All around best GPU right now for $350?

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Spitfire7

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Hey guys, I have been doing my research, looking at charts, and done just about everything except asked the community about this.

I have right around $350 to spend and I like nVidia cards. I started looking at the GTX660, then GTX960, then realized I think I found the one that will best suit me for the next 5 6 years if not longer... the EVGA GTX 970 FTW+. I saw this sell recently for $330, but I missed it because I didn't have the money yet. The sales are currently off and I am looking and ready to buy. If you guys see it for an amazing price, let me know ASAP. I will be upgrading from a XFX GTX 260 which has been an amazing card.

So main question is, since I am so focused on this card right now, is there another one that I should be taking a look at that will be better or just as good for cheaper? I want good customer support and all the cool features like upgrade, replacements if broken and good warranty. Please let me know. Thanks guys.
 
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Karadjgne

Karadjgne

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Evga has the best service and support bar none. My experiences with Asus have been good, msi was blah, and Gigabyte lost the gpu then claimed it was my fault. As for other brands like PNY, Zotac, inno3d etc, some ppl love them, some don't, I've never worked with them.

As far as 970 performance out of the box, Gigabyte is #1, msi #2, Evga #3 and Asus trails the pack. In oc, msi #1, Evga #2, Asus #3, Gigabyte #4 but only because they have so little headroom with such high clocks to start with.

These will also vary, depending on the card, the FTW having higher clocks will OC less.

Realistically though, for all around performance, either the MSI gaming 4G, or the Evga FTW are equally impressive, but msi doesn't offer the services Evga does.
 
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Spitfire7

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Well, the SC has a lot lower clocks and I probably wont be doing much overclocking. I like it fast right out of the box with factory fast specs at this point. So I am hoping to still get the FTW+.
 
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jerdle

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Getting a GeForce card and not overclocking kind of destroys the reason for getting an nvida GPU. The "factory overclocks" are all mild and don't push the card. The 970 can beat a 390 if you overclock it sufficiently, but if you don't you're just spending more money on a card that doesn't perform as well.
 
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Spitfire7

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Good point, so let me be more clear. Out of the box, I probably wont overclock since I am getting awesome 30 to 40fps on most if not all my games such as BF3 and 4, COD's etc all on high or max settings. I am coming from the GTX 260, so anything this card will give me, is going to be leaps and bounds above what I already have, but the cool thing is, when that new super super powerful game comes out that destroys most computers, I will at that time overclock and feel pretty good about myself and my decision lol. You know? Believe it or not, I have had my card for what.. 10 years or so? When did that come out? Well never mind about that, but it has lasted me that long and played these games flawlessly until the new direcX thing came out where my GPU is not compatible. So now I MUST upgrade. You guys might say, in this line of thinking, then why not just get the standard GTX970 since there will be drastic improvement? The reason is, because I do like getting the best of what I can get within my category and I just recently saw the FTW+ go for $330. Darn, darn, darn I missed it. He had 4 brand new ones on ebay and I missed it. So thats what my head is at right now. Your thoughts?
 
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jerdle

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my thoughts are if you plan on overclocking later why not do it when you get it to enjoy the full benefits for its whole lifetime...

In any case, if you had a side by side comparison of two different 970s, you're unlikely to be able to discern a difference between the ftw+ and a competing card.
 
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17seconds

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Quote:
"You can find the GTX 970 online for $310, which is definitely a better option in terms of performance, power draw, and noise—pretty much everything."
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/R9_390_PCS_Plus/35.html
perfrel_1920.gif
 
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Karadjgne

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I just bought an Asus gtx970 STRIX. Why Asus? Because I can OC my current Asus 660ti to slightly better performance than a stock Gigabyte 960 G1. Considering the 960 is around 1/2way between a 760 and a 770, the 760 being about 20% higher than a 660ti and the fact that the G1 is close to same performance as a 770, I figure I've stretched my little 660ti to close to 770 standards. To me that's not too shabby. Especially when ppl say Asus sucks at OC.
 
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Spitfire7

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Hey guys, I went with the GTW970 FTW+ and super happy with it, except there seems to be a small glitch happening. Can you guys help me out?

I was running stable for over 8 years on a GTX 260 and continually upgrading my computer components until it was time to upgrade the GPU. I just purchased the EVGA GTX 970 FTW+ and games and everything else looks amazing, but when surfing the web, the test sometimes flickers, flashes, somewhat disappears, and is affected by the mouse cursors when I hover over it.

I have also been using Windows Media Player for all my video needs for over 8 years and now that I have this 970 I can watch the video in full screen, but then it automatically comes out of full screen and the top bar is solid white and the bottom bar where the play/stop is also all white. When I put the cursor over the white bar where the play button used to be, it appears again until I move the cursor off. I can't get back into full screen and then the video blacks out and sometimes freezes from then on.

EVGA didn't know how to fix this so they gave me a new card. It turns out this is still happening with a brand new card. I have tried the drivers that came with the card on the CD as well as the latest drivers from the website. So far nothing has solved this issue. I have re-installed directX as well. I am not overclocking either.

It sounds like an issue with windows, HDMI, refresh rate 60MHz or 59MHz, or something within windows right? I have also installed all the add on plugins for WMP as well. My windows is also all updated.

How can I fix this.

My Specs:
ASUS Z97-Pro
Quad Core i7 4970k 4GHz
8GB 2400DDR3 G.Skill (Trident X Series)
GTX 970FTW+
OCZ 850 GamerXtreme PSU
1 TB HHD
1 TB HHD backup
Windows 7
 
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Karadjgne

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You say 'reinstalled'. You are coming from a 260 which while it has the basic same drivers as all the nvidia cards, all the drivers are not the same. A simple uninstall may not erase every driver, as with most software, you'll end up with remnants, especially in your registry. You'll need to use a driver cleaner to totally remove everything from everywhere before installing new drivers. Don't bother with the cd, any drivers on it are already outdated. DL and save a full clean version, wipe out totally the old drivers, the install from the save.

Doing this will pretty much eliminate the drivers as a cause. You've already eliminated the card as a cause with the replacement, no way it's even remotely possible it's from the same batch. This leaves software issues and other hardware issues. I'd check your cables, change ports, use dvi instead of hdmi, plug mouse into different USB if possible. Make sure your bios is updated, Windows is updated as possible. The more possible causes you can eliminate, the easier it becomes as the field narrows. It's even possible that the gpu just doesn't like the ripple on the 12v rail of your psu.
 
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Spitfire7

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Oops, I didn't mean to select as the best solution yet, since I haven't tried all those thing yet. I did plug in the DVI from GPU to VGA PC slot on TV and everything works perfectly fine. It's gotta be something with the HDMI. I have tried two different HDMI cables and both are doing the same thing. I also, always do the custom Clean Install when doing drivers.

For some reason this doesn't seem to be a common issue. I think if it is the same thing, it might be under the same issues as windows 7, monitor, or graphics card fuzzy, blurry text/image. Some of those threads have seemed to be similar, but with not fix yet.
 
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Karadjgne

Karadjgne

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What inputs does your monitor have? If there is an alternative to hdmi like a dvi-d or dp, I'd use that instead since you've basically narrowed it down to a hdmi problem. It may not even be the pc, it may be an issue with the hdmi port on the monitor. It may also be a cable issue. There are different grades of cables. The 970 has hdmi 2.0, and for this you'll need either a high speed hdmi or high speed with ethernet cable for 1080p or better. A standard hdmi cable or standard hdmi with ethernet cable won't exactly work as those only support the bandwidth of hdmi 1.0 to 1.3 and resolutions of 720p - 1080i. If you have an older monitor that's hdmi 1.0-1.3 it'll also be funky as hdmi 1.4 required either a new chipset or firmware upgrade to accept the newer bandwidth limits
 
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Spitfire7

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I am using my 55" HDTV. It has HDMI, all the standard TV inputs, and a VGA PC input which I have no issues using. I also just upgraded to a new high speed HDMI cable and I am still seeing these issues. The cable I was using has this written on the side (AWM Style 20276 80ºC 30V VW-1 HDMI 1.3b CAT.2) The new cable has this written on the side (High Speed HDMI cable E119932 AWM 20276 80ºC 30V VW-1 Copartner). I think you might be on to something, so please let me know about these two cables I just listed. My TV is about 6 years old and is a 55" VIZIO.
 
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Karadjgne

Karadjgne

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The new cable is high speed hdmi, so is hdmi 2.0 capable, same as the card. Your 55" HDTV may not be though, so might be having a problem with bandwidth population. You might check with TV manufacturer website and see if there is a firmware update for your model.
 
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Spitfire7

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I have some new information. Come to find out even the VGA port is also having the same issues now. So its not limited just to the HDMI. Now what? Should I send this card back and try to do an upgrade to a GTX 980? Would that solve the problems possibly or actually create more?

Is this card just not compatible with my setup? I will look into the firmware.
 
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Spitfire7

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I think I figured this weird very odd problem out. I just spend an hour on the phone with EVGA to no avail. They pretty much had me install really old drivers and still we were seeing the problem. They had no idea and even when escalated the higher up tech still couldn't figure it out. We did a full uninstall diver cleaner too. I hung up frustrated with a prayer and persistence I just started messing with everything. I opened WMP and played the video. Same thing happened. I closed and disabled the WMP codec that comes up that I installed a long long time ago which worked fine on them GTX260. I also noticed at this time that Precision X16 tool wasn't open either. I opened up the WMP video and I absolutely could not get the issue to come back. It worked, but what worked, how did I fix it? I waiting and waited and opened and closed and no issues. I opened Precision X tool and within 15 seconds big problem. I restarted the computer to now narrow down these two programs. I turned off Precision X and only had the video play with the codecs that automatically come up. Problem happened again. I closed the codecs and only had Precision X and the video open and the problem happened again. I then uninstalled the codes and turned off Precision X16 and restarted. It worked, no issues at all. I can't get the problem to come back. What the heck!!!! WOW, you have no idea how good it feels to have found this needle in the haystack. So no one on here, no one at EVGA, and no one on the internet has had this issue before? Well let this be the first of threads to have fully fixed this issue. Prayer really does work. I sure wish I did that a long time ago. Thank God because moments after my prayer it was fixed. Ask the good Lord and you shall receive. Thanks and thank you all for helping with this.
 
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