Upgrade GTX 970 Or Wait

Kymsplat

Commendable
Jun 12, 2016
8
0
1,520
Hey everyone, got a bit of a dilemma at the moment. First and foremost I will list my current PC specs:

Mobo - MSI X370 XPower Titanium (Got on a GREAT deal from Amazon, since I know its notoriously overpriced!)
CPU - AMD Ryzen 7 1800X (No OC YET)
CPUFan - Noctua DH15
GPU - EVGA GTX 970 FTW+
RAM - Team Delta DDR4 16GB 2400mhz (Might be 2166 or whatever the next step down is)
Storage - Samsung 850 EVO 500gb SSD + WDBlue 1TB
PSU - 550w EVGA Bronze+

SO. I have just ordered a 1080p 144hz Monitor since I am an avid Counter Strike player and have been stuck with a really terrible ancient 60hz Samsung for a very long time now. However as an avid MMO player also, I am feeling my 970 won't stand up any longer with the new monitor. I have been searching and searching for my best "bang for buck", and have unfortunately ran out of any idea of what I am/should/will do!

Currently I am looking around the used market since GPU prices are so high, and it seems I can get a used 1070 for £300, 1070Ti for £360 - £390 or a 1080 for £400 - £430. Some of these prices include Refurbished and/or just basic box damage or demo units etc, so the deal sweetens. I have 4 options that I can tell:

1. Wait for next gen Nvidia. I am a very impatient person, and while I am not necessarily hitting any ceilings, I do have the very bad itch to upgrade since it has been 2-3 years since I last upgraded my GPU. I have also read that the performance increase from 16nm to 12nm is not as wondrous as Maxwell to Pascal, which leads me to believe the "bang for buck" on release day will not be as amazing as a potential second hand 1070/1080, and with the whole market being in a horrendous state for so long, I dont believe that this will get any better with new releases. I would love if someone could convince me otherwise.

2. Get a RX580. My new monitor is actually a FreeSync Monitor, so this could work out a bit better and probably cheaper but I am not a big fan on AMD graphics. I would also most likely have to get a new PSU to support such a card, which I am fine with since I have a non modular PSU which makes case and cable management a total nightmare. Just means more money. I have more then enough case cooling to negate the bump in heat from AMD cards.

3. Get a 1070. Seems like this might fall out of usefullness quickly compared to how much of a stretch there is between 1070 and 1080, however they are considerably cheaper - could even get one for sub £300. I could probably push to a PSU upgrade with one of these too to help with my abysmal cable management from using a non modular PSU.

4. Get a 1070Ti/1080. I would probably lean towards a 1080 for future proof, but there are some nice deals on 1070Ti that pop up from what I have seen. There are currently some really nice "almost new" 1080's for sale for around £400. Bit of a stretch budget wise, but seems a lot more future proof.

Anyway sorry for posting, as I know there are an abundance of these sort of threads, but I really am stuck with no one to bounce ideas off of.

I think I know that I should ultimately wait, but with computer parts, it seems to always be a waiting cycle of "something better is around the corner". At the moment there is nothing set in stone for next gen Nvidia, and as I said, the improvements seem quite irrelevant, especially if I am an MMO/Esports type of person.

I forgot to say that I also record/encode/produce YouTube videos and stream, so I believe a bump up in Vram can quite significantly improve what I can record at/encode too (At least when using GPU encoding right?) in which case waiting for the higher rated and supposedly higher capacity next gen would prove very beneficial.

On a very final note, I am not currently gaining income because of illness, so the chance of me having the money to spend that I have now when the next gen comes out is in the air. I could be working again or I could not be. But if it is ultimately worthwhile to wait then all I can do is try!

Thanks for taking the time to read and help me out anyone who does so. It is very much appreciated!

 
Solution
My advice:

wait for your new monitor and see how you do.
Likely your GTX970 will do just fine with mmo games.
Fast action games, perhaps not.

To address your issues:

1. If you wait for the next best thing, you will wait forever.
If you have a need now, buy now.
No telling what will come, but if it exceeds current GTX1080ti capabilities, you can be sure that the premium will be very high.

2. The GTX 1xxx cards have a capability called adaptive vsync that works well to reduce lag or tearing, whichever problem a mismatched fps rate is giving you. Past that R-580 is not stronger than your GTX970, you will not see a difference.

3. GTX1070 is not that big of a boost either. Look for a GTX1080 or GTX1080ti.

4. ^^^^

As to...
I would also advise you to wait. The 970 is more than enough gaming power for now. So, either wait for Vega to drop in price so you can use that freesync monitor or for Navi to arrive. You've got enough power in the 970 to play a long waiting game if you need to. AMD is claiming that Navi cards will have 1080 performance at RX 580 prices (MSRP prices, not crypto mining super inflated prices), but Navi may not come out until next year. Your 970 should hold out until then... or if you need to upgrade sooner for whatever reason, wait for the Vega 56 to drop to a more reasonable price (currently they are around $510 to $550 but they should be closer to $400 to $450... which is much better than the near $1000 they were going for not too long ago).

So long story short, Navi or bust, but if you bust, the Vega 56 isn't a bad card and would be a reasonable upgrade.
 
My advice:

wait for your new monitor and see how you do.
Likely your GTX970 will do just fine with mmo games.
Fast action games, perhaps not.

To address your issues:

1. If you wait for the next best thing, you will wait forever.
If you have a need now, buy now.
No telling what will come, but if it exceeds current GTX1080ti capabilities, you can be sure that the premium will be very high.

2. The GTX 1xxx cards have a capability called adaptive vsync that works well to reduce lag or tearing, whichever problem a mismatched fps rate is giving you. Past that R-580 is not stronger than your GTX970, you will not see a difference.

3. GTX1070 is not that big of a boost either. Look for a GTX1080 or GTX1080ti.

4. ^^^^

As to vram, it is not as important as you might think.
VRAM has become a marketing issue.
My understanding is that vram is more of a performance issue than a functional issue.
A game needs to have most of the data in vram that it uses most of the time.
Somewhat like real ram.
If a game needs something not in vram, it needs to get it across the pcie boundary
hopefully from real ram and hopefully not from a hard drive.
It is not informative to know to what level the available vram is filled.
Possibly much of what is there is not needed.
What is not known is the rate of vram exchange.
Vram is managed by the Graphics card driver, and by the game. There may be differences in effectiveness between amd and nvidia cards.
And differences between games.
Here is an older performance test comparing 2gb with 4gb vram.
http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Video-Card-Performance-2GB-vs-4GB-Memory-154/
Spoiler... not a significant difference.
A more current set of tests shows the same results:
http://www.techspot.com/review/1114-vram-comparison-test/page5.html

And... no game maker wants to limit their market by
requiring huge amounts of vram. The vram you see will be appropriate to the particular card.
 
Solution

toshibitsu

Distinguished
I'd only upgrade now if you intend on doing 4k gaming, then you'd want a 1080 Ti. Those have at least come back down in price and you can pick them up new for around $700 - $750.

Otherwise as the other dudes/dudettes are saying, wait for the new cards. Be ready for them though... I'm 100% positive that the new cards will sell out quickly and start popping up at inflated prices on ebay, etc.
 

Kymsplat

Commendable
Jun 12, 2016
8
0
1,520
Thanks for all your kind words and help everyone. I had not even considered Navi cards but it would actually make a lot of sense with a Freesync monitor. Either way I guess I will play the waiting game and do my best to try and get the money together for launch day purchases.

Really appreciate the help!