky. Running cards in SLI definitely does have an advantage and could benefit you in other things than just gaming, but right now I think you get better, smoother gameplay with less issues with a single GPU. I'd get one of the oc'd cards like EVGA's gtx 980 ACX 2.0

My advice is get the second best single card on the market at the time you are wanting to buy. For Nvidia assuming that the gtx 990 is coming, I'd buy the gtx 980.

They also had posted in the ea forums they recommend to not overclock you GPU. Dragon age inquisition is still buggy but SLI as a graphics solution is still buggy too.

 
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