Is GTX 970 overkill at 1600x900?

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bamj6

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Oct 28, 2008
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I have a ITX GTX 960 that i'm happy with it especially with my computer specs, case flow, gaming resolution and games I play and am planning to play. By the time I want to go higher than this, there'll be a newer, better ITX card that succeeds this that's a bigger gain than a 970. I bought it for the Witcher 3 promo and am looking to play a preordered GTA V.

With that said, if I was able to buy an ITX 970 at BH Photo Manhattan (where I bought the 960) , would it have been overkill at 1600x900?

The 980 is way overkill at that resolution along with it being too big to fit in my case. and the 970's that were in store to buy are also too big for my case.
 
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drewhoo

drewhoo

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Yes. The 970 is overkill at 1080p, except maybe, MAYBE not overkill at 1080p 144hz. I used a 970 on a 1440p, and it kept everything in the high 50's on Far Cry 4 with settings turned to Ultra.
 
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bgunner

bgunner

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Feb 13, 2009
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This would depend on the CPU. Having extra performance is nice when you can add it to AA levels. But if your CPU would bottleneck it then the extra would go to waste because the GPU would not get fed enough info to keep it working at full force.
 
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bamj6

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Mine is a stock I7 2600K, which compared to the non LGA 2011 processors, is not a dramatic performance loss between the best ones. Even if Skylake comes, I still have the Ivy Bridge trumpcard if need be.
 
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bgunner

bgunner

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the extra performance would not be a waste in the future as games start to require better and better GPU's. In the mean time the extra could have gone into doing high level AA. You may still be able to do that to a small degree with your 960 just not quite as much. Obviously if the card did not fit in the case then this is all hypothetical.

ITX's are great for a living room HTPC but the size really limits the GPU that can be used. Always a trade off, Right?
 
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bamj6

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Well what I'm doing with the 960 now is exactly what I did with my old card.

I turned the Sapphire 6950 to a 6970 via shaders and OC. That made me go up a GPU tier according to their hiearchy. I'm overclocking this card up to a defacto gtx 870. Which is a 770 but 10-15 degrees cooler at load and will meet the exact recommended requirements of Witcher 3. Gotta love the Maxwell technology.

I admit if I was able to buy a 970 in store that fit my case (all 970's in BH photo store were longer than my old card), I would've overclocked that to a stock 980 as well, but doing that at 900p is a bigger waste than it already is.
 
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17seconds

17seconds

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With DSR, overkill is a thing of the past. Even on your monitor you can enable DSR factors that can render your games as high as 4K resolution. You'll find that suddenly your "overkill" GTX 970 is hardly enough to produce playable framerates consistently.
 
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pomps74

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True
 
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bamj6

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This time last year, the title of the thread changes to 770, but the arguments stay the same

The way I see GeForce Experience, Im waiting until GTA V and Witcher 3 come out. If I'm already maxing Dying Light at my res now, I won't need its optimization until then
 
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