[Hardware Unboxed] Is the GTX 970 still worth it for modern games?

[nathanddrews]

YouTube suggested this video to me and as the owner of two GTX 970s it makes me feel pretty good, but not great. 20 current games, "stock" vs OC, 1080p and 1440p, power use, etc. No frame times, though.

TL;DW: The OC GTX 970 is right in between the RX 480 4GB and GTX 1060 6GB, but consumes 30-100W more under load. The vanilla GTX 970 is nearly identical to the RX 470, but consumes 30W more under load.

 

[mohit9206]

Gtx 970 is no longer good enough for anything above 1080p. Take recently launched Resident evil 7 for example. That game eats vram like crazy leading to freezes and stutters.
RE7 was a poor pc port but its only going to get worse for lower vram cards. Hence cards like 970, rx480 4gb etc have no longevity.

 

[2is]

Gtx 970 is no longer good enough for anything above 1080p. Take recently launched Resident evil 7 for example. That game eats vram like crazy leading to freezes and stutters.
RE7 was a poor pc port but its only going to get worse for lower vram cards. Hence cards like 970, rx480 4gb etc have no longevity.

I think it depends on what your expectations are. Just last night a few friends and I partied up and played some BF1. Two of us are on 980Ti's, one on a 1070 and one on a 970. All running 1440p. No one had performance or visual complaints. If you're not the type who needs to move all the sliders to the right most position, a 970 is still plenty good enough to play any game out there at 1440p with decent performance and visuals.

I was running 680's when people made similar comments about those cards and 1080p, yet I had no issues in any game, just certain ones I had to turn a few settings down not to exceed 2GB. Once I went to 1440p it was much harder to live with. The level I had to turn settings down had a significate degradation in visual quality so an upgrade was in order.

 

[Mopetar]

I think it's still good enough where unless you want to get a 1070, there isn't a lot of point in upgrading. Even then, the 970 is still good enough for most people that you'd be better off waiting for Volta as that's going to represent a larger architectural shift in Nvidia GPUs. Vega may or may not be worth considering, but it's still 2 - 3 months away at this point, but if nothing else may put some price pressure on the 1070 and 1080.

If you can wait another year, I think you'll be able to get substantially more value for your money when upgrading from a 970. The only way I'd consider upgrading right now is if I wanted to go to 4k in which case the 1080 Ti should provide enough muscle for a good single card experience.

 

[SlickR12345]

NO! There is ZERO reason to buy a 970 in 2017. Instead of wasting that money, you can buy an RX 480 8GB or 1060 6GB and have a lot more longevity and better performance overall.

If you can find one for $150 its still not worth it, you are getting it used so you don't know if its been used for mining, you don't know if its had some crazy OC with bios modifications and eating up its life span, and for just $10 or $20 more you can get the RX 470. Admittedly a tad bit slower performance overall, but at least you are getting it new, its better for DX12, it beats the 970 in DX12 and isn't crippled wuth 3.5GB ram.

You can also spend like $30 more and there are many and often RX 470 with 8GB at $190, sometimes even cheaper on sale and through rebates and stuff.

I said that 3GB is dead on arrival, the 1060 3GB is worthless these days, can't handle any new game properly at 1080p its low memory is crippling it, where it once handedly beat the RX 470 and even beat the RX 480 4GB often, its now often slower in new games than the 470 4GB, purely because of its limited memory.

4GB is becoming obsolete as well. Its just not cutting it anymore either. Sure ultimately you've got a year that it won't be completely useless, but if you want to play at max settings at 1080p you won't be able to with only 4GB very soon.

Even 6GB is showing its limitations at 1440p. The 1060 6GB wins at 1080p over the 480 8gb, but often ends up equal or slower at 1440p. This is purely due to its lower memory.

 

[Bacon1]

NO! There is ZERO reason to buy a 970 in 2017. Instead of wasting that money, you can buy an RX 480 8GB or 1060 6GB and have a lot more longevity and better performance overall.

No one said anything about buying one new. The review was about how it compares in modern games.

 

[SlickR12345]

No one said anything about buying one new. The review was about how it compares in modern games.

The title of the video is LITERALLY: "Nvidia 970 - is it still worth buying?"
Stop it! Stop trolling! Stop posting spam!

Trolling and threadcrapping is not allowed.
YOU are the one trolling, no one said anything about buying
Markfw
Anandtech Moderator

 

[Bacon1]

The title of the video is LITERALLY: "Nvidia 970 - is it still worth buying?"
Stop it! Stop trolling! Stop posting spam!

Spam?

The title of this thread is:
Is the GTX 970 still worth it for modern games?

 

[Face2Face]

I think the video is great at showing current GTX 970 owners that their cards are still fine for 1080p. The GTX 970 is still NVIDIA's most popular card. I used to own one and I can say it was a great match for 1080p. Even at 1440p it did pretty good with some settings dialed down. I didn't experience the 3.5GB issues as the early adopters did, as I bought mine mid-late last year used. From what I could tell the 3.5GB issue was taken care using newer drivers, as even when maxing out the 4GB vram I didn't experience any stutter as seen in before the fix. If I were buying new, I'd grab the RX 470 or RX 480 8GB without question, but if you currently own a GTX 970 and game at 1080p, there's no reason to upgrade/sidegrade to a GTX 1060 or RX 480...yet.

 

[2is]

The title of the video is LITERALLY: "Nvidia 970 - is it still worth buying?"
Stop it! Stop trolling! Stop posting spam!

Talk about discrediting anything you have to say. Failure to read or know the meaning of the word literally.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Well, I am sure it is better than my HD7770!! Seriously though, dont really see the point of buying a last gen card now, unless there is a fantastic sale price. With 470s 150.00 or less and 8gb 480/6gb 1060 around 200.00, I think a 970 would have to be around 150.00 to make a purchase.

 

[Insomniator]

I really don't understand the obsession with ultra/max settings. I have an r9 390 and just bought GTA V -- runs 60 gps+ at 1440p/Very high. Unless the 4GB of vram is seriously a limiter I would expect the 970 to perform similarly.

To say the 970 is not worth it for anything above 1080p is just ignorant. 95% of gamers are not upgrading their PC's every 6 months. The 970 is still 'high end' in the minds of the average user. I have friends gaming on freakin 7850's still.

Games look almost identical at high vs ultra. Tell me you notice the stairs are a little less jaggy in doom on ultra when you are blasting 100 demons a minute. Give me a break. Most would LOVE to have a 970 these days, you can't go by AT nerds that barely even play games besides 3Dmark with their SLI 1080's.

 

[Head1985]

He have pretty crap oc.Only 1410/8000 most can 1500/8000 with another 6% performance.
GTX970 1500/8000=GTX980 its still decent card for 1080p.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Not all 970's OC great, mine didn't and it was a higher-end EVGA model. Luck of the draw as always. Couldn't even do 1410 for long sessions. I had to keep it at the stock speeds (which were OCed past the reference model).

Overall I find my current AMD 470 4GB with stock OC to be indistinguishable in gameplay from the stock OCed 970. Seeing as how I am at 1080p I am happy with that level of performance for now. Hell I only sold the 970 because it was about to take a huge drop in value and it couldn't mine Ethereum (at the time). I think it could still work fine for a lot of people.

Buying new I would recommend a cheap 480 or 470.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

My 970 was a horrible overclocker too (EVGA GTX 970 SC). I can get it to 1418 MHz and +200 MHz on the memory (it's Hynix) relatively stably (eg maybe a crash to desktop every couple of days), but those crashes are still annoying enough that I'll only run it OC if there is a specific setting I want to turn on that I can just barely get by with when OC but can't get a steady 60 fps at stock. For example, HBAO+ in The Witcher 3 gives a very big visual improvement IMO but I really needed the OC to just stay at 60 fps when I turned it on. Otherwise I run my games at the stock settings (which boost to 1367 MHz ingame). If I turn up my core clock say 80 MHz I'll get a crash a minute into Firestrike, Valley, or Heaven no matter how much voltage I give and even if I have it running about 50-55C on the core at load. I'm probably not going to buy another EVGA gpu after seeing the weak VRMs they put on their early 970s (which is what I have) and the temperature problems on their early 1070s. Though maybe that's a given anyways since my next gpu will likely be from AMD, as they serve the midrange $200-$250 market much better than Nvidia and I'm going to stay on 1080p most likely until 4k becomes mainstream and for mainstream prices (I don't consider $700 mainstream, though I do think it's awesome to finally get a single card that can do 4k that isn't a Titan).

But I'm still happy with my 970 at 1080p. I can still play everything at 60 fps by dropping settings to high occasionally, and I can rarely tell any difference between high and ultra in a game. So I'm in no hurry to replace my 970. I always anticipated using it for three years, but now into my third year with it I'm not so sure I'll replace it until four years. But no one in his right mind should buy a 970 when you can buy a 470 with a warranty so cheaply now and get the same performance, or a 480 for a little more and get a significantly stronger gpu.

 

[Dribble]

The big advantage of the 970 is there are so many out there. Any game maker will have actively tested on a 970 and made tweaks to suit it because he knows a good proportion of his potential buyers will have one. Hence games are still gonna run well on them.

 

[HumblePie]

The 970 when it was released was a great card for performance to price. Despite the stupid .5GB fiasco. I still have my old one. Just need to toss it in a build. Is it worth buying one in today's market? A cheap used one for a budget gaming box would be an ok purchase for under $100. Over a $100 and there are more appealing options.

 

[Leyawiin]

Gtx 970 is no longer good enough for anything above 1080p. Take recently launched Resident evil 7 for example. That game eats vram like crazy leading to freezes and stutters.
RE7 was a poor pc port but its only going to get worse for lower vram cards. Hence cards like 970, rx480 4gb etc have no longevity.

It does the same to any 4GB card on max settings as well. So you could amend your statement by saying the RX 470 4GB, RX 480 4GB, R9 Fury (X) (Nano) are no longer good enough for anything about 1080p (if you want to use that generalization over one game).

 

[David_k]

The memory partitions with the fast 3.5GB and slow .5GB (also don't forget the fact that it cant write to both partitions at the same time as far as I remember) means that. it will indeed do worse than cards with full 4GB memory. And for the fury the super fast memory somewhat helps with the memory capacity bottleneck.

 

[Leyawiin]

The memory partitions with the fast 3.5GB and slow .5GB (also don't forget the fact that it cant write to both partitions at the same time as far as I remember) means that. it will indeed do worse than cards with full 4GB memory. And for the fury the super fast memory somewhat helps with the memory capacity bottleneck.

The reviews of that game show 4GB cards (any/all) having difficultly with VRAM demands. If the person I quoted is using that particular game as a basis to warn against buying a GTX 970 he needs to include anything from 4GB on down (3.5+.5 or not).

 

[kawi6rr]

970 would not be a card I would buy new or used during 2017, there are better options out there.

 

[HumblePie]

970 would not be a card I would buy new or used during 2017, there are better options out there.

Why not used for a budget build? As long as one can get it for $100 or less that price isn't bad. Personally as used RX 480 4GB is the better choice if you can nab one for $115-$120 or so. Anything more than that and you might as well buy a new one as they have gone down to about $130 new after rebate.

Just depends on the price point. If you are looking to put together a decent sub $500 or even sub $400 system that "can" game then a cheap used 970 can fit the bill. Even though it is a 2 and half year old vid card now.

That being said, an RX 480 for only a little more is a better option in the long run.

 

[Leyawiin]

As long as one can get it for $100 or less that price isn't bad.

Because you won't. Lowest I've seen it in hardware forums this past week is $130 (and it was snapped up fast).

 

[2is]

There's a big difference between buying a 970 now vs already owning a 970 today.

There's better cards to spend money on, but if you already own one and looking for a bigger jump than what current cards have to offer, it's still very serviceable until the next big thing comes.

At 1080p a 970 is at least as fast as a 980Ti/1070 are at 1440p and at 1440p a 970 can still run even demanding games at medium/high settings @ 60+

 

[HumblePie]

Because you won't. Lowest I've seen it in hardware forums this past week is $130 (and it was snapped up fast).

The for sale/trade forum on this site is quite lackluster these days compared to other places. $130 was a horrible price to buy a 970 at in the current market. Especially since RX 480 4GB cards have been as low as $140 new and cheaper than that for open/refurbs.

https://slickdeals.net/f/9742828-po...d-140-after-20-rebate-free-s-h?src=SiteSearch

The above link was a previous deal for a $140 used rx 480 4GB card from newegg. Open box and refurbs have been seen for $130 and under. Which is like buying used in my opinion. so buying a used 970 for $130 is just plain stupid of the person that did so from this forum. Again you can search other sites with more active for sale/trade forums and they have better prices sometimes.