Selecting a future-proof card (NVIDIA)

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
M

Malzey

Reputable
Nov 2, 2015
35
0
4,540
NVidia only, please. (Sorry Ati peeps)
No seriously, I want a future proof NVIDIA card.

The past week I've been looking to upgrade my 560 ti DS SC SLI to something that will hopefully last me another 5-6 years.
Now is the time to upgrade because my cards struggle to not overheat when playing Witcher 3 on Medium settings.

Here are my current important specs so that I can avoid compatibility issues (which shouldn't be an issue)

Intel i7 2700k oc'd to 4.4 GHz
ASUS P8-Z77 mobo
8 gb Corsair vengeance RAM (4 chips)
Corsair RMi 850 watt PSU
Evga 560 ti DS Superclocked in SLI

I'd really like to go with EVGA on this one because of Precision X and also the ACX fans are good for overclocking.

The 970 I was looking at was this one in Canadian dollars:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=14-487-088

It is basically as high as I'm willing to go in price otherwise I wouldn't be asking and I would get a 980 Kingpin.

However looking through the 970 I've heard of the flaw in its VRAM where it splits the memory with the 3.5 memory and .5 and performance drops after 3.5 is loaded (I'm aware this is a huge discussion and I've read about it).

basically all I need to know is: is the 970 SSC worth it, and will it last me another 5 years?

Edit: possible 6gb 970 model?
 
Solution
ianyanian
If you don't want to wait until Pascal comes out, go for GTX 960 or higher with 4GB VRAM.
Most games today use 2GB and sometimes 3GB+ (high resolution textures, shadows, etc.).
1080p is the most mainstream resolution today and perhaps 2-3 years later 1440p or 4K can be the mainstream resolution.
The higher the resolution, the more VRAM it needs.

If your motherboard has two x16 PCIe slots, you can add up another card a year or two years later (roughly half the price for an used card).
Moreover, with the new DirectX12, your total VRAM will be combined with the second card (8GB total). DirectX11 can't do this.
Sort by date Sort by votes
X

xapoc

Reputable
Jan 16, 2015
845
0
5,360
I was going to say if vram is concern get 390, but I have 970s and as an example I play skyrim with over 20GB of texture mods and vram is not an issue for me. I dont get any stuttering, I also seen people play BF 4 on ultra at 1440p and no issues there.
Will it last 5 year, it will but will it perform well with games that come out in 5 years? no one will know..
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Xtergo

Xtergo

Reputable
May 4, 2015
908
4
5,365
If i am correct recently a day or ago ubisoft announced that in order to run its latest title 'Assasisn creed syndicate" on 1080p you need 3Gb Vram and 4Gb vram on QHD+ so here you go the card isn't future proof or not even present proof if you know what i mean.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
M

Malzey

Reputable
Nov 2, 2015
35
0
4,540


Id call it more of an intentional flaw than a feature, I mean I'll gladly look into ATI stuff but I really prefer the efficiency of the maxwell architecture, it's a huge selling point for me
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
g-unit1111

g-unit1111

Titan
Moderator
Jul 27, 2011
42,535
812
104,940


There's no such thing as "future proof". The 970 is a great card if you're going to be sticking with 1080P for the long haul. Want to move to 1440P, 4K, or Oculus? You're looking at a 970 SLI, 980, 980 SLI, or a 980TI.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
M

Malzey

Reputable
Nov 2, 2015
35
0
4,540


Seriously? But isn't assassins creed a title that doesn't care about memory saving and such? I noticed that for unity, how the specs were rediculously high (although it makes sense, they could've done more to make it run on most computers)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
M

Malzey

Reputable
Nov 2, 2015
35
0
4,540


Don't plan on 4K until it costs as much as a 1440p. My 5 year old dell monitor is still kicking and it's great, I think it's max res is 1560 x 1050 and it "looks" higher res to me because I sit farther away than most
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
M

Malzey

Reputable
Nov 2, 2015
35
0
4,540

That's what I thought about my 560 ti, 5 years ago it was running everything at max with no issues, I recently got a second 560 exclusively to play Witcher 3 without my card turning into a flamethrower but it's destined I need to upgrade. Maybe a 970 for now, surely 4gb is enough for the next 5 years, I mean 1gb did last me till this long and I'm not a stickler for max settings
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Kari

Kari

Splendid
Jun 16, 2004
3,844
1
23,160

the next gen cards are supposed to get massive energy efficiency improvements thanks to a new 14/16nm finfet process (and massive amounts of HBM2 vram too like up to 16GB) but they wont launch until summer -16, so it is a bit of a wait...

but I'm personally waiting for them atm :D
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
M

Malzey

Reputable
Nov 2, 2015
35
0
4,540

Yeah I figure I need to upgrade my 8gb soon to at least 16, but those requirements are absolutely rediculous.
Two years ago we had games coming out most people can max, and now people need to spend over $1000 just to run them at all?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
M

Malzey

Reputable
Nov 2, 2015
35
0
4,540

Oh lord I might actually consider waiting that long, providing my 560's can run Just cause 3 (still no requirements on that game yet?)

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
M

Malzey

Reputable
Nov 2, 2015
35
0
4,540


That spoke to me.

Pascal? Is that like a new architecture? (I'm a bit out of the loop these days)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
g-unit1111

g-unit1111

Titan
Moderator
Jul 27, 2011
42,535
812
104,940


Yeah I agree, I want a 4K monitor and the Acer I'm looking at is easily going to cost somewhere in the $600 range, and that's after the 980TI that I'm planning on buying to accompany it.

Remember the 970 isnt 4gb its 3.5
Click to expand...

Please don't go there, there's several thousand pages of info on this topic on this forum and we don't want this thread devolving into that. It's been debunked and debunked thoroughly by NVIDIA themselves and every tech blog and site out there.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Kari

Kari

Splendid
Jun 16, 2004
3,844
1
23,160

I'm more worried I'm unable to play Fallout4 at all since my 6 year old 1 gig card doesn't really meet the minimun requirements (NVIDIA GTX 550 Ti 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB or equivalent)
but we'll see if i can resist the urge to upgrade, maybe some cheap second hand 2gb model in the mean time :DD
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Kari

Kari

Splendid
Jun 16, 2004
3,844
1
23,160

yeah it's the new arch they'll be using at the 16nm process, basically it is just maxwell with hbm2 and some compute tweaks. But the smaller process node will mean it'll have more shaders etc, so overall lot faster at any given power envelope.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
g-unit1111

g-unit1111

Titan
Moderator
Jul 27, 2011
42,535
812
104,940


A 550TI is a very weak GPU by today's standards. You're better off investing in something like a 4GB 960 or 970 to play games like Fallout 4. I just bought a 4GB 960 EVGA FTW and it's a pretty awesome card. For my 1080P TV it should be able to handle Fallout 4 very nicely.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
M

Malzey

Reputable
Nov 2, 2015
35
0
4,540

Well fallout 4 looks like the same general requirements as just cause 3, however in just cause 3 the render distance looks extremely far... When I first got just cause 2 I was "surprised" my 560 was nearly maxing out the memory with that game at around 800-900 mb

But a second hand card seems like a good idea till the summer, have any price estimates been given on pascal cards?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
M

Malzey

Reputable
Nov 2, 2015
35
0
4,540


I was actually looking at that same card wondering if I should get it, it does have a 4gb model, the only difference I see from the 970 is a slightly lower core clock (can be met with overclockjng well with the ACX and 500~ less CUDA cores. Do you think, for now that a 960 would be a better choice considering it is MUCH cheaper than a 970 and I could SLI/ replace it with a pascal card in the future?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Kari

Kari

Splendid
Jun 16, 2004
3,844
1
23,160

thats the weird thing about those min reqs they've listed, surely HD7870 is a lot faster than a 550ti but my current card is from the red team so I'm a bit worried the game heavyly favors nvidia.... and dont really want to buy any of the current gen cards just for 6 to 9 months till the next gen gets released with all their awesomeness.


edit
have any price estimates been given on pascal cards
Click to expand...
no, but I'd expect them to vaguely follow the current trend for each model respectively.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom