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Upgrade Options?

J

johnno

Member
Hi Folks, I built this system (sig) in 2011 (with your help) and it has been absolutely brilliant. It still is. Although, I think it could do with a GPU upgrade. I've been itching to get a gtx970. But the recent press and discussions have put me off and I am now not sure (would prefer to stick with Nvidia). Also would I benefit from more or different RAM? I feel as though the CPU at 4.3 is still up to the job?

Thanks for those who have some thoughts 🙂
 
Yes, if you're gaming on 1080p you could definitely use both the extra VRAM and the extra performance of a GTX970. And yes, 2500K at 4.3GHz is still quite capable 🙂 (roughly equivalent to stock 4670K).

I wouldn't worry about the 3.5GB+0.5GB VRAM issue of GTX 970. With only a single card on 1080p, you're not going to be using more than 3.5GB of VRAM so it's a non-issue.
 
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I think the greatest improvement would be getting a new GPU. It's usually the bottleneck. And it's also just one component.

My 2 cents are:
1. GTX970 gets well reviewed, if you like the price/performance ratio you see, ignore the press, just beware that the VRAM may become a limit in the future if you play at resolutions higher than full hd, because it's not equivalent to 4GB memory on other cards.
How soon, I have no idea.
Longevity-wise, just treat it as if you were buying a 3.5 GB card. That means, there's nothing to worry about at this price.

People who built a SLI to be used for years of 4K gaming or something may have been burned by this but not single GPU players.

2. Don't waste money on more RAM as right now there's not enough to gain from doing that for gaming. Save the money for your next upgrade.
Unless you can actually show an example in your current usage where the RAM limitation is real.
 
Thanks for the replies. I'm using a standard 24" 1920x1080 monitor and that is plenty for me. I'll probably go with a Asus or Gigabyte GTX 970 🙂
If that keeps me going for 2 - 3 years then I'll me more than happy and can put together a totally new build. The CPU will be 6-7 years old by then, fantastic value.
 
I agree with lehtv and Murloc. The 3.5 GB + 0.5 GB issue is something that Nvidia should have been up front about, but the real-world gaming benchmarks haven't changed from launch. If you're buying a card based on benchmarks and not specs (which is what you should do anyway), then your decision criteria hasn't really changed.
 
If you look at my GAME rig in my sig, you will see we have roughly equivalent machines... and perfectly adequate. I did upgrade my GTX560Ti 448 to, first, a GTX 760, then to a 970... the 970 is nice. The memory conflict has not been a issue with me, but I'm not playing anything more taxing than BF4.

I agree with the others... 8GB RAM is fine, the 2500K is fine. Bump that GPU up (and I vote for the 970 if you want to stay with NVidia... the 980 is just too big of a jump... ) and you should be in high cotton.

One question for you: What PSU are you running?
 
It looks like Zotac 970 is the best value at the moment: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/parts/video-card/#c=186&sort=a8

Asus and MSI have somewhat better cooling but it's not much of an issue if you're not looking to overclock. On the other hand, if you are going to overclock, then Gigabyte Windforce beats Asus and MSI with its 2x8-pin power and triple-fan cooler. It's quite long though and doesn't fit in every ATX case.

Zotac's warranty can be extended from 2 years to 5 years with registration, while MSI, Asus and Gigabyte are limited to 3 year warranty.
 
Echo, echo, echo...

The GTX 970 issue is a matter of false advertising, even if accidental, as many people bought the 970 with the expectation that it had the same memory bus, due the published specs saying so. It's still a good value, if you want to keep heat or noise down, or prefer staying Green.

If you're not going to overclock (or not by much), the Asus Strix offers the quietest non-blower cooling at a moderate price, and the Gigabyte G1 has the highest stock OC limits (they are built into the firmware). Sticking w/ stock speeds, performance is going to be nearly the same from any of them.

My understanding of the issue is that within 0-3.5GB, the card acts like it was 224-bit, with 56 ROPs (advertised: full-bandwidth 256-bit, 64 ROPs), then goes to basically CPU-class bandwidth when the last 0.5GB needs to be used.
 
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