Upgrading from a GTX 970 to GTX 1070 or GTX 1080?

ak2000spooky

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Mar 14, 2011
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In November I'm planning on picking up a new GPU (either the 1070 or 1080) and replacing my current 970. Unfortunately, the 970 did not meet my expectations when gaming on my 1440p 144Hz monitor. I play all kinds of games (FPS, RTS, RPG, etc.) and I really want to be able to run games at the best possible settings (ultra or very high) while getting FPS of 50+ for at least the next couple of years. I forgot to mention that I generally lag a year or two behind games (i.e. I pick up discounted games during steam sales and usually don't buy them when they are new, except occasionally for multiplayer games like Overwatch or Battlefield 1). So the question I have is a 1070 sufficient or do I need to sell a kidney and shell out the extra $$$ for a 1080? I think the rest of my system will not create any bottlenecks and I will probably upgrade the CPU in the next year or two anyways.

Current System:
- Intel i7-3770k (OC'ed 4.5Ghz)
- Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 (OC'ed +150/+300)
- 180GB Intel 520 SSD
- 500GB Samsung EVO SSD
- 1TB WD Black 7200 RPM
- ASRock Z77 Extreme4 (LGA 1155 / Intel Z77)
- 16GB 1600 G.Skill Ripjaws X Series
- Soundblaster X-Fi Titanium HD
- Nanoxia Deep Slience 5 Case
- ASUS ROG SWIFT PG278Q
- Custom Liquid Cooling (EK CPU/GPU Blocks,140mm Rad & 240mm Rad)
 
Solution
For such a high end monitor I'd get the 1080 as you want to crank up the settings. I'm looking to upgrade myself from 1080p to 1440p 144Hz and have decided the 1080 is the way to go

Reaper_7799

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1080 is nice but the 1070 will do just fine, when it's oc it's an oc 980 ti basically. I have no prob running 1440P maxed well above 60 but it wont push 100 fps, except a couple games so if you're looking to push towards the 144hz then the 1080 will probably give you another 15% at 1440P, sometimes 20% depending on game.
 

jimmyh234

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Dec 28, 2014
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I use the same monitor, i recently upgraded from the Asus GTX 970 Strix. The 970 played everything great in 1080p on max settings, but once i tried my 4K display or even the 1440p, i hardly got 60fps. Once you go 144Hz, you really cant go back. I got the 1080 which is 2-3X the performance of a GTX 970OC and i can now play GTA5/B03 ect. On the max settings1440p and stay right around 120-144 Fps. I probably still would have been getting right around 120+fps with the 1070, but i wanted to future proof just a little bit. I enjoy the card very much, and once the price goes down i might even get another for SLI set up.
 

ak2000spooky

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Mar 14, 2011
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I'm going to go with the 1080. I really want to get the full experience out of my set-up and monitor.