GTX960 4gb vs GTX970 [Is it worth the upgrade?]

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redgarl
Hell no.

However, you would be the perfect customer for the new upcoming RX 480. At 200$ and the performance rumored around a 290x, I think it is a pretty sweet deal at 50% the price of the 970 GTX and better performances.

Honestly with AMD and Nvidia rolling with new cards, you should not jump on the 28nm bandwagon. Just wait a month or two and make your choice.

If you can afford a 1070 GTX, just go for it. This card is able to match almost two 290x in CF.
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junkeymonkey

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should be a nice step up for sure , but only you and your bill fold know if its worth it

you can see from any benchmark reviews the 970 is more powerful and higher performance over the 960 but think you will have over 500 bucks invested in a card that if you bought once you could of got a near a 980 ti for that total cost
 
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redgarl

redgarl

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Jun 4, 2009
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Hell no.

However, you would be the perfect customer for the new upcoming RX 480. At 200$ and the performance rumored around a 290x, I think it is a pretty sweet deal at 50% the price of the 970 GTX and better performances.

Honestly with AMD and Nvidia rolling with new cards, you should not jump on the 28nm bandwagon. Just wait a month or two and make your choice.

If you can afford a 1070 GTX, just go for it. This card is able to match almost two 290x in CF.
 
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junkeymonkey

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if me I would just run the 960 for a few months or so and let all this pan out get over all this first release crap see what comes up in the aftermarket cards and a lot more ''end user'' reviews and threads are out to get the real deal on the cards over all the cherry picked /promotion / hype reviews you see now ..

in the end you may find the 960 aint all that bad
 
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Snipars Blade

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Aug 17, 2015
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I used to have an EVGA GTX960 2gb for half a year but then I got an MSI 4gb from my Aunt. Looking more, maybe a 1070 would be better than a 970...
 
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Snipars Blade

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I do sell my Graphics Cards to help me build funds for my next card, I already sold my EVGA 960 2gb to get the MSI 4gb one.
 
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Snipars Blade

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I am pretty stubborn and changing my NVIDIA out for an AMD would hurt me internally. I do like the look of that AMD card but since I am going to have a lot of cash later on I might just buy a 1070.
 
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Snipars Blade

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I won't be getting paid until later in the month, (mid june?) so yeah I might just wait for the new cards to drop... like my grades...
 
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photonboy

photonboy

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GTX1070:

Not sure what the "rumor" comment above meant because we already know the GTX1070 details. It's been tested and is roughly 81% as fast as the GTX1080 (give or take 2% depending on the game).

Following applies to GTX1070 except benchmarks:
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/GeForce-GTX-1080-8GB-Founders-Edition-Review-GP104-Brings-Pascal-Gamers

Review (for benchmarks, or just use 81% of GTX1080): http://www.gamespot.com/articles/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1070-review/1100-6440307/

Quick highlights (you can read more in the first link):

1. $400USD+ (non-reference)
2. similar to GTX980Ti/Titan X
3. 8GB VRAM

4. VR (Virtual Reality) boost up to 1.6X previous (needs the new hardware, and NVidia plugin for game/app)
5. better triple-monitor support ( read about SMP or Simultaneous Multi Projection):
6. HDR

7. HVENC
8. higher bandwidth video outputs (HDR, high refresh, and resolution add to bandwidth requirement)
9. Fast Sync (does support earlier NVidia cards)

10. audio (bounces off objects for more realistic audio... not sure if that's HDMI/DP output only or not)
11. Ansel (take 2D high-res and 3D snapshots of game... pretty neat I guess)

AMD Polaris:
We don't have any detailed info on that yet unfortunately. I WANT them to compete well against NVidia even though I will be buying a GTX1080.

The next year is really critical for AMD. They have some competitive CPU's, APU's and GPU's coming which hopefully helps to start digging them out of the RED. They've been so hurting for cash they made a deal with China and Samsung.

AMD's been investing a lot more in their DRIVERS, working on VR support (we don't know details yet) and generally trying to improve. So, kudos to them and I hope they can keep it up. I think AMD can stay afloat though. They also have a small amount of cash coming from the console APU's and Apple.
 
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photonboy

photonboy

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VR performance of GTX1080 vs GTX970:
This is basically a worst-case for the GTX970, but here it is:

1.2X (DX12 may be up to 20% faster in future games on GTX1000 series)
1.6X (up to 1.6X faster for VR... probably realistic)
1.5X (GTX1070 is roughly 50% faster than the GTX970)

2.88X

Yep, the GTX1070 should be almost 3X the performance in some VR titles!

Obviously we need 3rd party validation on this, but it should be reasonably close. Even if we only got 2X that's still a pretty big deal. Again, for non-VR that's roughy 1.5X faster on average for DX11 and some future games in DX12 will do even better.

*Just FYI, but none of the current DX12 programs are very useful. Tomb Raider's is tacked on so it's not really DX12 optimized (it did WORSE anyway). And AotS isn't optimized for NVidia's hardware (coding for AMD's ASync Compute isn't directly transferable to NVidia's hardware. Game devs will need to have two separate code paths for this part of the game if they want efficiency on both AMD and NVidia modern hardware.)

GTX1000 series has new hardware for buffering incoming data efficiently, but its previous cards do not (hence my up to 20% improvement in DX12 in the above calculation).

People freak out over DX12 support for some reason so I thought I should mention it (I don't think most people understand just how LONG it will take DX12 to be commonplace). The GTX970 is still a great card if the price is right, and don't forget DX12 games aren't common yet. In fact, if you don't have a strong CPU then you might want to avoid AMD cards due to the inefficient DX11 drivers.
 
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photonboy

photonboy

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i7-4790K.
He gave a build link at the top.

So one might say I'm surprised that you commented in that way without actually reading the post.
 
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Snipars Blade

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damn that 1080 performance tho
 
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Snipars Blade

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Thank you so much for all of the information
 
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jbc029

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Short of it: No buying a card this month if you can help it.
July 1: If you're not buying a 1070 or 1080, you shouldn't be buying an NV card. Nothing in their product stack will meet the 480 value mark until at least Q4 when the 1060 should arrive.

If you *Really* want that new card and you *Really* want to stay green, it's going to cost you ~$400 to get a meaningful upgrade. Purchasing a 970 is literally throwing away $80-100 at this point.
 
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