I am not impressed with my Nvidia GTX 970

[moonbogg]

I feel you there moonbogg. I don't have the investment in Nvidia hardware that you do, but I have spent hundreds on their GPUs the last couple of years (around $450 the last year alone) and it makes me sad to know that my money is probably being used to make PC gaming a worse experience for all of us.

Hell part of me wishes I never came to the Video Cards and Graphics forum. Then I could continue to buy Nvidia GPUs (which often best fit my needs) without the associated guilt.

I remember the good old days when I bought hardware without really digging into anything. We'd be at Frys and my friends would be like, "Dude get that ti200!" And I did, and Unreal Tournament ran so awesome and nothing else mattered. It was so wonderful.

 

[provost]

I think forums are a great place to get educated on products one buys, as along as free exchange of information is occurring between the consumers. I rather know, than live in an ignorant bliss by any company’s definition of what I “need” as the buyer of such company’s products. The reality is no one needs these consumer discretionary toys; it’s just an impulse buy. The more informed consumers are about what they are buying, the more honest the companies selling products to them.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Kinda. The 290 came out in 2013, and the 390 is basically that 2013 card with bells on. Relatively to that 2013 GPU, the 2014 970 is falling behind in newer games.

The problem isn't that new GPUs are beating the 970. We don't have newer GPUs than the 970. The issue is that the older 290 is starting to beat the 970 in newer games even at 1080p.

If you are a zero day gamer the 970 is obviously the better choice because Nvidia will have "Game Ready" drivers for you. But if you are a "I will buy it when it goes on sale" gamer (and I am one) often by the time you buy it the older AMD GPUs have caught up or are ahead. The Witcher 3 was like that, AMD GPUs started out way behind but then caught up. And that isn't even accounting for the fact that those 2013 GPUs might get an even further boost under Directx 12. Two years from now the 290 might be the clear winner between it and the 970 thanks to the new API.

You might say "well most people will have bought a new GPU by then," but I don't believe it. I bet a good chunk of people who just upgraded to a 970 since 2014 (making it the top GPU in Steam) are going to sit on it for at least three years. What we witnessed last generation is the sweet spot for GPU purchases moved from the $200 price point to the $300 price point (I think because the 960 sucked so much compared to a 970). With all those midrange gamers now paying 50% more for the GPU you can assume they will want to keep it longer than they kept the 660/670 they replaced. If the 970 really does require a lot of driver tricks to keep the 3.5GB thing from being a problem, then within the effective lifetime of the card for most 970 owners they might watch as their GPU suffers relatively due to a lack of focus from Nvidia. That isn't a good thing.

AMD was simply the better decision to make in the midrange last generation. Especially when those 290Xes were going for 970 prices. I really kick myself for missing that boat. An aftermarket 290X might end up where a 980 currently is in the pecking order in a few years.

Your honesty and self reflection are refreshing.

I let my son make our purchasing decision the last buying cycle. That will not happen again. He finally left behind console gaming a few years back when he was in middle school. It was the PC mindcraft modding community his friends were into, that got him to switch. He never looked back. I started him out on an AMD system - A8@4GHz and a 7850 2GB with a healthy overclock. Despite the fact he had zero issues with that setup he pleaded for a Nvidia card when upgrading. His friend had told him how bad AMD drivers suck, you know, the same kit he was blissfully using trouble free.

First I bought a refurb GTX960 FTW $150. Then I bought him a Zotac GTX970 $250. I had a GTX660 he used for a bit, and a GTX760 that I paid way too much for to help a friend out. Watching kepler become crippler has left me disappoint. I have not been this bent at nV since the NV40 pure video debacle. And the viral marketing fiasco that followed it. The response to 970 marketing doublespeak, should have been my cue to spend my cash elsewhere. http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2015/02/24/gtx-970/

Instead of being excited that we invented a way to increase memory of the GTX 970 from 3GB to 4GB, some were disappointed that we didn’t better describe the segmented nature of the architecture for that last 1GB of memory.

Riiiiight.

 

[Silverforce11]

An aftermarket 290X might end up where a 980 currently is in the pecking order in a few years.

It already does. Aftermarket R290X with 1050mhz core clocks = 390X. Look where the 390X is in recent games, matching the 980 or beating it.

Anyone who had an aftermarket R290, ones that run at 1ghz or higher, basically had 390 performance all that time.

The reference R290/X throttles to below 900mhz, losing more than 10% performance. It was such an awful cooler, that bad decision ruined Hawaii.

So they launch Hawaii again as the 390/X and they've been selling better, I frequently see 390/X recommended over 970/980 on neogaf, reddit, etc (even on this forum!!) which was unthinkable back in the R290/X days. Yet, it's the same chip! LOL. Perception is strong.

 

[poofyhairguy]

So they launch Hawaii again as the 390/X and they've been selling better, I frequently see 390/X recommended over 970/980 on neogaf, reddit, etc (even on this forum!!) which was unthinkable back in the R290/X days. Yet, it's the same chip! LOL. Perception is strong.

Yup. I thought at first the 390 perception boost was due to the 8GB ram, but 290 prices on Ebay have stayed steady as well. I think people are starting to see all that locked up power in Hawaii, much like Tahiti had.

I am pretty excited to see what happens to Tonga going forward. In the Directx11 era it doesn't really beat Tahiti, but it has the same number of ACEs as Hawaii. I bet in the long run the 380x matches or beats not only Tahiti on its best day but OG Titan and maybe even the 970. I am usually a $200 GPU guy myself (the 970 is by far my most valuable GPU since the GeForce 2 GTS) and I think Tonga will be a considered one of the best cards in that segment ever.

The X Factor to me is the crazy Nvidia market share (that I contribute to unfortunately). At some point does the 970/Nvidia popularity matter? Will developers in a Directx12 era (when they have complete control) try to take out or limit console features (that highlight AMD) to avoid being at the middle of a lot of pissed off fan boys kinda like the Ashes team has dealt with? I wonder. Those user reviews on Steam matter a lot now and some people won't like that they don't get the best.

Honestly the GPU I am upset I own isn't the 970. It is very pretty and it murders Rocket League and MGS V which is most of my gaming recently. I am upset I bought that 750 ti last month, even though it is doing great in the situation. I can't wait until AMD has a more competitive offering that does not need more than PCI slot power. The day they do it gets replaced.

 

[IEC]

2013? Wow, is 290/X already that old? I've been happily gaming for over two years with 290s... glad I didn't listen to the naysayers back then.

 

[thilanliyan]

2013? Wow, is 290/X already that old? I've been happily gaming for over two years with 290s... glad I didn't listen to the naysayers back then.

I got 3 290s near launch and didn't pay the mining markup on them, and heck yeah I mined lol. Cards paid for themselves and then some.

I sold one when I stopped mining and now am just running 2 of them. My cards were reference though which I prefer since I watercool them. Besides the noise of the stock cooler the 290s have been great cards.

 

[MrK6]

I had a 7970 @ 1.3GHz FOR YEARS that chewed through everything I threw at it. I only got rid of it because I went back to air cooling and wanted something silent. I then got a 970 and was unimpressed when it would choke because of its shoddy memory subsystem design. I then got a 980 Ti as nothing from AMD at the time would be as quiet, and it has been good. That said, none of the above discussion surprises me, AMD cards have generally stood the test of time where as many of nvidia's offerings haven't. It seems they design for good tech specs and high benchmark scores since that's all people discuss on launch, and leave longevity and product support as second thoughts. I can't blame them as it doesn't sell cards, buzzwords, heavy marketing, fanboys, and flashiness do.

To help with OP's problem at least in Fallout 4, turn down "God Rays" to medium or low; @ 1600p it literally can halve my framerate for zero improvement in image quality. Nvidia stupidly has never coded a tesselation limit option into their drivers and it hurts here. I have everything else maxed on my 980 Ti and I stay at 60 FPS otherwise. Also TAA is worthless, disable in game AA and run SMAA through Reshade or similar. The vanilla game doesn't look half bad with some tweaking:

That said, IQ mods can't come soon enough, but I digress.

 

[Axon]

Like most PC users, I envied a Fury X or 980ti, but could not afford either. I settled for a 970.

First game, Fallout 4. Runs like ass at times.

2nd game, Xcom 2, Runs like ass pretty much always.

Are programmers getting lazy and just using whatever Direct-x pre-made template crap is available on consoles or something? I don't understand how this supposed powerhouse of a video card barely limps along with some of the current gen games.

Aren't they all using the same engines, unity or unreal engine? Are those just horribly optimized or something?

Don't run the generic "ultra" setting for F04. Turn down by half grass, AA, Antisotropic, and set Ambient to SSAO. I use these setting with my 970 and find that they keep my temps at a modest 64c and run at a very nice framerate without much quality being sacrificed. Sometimes I even leave AA off. Haven't noticed much difference.

I agree with the general premise that, right now, the GTX 970 is a disappointing card. I bought one at the peak of the hypetrain, before the 390 or 390x had been released. Now I'd buy either a 390x or go all in on a 980ti.

 

[kondziowy]

This is my The Division Album: Division 1440p R9 280x, and it is on par with GTX970 (ultra but -hbao -50% render distance +max reflections). I got 280x for 180$ full year ago and the guy who sold it to me probably got 970 for $400. I'm glad everybody overpay for Nvidia so I can get the same performance much cheaper ()

 

[amenx]

Don't run the generic "ultra" setting for F04. Turn down by half grass, AA, Antisotropic, and set Ambient to SSAO. I use these setting with my 970 and find that they keep my temps at a modest 64c and run at a very nice framerate without much quality being sacrificed. Sometimes I even leave AA off. Haven't noticed much difference.

This is not a tough game to run. Most settings on ultra, just god rays and shadow distance take an abnormal hit on perf. These can be lowered with virtually no effect on image quality (in fact lower god rays looks better to me, reduces washed out effect).

NEVER in any game turn down anisotropic! To do so reduces overall game detail at varying distances. Rather max it out as default in ALL games. It has MINIMAL IMPACT on performance with GPUs released in last decade. AA is another matter but you can turn it down more on 1440p than 1080p.

970 is still kick ass card, I have no issues with it whatsoever in ANY game I have thrown at it @1440p while managing to retain IQ at virtually little to no difference than it would appear maxed out. It may not be as good a buy as it was when released, but thats another matter. It may even be slipping in performance in recent titles, but its still too narrow a time slice to reach any definitive conclusion. If it appears going in the direction of kepler over next few months, I will not be buying Pascal but will switch to AMD.

 

[kondziowy]

970 is still kick ass card...
...If it appears going in the direction of kepler over next few months, I will not be buying Pascal but will switch to AMD.

Isn't 970 going Kepler way already, like GTX770? I mean
-not enough Vram (Rise of Timb Raider), and
-falling behind GCN equivalent at the time of release (The Division, Rise of Tomb Raider)

 

[amenx]

Isn't 970 going Kepler way already, like GTX770? I mean
-not enough Vram (Rise of Timb Raider), and
-falling behind GCN equivalent at the time of release (The Division, Rise of Tomb Raider)

what you missed... "It may even be slipping in performance in recent titles, but its still too narrow a time slice to reach any definitive conclusion."

 

[guskline]

Like others I had a 970 for a very short time but sold it and bought a 290. The return of the 970 was directly related to the misstated memory issue (that horse has been beaten to death!). I realized at the time that the 290 was a little slower in benches BUT had true 4 G of memory. It also was a hotter running GPU but for me that wasn't an issue because I custom water cool and was adding a waterblock to address the issue.

I actually had the 2 R9 290s in CF under water in my 5960x rig when the Fury X and GTX980TIs came out. I looked for the best card to nearly match my twin 290s and perhaps beat them. Fury X had it's own AIO and I wasn't happy with that. Ram was the new HBM but only 4G vram; the card hardly OC'd at all despite Joe Macri's infamous claim to the contrary and the Fury X was very hard to get.

Nvidia drops a bombshell in releasing the GTX980TI at a price nearly the same as the Fury X yet it has 6G vram (I know not HBM); OCs like crazy, has numerous custom configurations and is in relatively abundant supply.

Despite my anger at the 970 debacle, I chose the 980TI and have never looked back.

I feel the same way about the 290s vs the 970. The difference vs the Fury X and 980TI is the price. The 290s I purchased were each in the $275 to $300 range (I avoided the period of the mining craze).

 

[sontin]

The GTX 970 is STILL about 10% faster than an R9 290 @ 1080p and dead even with it at 1440p. Its a little ahead of the R9 390 @ 1080p and a little behind it @ 1440p. Why are you guys going on about it like its a GTX 960 FFS? "Getting slower" SMH. New games get more demanding, new GPU generations are on the horizon. That's how it works. It wasn't the top card when new and its not some recycled/rebranded architecture from three or four years ago either. Its doing exactly what it was meant to do (very good performance at 1080p and acceptable performance @ 1440). I got mine for a little over $250 during the holidays and I couldn't be happier with a purchase.

Nobody would buy a 290X for $549 anymore. But yet you have people here who are hyping this card as a better card than the GTX970 at $329.

AMD cards are not better. They got price reduced to a point where people would buy then again.

 

[Head1985]

GTX970 after oc 1500/8000 is basically GTX980 you know guys?Its pretty decent 1440P card and still excelent 1080P card.

but you need win10 with new WDDM 2.0 memory management.

 

[Timmah!]

Did not read entire thread, but its no surprising people deem 970 to be disappointing. After all, its glorified 680 sold 4 years later for 350 EUROs. Personally, i would not touch it with barge pole, and i am still rocking GTX 580.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Did not read entire thread, but its no surprising people deem 970 to be disappointing. After all, its glorified 680 sold 4 years later for 350 EUROs. Personally, i would not touch it with barge pole, and i am still rocking GTX 580.

A friend of mine literally just upgraded from a GTX 580 to a GTX 970 and he is stunned by the improvement in performance over the 580 in the titles he plays. The performance delta is quite significant.

 

[Arachnotronic]

I remember the good old days when I bought hardware without really digging into anything. We'd be at Frys and my friends would be like, "Dude get that ti200!" And I did, and Unreal Tournament ran so awesome and nothing else mattered. It was so wonderful.

That's how most NVIDIA customers feel, apparently, given the company's continued success.

The reality is that both NVIDIA and AMD make excellent gaming products (though NVIDIA has the edge in terms of perf/watt and raw performance at the highest end with 980 Ti; AMD's thing is aggressive pricing at many different performance levels).

I find it sad when people on these forums refer to some customers as "sheep" and other derogatory terms. Those folks are enjoying the games that they bought the GPU to play while the haters are throwing tantrums on internet forums about how those people should have bought something else because <insert reason to support favorite brand vendor>.

 

[Timmah!]

A friend of mine literally just upgraded from a GTX 580 to a GTX 970 and he is stunned by the improvement in performance over the 580 in the titles he plays. The performance delta is quite significant.

Maybe in games and maybe against 580. I was talking about comparison to 680, which has only sligthly lower shader count and slightly lower clocks (out of the box). Granted, 970 being Maxwell has some IPC improvements, higher ROP numbers, slightly higher memory bandwith, etc... but ultimately, in terms of absolute performance expressed in TFLOPS, its 3,6 vs 3 in favor of 970. May not look that way in games due to lacking proper driver support for Kepler cards, you can bet in apps capable of using the cards to their potential, the performance difference would more or less match that TFLOPS difference...

 

[kondziowy]

what you missed... "It may even be slipping in performance in recent titles, but its still too narrow a time slice to reach any definitive conclusion."

Sure you have a point here. But the way I see it: I was choosing between gtx960 and 280x and the moment I heard rumors 960 will be 128 bit card I knew what is going on.

970 was out of 280x reach by far. 280x couldn't even touch it, some benchmarks were showing 100% gap between them, just like a gap in price. The gap was narrowing ever since and I watched it closely. I calculated 280x will be on par in 2017. I gave 970 too much credit already. A year ago everybody would lough at my face if I told them these cards are not that much different. It's rebrandeon they said...

 

[Arachnotronic]

Maybe in games and maybe against 580. I was talking about comparison to 680, which has only sligthly lower shader count and slightly lower clocks (out of the box). Granted, 970 being Maxwell has some IPC improvements, higher ROP numbers, slightly higher memory bandwith, etc... but ultimately, in terms of absolute performance expressed in TFLOPS, its 3,6 vs 3 in favor of 970. May not look that way in games due to lacking proper driver support for Kepler cards, you can bet in apps capable of using the cards to their potential, the performance difference would more or less match that TFLOPS difference...

Looks to me that the stock GTX 970 is a full 42.6% faster at 1080p than the stock GTX 680.

Love the conspiracy theory BS that NVIDIA is artificially gimping Kepler and that there's no way that Maxwell could possibly just be a better/more robust architecture. Nope, no chance of that...

 

[Head1985]

Looks to me that the stock GTX 970 is a full 42.6% faster at 1080p than the stock GTX 680.

Love the conspiracy theory BS that NVIDIA is artificially gimping Kepler and that there's no way that Maxwell could possibly just be a better/more robust architecture. Nope, no chance of that...

Its alot more in new games.GTX970 1500/8000(GTX980 performance) is like 70-100% faster than GTX770.
Rise of the tomb raider:
GTX670 1280/7400-GTX770 performance
GTX970 1500/8000 GTX980 performance

970
http://abload.de/img/rottr_2016_02_16_19_4f4zpk.png
http://abload.de/img/rottr_2016_02_16_19_4lsxsk.png
670
http://abload.de/img/rottr_2016_02_16_19_5t6l4m.png
http://abload.de/img/rottr_2016_02_16_19_5j4y8b.png

Another scene
GTX970 all max 49.3fps
http://abload.de/img/rottr_2016_02_19_03_2x9q3j.png
GTX670 all max textures medium 1700MB Vram 26.7Fps
http://abload.de/img/rottr_2016_02_19_04_2blokc.png
GTX670 all max very high textures 23fps
http://abload.de/img/rottr_2016_02_19_04_289qre.png

GTX670 all low still slower than GTX970 at max settings
http://abload.de/img/rottr_2016_02_19_04_34nucj.png
http://abload.de/img/rottr_2016_02_19_04_3n2uyx.png

 

[crisium]

Love the conspiracy theory BS that NVIDIA is artificially gimping Kepler and that there's no way that Maxwell could possibly just be a better/more robust architecture. Nope, no chance of that...

What a coincidence that GCN also became just a better/more robust architecture two months after Maxwell launched. People make a new thread for new game benchmarks all the time, and it clearly started with Far Cry 4 and has been very common since then, albeit with exceptions. *Insert any post of people proving this time and time again, which you have read before*.

Timmah!'s post doesn't make sense; obviously Maxwell is far more efficient than Kepler and the 970 should always be significantly faster than the 680. But I just don't understand how you can respond with a typical Kepler denialist statement like that when clearly the gap has vastly grown since November 2014.

 

[pcslookout]

Its alot more in new games.GTX970 1500/8000(GTX980 performance) is like 70-100% faster than GTX770.
Rise of the tomb raider:
GTX670 1280/7400-GTX770 performance
GTX970 1500/8000 GTX980 performance

970
http://abload.de/img/rottr_2016_02_16_19_4f4zpk.png
http://abload.de/img/rottr_2016_02_16_19_4lsxsk.png
670
http://abload.de/img/rottr_2016_02_16_19_5t6l4m.png
http://abload.de/img/rottr_2016_02_16_19_5j4y8b.png

Another scene
GTX970 all max 49.3fps
http://abload.de/img/rottr_2016_02_19_03_2x9q3j.png
GTX670 all max textures medium 1700MB Vram 26.7Fps
http://abload.de/img/rottr_2016_02_19_04_2blokc.png
GTX670 all max very high textures 23fps
http://abload.de/img/rottr_2016_02_19_04_289qre.png

GTX670 all low still slower than GTX970 at max settings
http://abload.de/img/rottr_2016_02_19_04_34nucj.png
http://abload.de/img/rottr_2016_02_19_04_3n2uyx.png

Really? Is it really worth it for me to upgrade from a GTX 770 4GB to the GTX 970 ?