Oh well, i guess it is still the best option for me. Or http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/b3085/zotac-gtx-970-amp-omega-edition.html , but not sure about the cooler modes either.
At around 1500/7600 it seems to match a stock 980 (might be fine with the just the core OC TBH). There will be instances where the core boost will not allow a 970 to match a 980 out right but the *feel* will be the same.
Looks like I would need to get EVGA GTX 970 Cheesecake ACX 2.0 and OC it to 1250MHz to get it around 980. Still, £300 vs £430...
Not that itll help your much with your blower needs, but my MSI 970 rolls very very cool, I have an abundance of fans, but currently have the exhaust blowing toward me and having to game with a hoodie on atm, so not too much of a worry about it overheating your case.
Just changed the thread title to reflect the discussion. Mine has just arrived, just downloading the 9xx drivers now.
I went for the basic EVGA with blower at £260. Didn't have much time for over clocking, but I'm working my way down from 1315mhz (265mhz over Base) on the core which was BT fastest review sample. So far I'm not stable at 240mhz, but get the feeling I'm not far off. Tried it at stock in Elite on the Rift, and it is an absolutely monumental upgrade from the 770. Would recommend.
What kind of bridge came with? I'm seriously thinking of getting 4 of them, got to be the EVGA ones they're the only ones that would fit. Wondering if the upgrade would be worth it tbh
Depends how you define worth it I guess! As good value for money? No. For playing games? No. Benchmarks? Yes, some. Epeen? Yes.
Well as for value for money that depends on the value you place on what you use the rig for. Don't bother with benchmarking tbh. Epeen to old to care for that now So that just leaves games, the only thing I use that rig for now, the question is Would I actually see a leap in performance if I upgraded to 4 x 970's if not then there's the answer to the value question.
Did you have a standard or OC 770? The 970 should get roughly 780 performance but obviously more if you're OCing the pants off it. I'd be interested to see how a stock 970 would compare to an OC 770, and ofc the vram would make a difference at certain resolutions with certain games.
Yes, if you monitored your FPS then you would, but not in terms of noticeable real world performance, since you probably get ridiculous fps in most games anyway. I had the standard 770 – never did any overclocking either. I haven’t run any performance comparisons, and only tried Elite – but the subjective difference here is MASSIVE!
You think a 770>970 is a decent upgrade... Damn I've gone from a 570>970 I did forget how much nicer the heatsink is on my MSI 570 over this one though. I take it you're aiming for 4k Teezlebub with 4 of them? How well will 4x970's scale in comparison to 2x980's with most games given that they're the same outlay?
I concur with Parge about the gains from the 680/770, I went from an overclocked 770 to a 980 and the 980 is pretty much twice as fast when overclocked. That's incredible in my book.
Ok, dropped it from 240 to 200Mhz OC on the core (boost of 1.38Ghz). Stable stable stable. Now pushing 222Mhz (1.4Ghz boost). EDIT: Stable at 222Mhz..... Temps are holding steady at 80c Think my 3D mark install is borked, as it seems to always crash on the volumetric lighting test and no where else. Tested 252 (1.43ghz) in games and in uni engine and seems stable. If I can hit 1.45Ghz boost I'll take that and push no more on the core. Know what I'll doing Saturday morning now! Seems that the fan is set to keep the temp at 80c at all times. The card is very quiet indeed, even at 100% load, and my case temp is down massively. Definitely a good shout on the blower cooler.
I upgraded from a 560TI to the MSI 970 and it's awesome . Using Afterburner I've noticed the fan only comes on for short periods and only goes to about 50% rpm and I haven't heard it. I have been playing Shadow of Mordor on ultra (but without the HD DLC) and it is really smooth and highest temperature I have seen is 65C What does the MSI software that comes with the card do? I haven't installed it and don't want to unless there's a good reason. Only one minor complaint is when I was on the Rome 2 main menu there was so much coil whine I thought my washing machine had turned itself on easily solved by enabling vsync though. Oh and I haven't done any OCing yet. I've noticed SCAN have raised the price of the MSI version by around £15 since launch.
IIRC it allows the card to be set with a slightly higher OC (it has something like Eco / Gaming * OC modes). It can probably do more as well but I doubt much more than Afterburner can do. Nice to see lots of people getting on well with the 970 - it s a cracking card and very reminisent of the 8800GT. I was about to hit the buy button on one at launch but couldn't pass up the 690 at the price I paid. I will probably hold off now until the Titan II / 980TI is launched and go from there.
So, my final overclocking results are in - and they do not disappoint! All of the below are stable over 8 runs of Uniengine's 'Valley' Benchmark, and two hours of Mechwarrior Online and Elite Dangerous (in the Rift). I've added my results to Bit Techs 970 roundup spreadie Wowza! Either I've got lucky with this particular card, or pretty much all 970's clock like a dream. I managed to push the default GPU clock to 1,303Mhz - just 10Mhz short than the MSI Gaming that BT reviewed. Any higher than this (and I did try, pushing to 1,323Mhz to see if I could beat it) and I'd get a display driver crash after about 5 minutes. However, my maximum observed boost clock was the same - 1,504Mhz. Fan speeds stayed at the 60% (about 2000rpm) level the whole time, and the chip maxed out at 80C. Memory, I didn't really play with too much - just set it to the same level as all of the cards in BTs testing managed, and that was it, perfectly stable. Most impressive of all, I suppose, was the fact that this is supposed to be as close to a 'stock' card as you can get, not only in terms of the cooler, but also the default clocks. In fact, the Base Clock Increase is a whopping 24% over stock! I'll leave you with a GPUz piccie.
Insane OCing and performance potential from these cards btw, but even so... it would still have been outside my budget, and probably way outside my performance requirement too (even the 770 is considerably more than I need at 1920x1200), but it's nice to have reserve power. One thing I really like about the 970 is the increased vram size, which IMO they should have done with the 770 and 780.
