# GTX 970... still a beast???



## Varmintbaby (Aug 5, 2018)

So I have an MSI Twin Frozr GTX 970 with 4GB Ram. I was looking on GPU boss and this card holds up against a GTX 1060 and most of AMD 57x and 58x cards. Is this card really still that much of a beast? In Battlefield 4 I'm getting over 100+fps and PUBG on medium settings I"m getting 80-100 depending on whats going on. I just got a game called Kingdom Come: Deliverance which is a beautiful RPG set in the Holy Roman Empire times. The game runs at about 50fps and will dip down into the 30's from time to time. I don't think the game is very well optimized as it's kinda buggy also. Should I just hold onto this card for a while longer or what card would be worth it in terms of performance (fps) increase to validate spending $300 - $400 dollars? I appreciate any responses. Later!


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## rtwjunkie (Aug 5, 2018)

If you’re happy currently with the 970, that’s great, it’s still fairly decent, as you’ve seen. I see it losing ground real quickly as new games come out.

However, as you seem to be willing to spend up to $400, I would upgrade.  Truly worthy upgrade can be had with the GTX 1070. 

A quick check showed there are several models running as low as $399 and $409.  The performance increase would be off the charts for you.


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## johnspack (Aug 5, 2018)

Yep,  1070 is the only true upgrade path,  and now actually 1070ti as it's only like 20 bucks more.  1060 is a sidegrade so don't bother.


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## Laurijan (Aug 5, 2018)

the gtx970 has been about 160$ used for like 2 years. that card didnt drop much in resell price since its mostly better than gtx1050 and about same with gtx1060. sure it has to do with the cryptoboom gpu shortage too.


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## FordGT90Concept (Aug 5, 2018)

New cards should be debuting soon (like two weeks) so I wouldn't buy anything at this point.


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## Melvis (Aug 5, 2018)

I am happy with my x2 GTX 970's, plays all the games I play even at 1440P, but I only went to 1440P when I got my second GTX 970.  I put it it against my mates GTX 1060 6GB card in the latest Final fantasy and we basically scored the same, only about 100 points different. So if your only gaming at 1080P then the 970 will run everything without an issue. Price to performance its a win win card and still is even today.


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## enxo218 (Aug 5, 2018)

I have the same card and at 1080p I have yet to complain about performance but I consider the 1070 a viable upgrade , just wait a bit for the new cards to arrive and maybe you can save on a price reduction on last gen....that's what I'm waiting to do anyway


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## gamerman (Aug 5, 2018)

yesindeed.
gtx 970 is still egood gpu for FHd games.
specially AIB versions,and memory things are no point.not for real game world.

97 gtx rock,its much better than example vega gpus.


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## Vayra86 (Aug 6, 2018)

gamerman said:


> yesindeed.
> gtx 970 is still egood gpu for FHd games.
> specially AIB versions,and memory things are no point.not for real game world.
> 
> 97 gtx rock,its much better than example vega gpus.



Vega is quite a bit faster... 

Regardless, its not a bad card, but it runs into limits these days. Even for 1080p


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## Kissamies (Aug 6, 2018)

Kicking with GTX 980 OC (1500/1950) and no problems with 1080p here.


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## INSTG8R (Aug 6, 2018)

Vayra86 said:


> Vega is quite a bit faster...
> 
> Regardless, its not a bad card, but it runs into limits these days. Even for 1080p


Considerably!


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## Varmintbaby (Aug 6, 2018)

Ok so I used EVGA Precision App that's on Steam for free to overclock my 970 a bit.  I upped the GPU core clock by 185mhz and the memory by 561mhz and I'm getting consistent 60-70fps in most areas in Kingdom Come Deliverance, whereas in those areas I might have gotten 50ish or 40ish before. Pretty cool! It seems that the longer I play though the GPU heats up and some fps go down. Anyway, thanks for all of your inputs. I think I'll stick with this card until the next generation of Nvidia cards come out. I hear the new Nvidia cards will include some type of new connector for the next gen of VR headsets. We'll see. Anyway.. laterz!


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## peche (Aug 8, 2018)

GTX970 still decent card for gaming,  if you are planing to upgrade aim for GTX 1070 at least, somthing lower will be a downgrade.

GTX900 series have great OC capacities, so be wise when OC'ing, and be wise with voltages, im still holding my GTX 980 for a year more maybe, she still knows how to make me happy, 

Regards,


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## Eric3988 (Aug 12, 2018)

Nothing wrong with the 970, fine card at 1080p and medium-high settings. I would hold onto the upgrade money and get the next gen equivalent when the time comes even if you have to wait until next spring or summer.


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 12, 2018)

Eric3988 said:


> Nothing wrong with the 970


Sure there is, I've had one. Everything runs fine up to the point where the last 512mb of vram is accessed. Then the card chugs. That last 512mb is 32bit access only and severely limits vram transfer rates when accessed. 


Eric3988 said:


> I would hold onto the upgrade money and get the next gen equivalent


A 980 or 1060 would be much better options that do not suffer from the same problems.


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## Fluffmeister (Aug 13, 2018)

Loved my 970, and even Monster Hunter: World at 4K doesn't max out it's VRAM.

It's the age old story of the GPU not having  enough grunt before VRAM becomes an issue, but hey ho, people love to complain.


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## dgianstefani (Aug 13, 2018)

A 1060 is definitely not a sidegrade from a 970, it's about 15% faster, plus the additional VRAM make it much more able to play modern games.


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## Varmintbaby (Aug 13, 2018)

dgianstefani said:


> A 1060 is definitely not a sidegrade from a 970, it's about 15% faster, plus the additional VRAM make it much more able to play modern games.



But all of the benchmarking sites I've gone to have the 970 beating the 1060 in so many categories, especially game related benchmarks


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## dgianstefani (Aug 13, 2018)

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare/GeForce+GTX+1060vsGeForce+GTX+970/3548vs2954
http://hwbench.com/vgas/geforce-gtx-1060-vs-geforce-gtx-970


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 13, 2018)

Varmintbaby said:


> But all of the benchmarking sites I've gone to have the 970 beating the 1060 in so many categories, especially game related benchmarks


Not sure where you're looking, but make sure you're comparing the 6GB 1060 to the 970, not the 3gb 1060. The 1060 6gb handily beats the 970 and you'll never encounter the ram issues.


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## ASOT (Aug 13, 2018)

Still rockin but not a beast!


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 13, 2018)

Fluffmeister said:


> It's the age old story of the GPU not having enough grunt before VRAM becomes an issue, but hey ho, people love to complain.


I shared a real experience that I had, which was documented by a whole host of users. Thank you for marginalizing a real world problem. It's what you seem to be good at.


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## MrGenius (Aug 13, 2018)

dgianstefani said:


> A 1060 is definitely not a sidegrade from a 970, it's about 15% faster, plus the additional VRAM make it much more able to play modern games.


A graphics card that's not at least, or more than, 50% faster is a sidegrade. Only 15% faster? Please. That's called a MAJOR sidegrade. MEGA waste of time/money.


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## Varmintbaby (Aug 13, 2018)

MrGenius said:


> A graphics card that's not at least, or more than, 50% faster is a sidegrade. Only 15% faster? Please. That's called a MAJOR sidegrade. MEGA waste of time/money.



@MrGenius 

Sorry but I have to ask this. I assume you know what your avi means. Why want anything to do with satan? He's on a path to destruction. In the end, he'll perish in the lake of fire along with his followers.  Why not just treat your neighbor right and have love and respect for God? That's what will lead to eternal life in heaven. What is your opinion on it?


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## ASOT (Aug 13, 2018)

Get the 1070 or Ti version this is the path to go 970<1070 ..1060 6gb is small upgrade


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## Zfast4y0u (Aug 13, 2018)

MrGenius said:


> A graphics card that's not at least, or more than, 50% faster is a sidegrade. Only 15% faster? Please. That's called a MAJOR sidegrade. MEGA waste of time/money.



i went from intel dual core eXXXX ( forgot model) with nvidia 9500gt asus version to, 8700k, 1080ti sli xd


970 is fine card, just shame what nvidia has done to it with last 500mb of ram, really finger in eyes to the costumers.


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## dgianstefani (Aug 13, 2018)

Except it's not just the 15% faster, it's also the doubling of VRAM which is arguably more important.


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## CrAsHnBuRnXp (Aug 13, 2018)

rtwjunkie said:


> However, as you seem to be willing to spend up to $400, I would upgrade. Truly worthy upgrade can be had with the GTX 1070.


Id suggest waiting until the new cards come out quite honestly and get an 1170/2070


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## peche (Aug 13, 2018)

dgianstefani said:


> A 1060 is definitely not a sidegrade from a 970, it's about 15% faster, plus the additional VRAM make it much more able to play modern games.


i would say is not a wise upgrade, for the price paid, 10%-15% improvement on some games and more directed to consumption and efficency for gaming is like meeeh, 980ti, 1070, 1070ti and so are upgrades with much more sense than GTx 1060, 980 for example, but thats just my point of view, 



ASOT said:


> Get the 1070 or Ti version this is the path to go 970<1070 ..1060 6gb is small upgrade


+1 here


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## AltCapwn (Aug 13, 2018)

Stick with your GTX 970 until the next gen gets released.


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## dgianstefani (Aug 13, 2018)

Kek, "anything less than a 50% increase is a sidegrade".  Ok. So 1080 to 1080ti is a sidegrade XD.


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## Eric3988 (Aug 13, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> Sure there is, I've had one. Everything runs fine up to the point where the last 512mb of vram is accessed. Then the card chugs. That last 512mb is 32bit access only and severely limits vram transfer rates when accessed.
> 
> A 980 or 1060 would be much better options that do not suffer from the same problems.



I would say that's more of a technical issue than anything. In everyday gaming use at 1080p I did not encounter issues. To me a 1060 6gb is an upgrade but why get something marginally better now when that same money will get you something clearly better a year or less from now? It's all opportunity cost, spend money now and sacrifice future performance. 10-15% performance across the board isn't enough to incentive for me to upgrade. That's going from 45 to 50/1fps. Above 30% performance and now I'm considering, above 50% and I'm throwing money to the retailer.


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## dgianstefani (Aug 14, 2018)

It's not just 15%, it's a lot more when the game uses more than 3gb VRAM.  Which I would say most games do these days.


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## John Naylor (Aug 15, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> Not sure where you're looking, but make sure you're comparing the 6GB 1060 to the 970, not the 3gb 1060. The 1060 6gb handily beats the 970 and you'll never encounter the ram issues.





dgianstefani said:


> It's not just 15%, it's a lot more when the game uses more than 3gb VRAM.  Which I would say most games do these days.



Not at 1080p and rarely at 1440p

According to TPUs testing, there are no VRAM issues at 3 GB for the 1060... at least today.  If there were, we'd see a degradation of the performance difference between 1080p and 1440p, but testing shows no such effect.  How can that be ?  If VRAM is supposed to be an issue at 1080P shouldn't it be more of a problem at 1440p ?

The 6GB card has 10% more shaders so it will be faster, but logic demands that if VRAM is an issue at 1080p, that performance will tail off as resolution increases to 1440p

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_1060_Gaming_X_3_GB/26.html

At 1080p, the 6GB scores 106% to the 3 GB's 100%
At 1440p, the 6GB scores 106% to the 3 GB's 100%

Only when we get to 2160p does the 3 GB come up short where the advantage jumps from 6% to 14%.

As for the upgrade decision.... it's a given that whatever 10xx series card is under consideration, it will be cheaper than it is today,and that is just a few weeks away.  It seems likely that within the next 2 weeks we'll know what 11xx has to offer and no doubt the cheaper 1160 will outperform the 1070.  As for VRAM, I have yet to see a test that shows any **real** significant VRAM impacts on performance ... as long as 3 GB is the floor for 1080p and 6 GP for 1440p.   Unfortunately, there is no utility that measures actual VRAM usage.

"We spoke to Nvidia’s Brandon Bell on this topic, who told us the following: “None of the GPU tools on the market report memory usage correctly, whether it’s GPU-Z, Afterburner, Precision, etc. They all report the amount of memory requested by the GPU, not the actual memory usage. Cards will larger memory will request more memory, but that doesn’t mean that they actually use it. They simply request it because the memory is available.”

Resolution (Minimum / Recommended Going Forward for "peace of mind")

1080p - 3 GB / 4 GB
1440p - 6 GB / 8 GB
2180p - 12 GB / 16 GB

In every case, the only time testers could find an impact from RAM, outside poor console ports and other anomalies, was when the games were virtually unplayable (< 30 fps) at selected settings and resolution.  That's not to say there weren't anomalies... In TPUs test the 6GB had a 19% advantage at 1080p, that grew to 26% at 1440p.  On RoTR, a 32% advantage at 1080p, drops to 15.8% at 1440p. clearly not a VRAM issue as performance improved greatly at the higher resolution.  Yes, we've all seen the posts where folks claim VRAM issues and I have to think that misinterpreting what utilities actually measure (allocation instead of usage) is the basis for most.  And unless you actually work at it, you have to work perty hard to create an issue as we saw with all the hoopla around the 970.  In all these cases, when tested, review sites have been unable to duplicate these issues ... again, w/o doing some really funky things in an effort to 'create' an issue where one did not exist under normal usage.  Like the 960 3.5 Gb hoopla, whereever the 970 had a problem, the 980 did too.... both cards simply were not capable for 2160p.   More reading here:

600 series https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Video-Card-Performance-2GB-vs-4GB-Memory-154/
700 series ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_fBCvFXi0g
900 series https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/gigabyte_geforce_gtx_960_g1_gaming_4gb_review,12.html
900 series https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/...y-x-faces-off-with-nvidias-gtx-980-ti-titan-x


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 15, 2018)

John Naylor said:


> According to TPUs testing, there are no VRAM issues at 3 GB for the 1060... at least today.


You misunderstood, I was talking about the vram issues with the 970. You are correct, no such problems exist for any of the 1060 variations.


John Naylor said:


> As for VRAM, I have yet to see a test that shows any **real** significant VRAM impacts on performance


Again, see above. The issues with the 970's divided ram problem(3.5GB@224bit+.5GB@32bit=3.5GB@196GBps+.5@28GBps) are well documented. The 1xxx series have no such problems.

The rest of what you said, I've no problems with. Just wanted to clarify.


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## ASOT (Aug 15, 2018)

GTX 970 will remain a refference in price/ratio performance long time.


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## peche (Aug 16, 2018)

ASOT said:


> GTX 970 will remain a refference in price/ratio performance long time.


Actually will remain for this generation and could be next as one of best used options so far regarding price and performance ratio, for 1080 will be one of the best option for medium and high settings, so is 980, for me GTX 980ti is on an unbeatable place for its specs!

Regards,


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## John Naylor (Aug 16, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> You misunderstood, I was talking about the vram issues with the 970. You are correct, no such problems exist for any of the 1060 variations.
> 
> Again, see above. The issues with the 970's divided ram problem(3.5GB@224bit+.5GB@32bit=3.5GB@196GBps+.5@28GBps) are well documented. The 1xxx series have no such problems.
> 
> The rest of what you said, I've no problems with. Just wanted to clarify.



My bad.... 

However, the 3.5 Gb thing with the 970's, I also saw as much ado about nothing.   In any case where the 970 had a problem, so did the 980.  Neither is suitable for 4k resolution.   

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/m...-mordor-geforce-gtx-970-vram-stress-test.html



> The past few days we did look a little closer to some of the reports out there. At 2560x1440 I tried filling that graphics memory, but most games simply do not use more than 1.5 to 3 GB at that resolution combined with the very best image quality settings.....
> 
> Let me clearly state this, the GTX 970 is not an Ultra HD card, it has never been marketed as such and we never recommended even a GTX 980 for Ultra HD gaming either. So if you start looking at that resolution and zoom in, then of course you are bound to run into performance issues, but so does the GTX 980. These cards are still too weak for such a resolution combined with proper image quality settings ... Face it, if you planned to game at Ultra HD, you would not buy a GeForce GTX 970....
> 
> Overall you will have a hard time pushing any card over 3.5 GB of graphics memory usage with any game unless you do some freaky stuff. The ones that do pass 3.5 GB mostly are poor console ports or situations where you game in Ultra HD or DSR Ultra HD rendering. In that situation I cannot guarantee that your overall experience will be trouble free, however we have a hard time detecting and replicating the stuttering issues some people have mentioned.



Being geeks, we all do the same thing .... we open the box, put it together and then read the instructions only if we have parts left over.   So when we download a utility, what I am getting at, make sure you know what the utility is reading before deciding that yoiu need a more expensive GFX card.  And, AFAIK, there is no utility in existence that reads VRAM in actual use; only what the game designer decided he / she wanted to "allocate" based upon what it detects during installation .


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 16, 2018)

John Naylor said:


> My bad....


No worries.


John Naylor said:


> However, the 3.5 Gb thing with the 970's, I also saw as much ado about nothing. In any case where the 970 had a problem, so did the 980. Neither is suitable for 4k resolution.


Both of the displays I had at the time I owned the 970 were 1080p(I run dual displays 24/7). Had none of the same problems with the 980 that replaced the 970. Also had none of those problems with the 4GB 670 or 4GB 770 I had before then. The 970 was the exclusive problem card. More than one brand of 970 was tested, bought new. So I was able to rule out the card being defective.


John Naylor said:


> https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/m...-mordor-geforce-gtx-970-vram-stress-test.html


Saw that, testing methodologies did not reveal the problem sufficiently. The general theme of results I and others found is that if you run a single monitor, a 970 may very well run perfectly or well enough for the design problems to be unnoticed. However, once you go multi-monitor, which is very common, the design problems of the 970 become more prevalent as more vram is used to maintain both game display data and desktop display data, which remains displayed on the monitors not focused by the game being played.


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## CounterZeus (Aug 16, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> No worries.
> 
> Both of the displays I had at the time I owned the 970 were 1080p(I run dual displays 24/7). Had none of the same problems with the 980 that replaced the 970. Also had none of those problems with the 4GB 670 or 4GB 770 I had before then. The 970 was the exclusive problem card. More than one brand of 970 was tested, bought new. So I was able to rule out
> 
> Saw that, testing methodologies did not reveal the problem sufficiently. The general theme of results I and others found is that if you run a single monitor, a 970 may very well run perfectly or well enough for the design problems to be unnoticed. However, once you go multi-monitor, which is very common, the design problems of the 970 become more prevalent as more vram is used to maintain both game display data and desktop display data, which remains displayed on the monitors not focused by the game being played.



I ran triple 1080p monitors with gtx970, then a triple monitor setup with 1x1440p + 2x1080p. Never had any issues regarding vram. What was your specific problem?

Edit: nvm, you said it at the end. Never had that issue.


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