They used cooler from another card. Resulted in no contact with some heat-pipes. Not something you expect from premium overclocking nvidia exclusive brand
They released an updated cooler which fixes this while being $10 cheaper.
They used cooler from another card. Resulted in no contact with some heat-pipes. Not something you expect from premium overclocking nvidia exclusive brand
I get it but in your case this is actually counter-intuitive. Why buy a GPU so fast that it bottlenecks your CPU, and when you upgrade your CPU in 12, 15 or 18 months, a much faster GPU at $350 will have come out? In other words, you run the risk of overspending now to buy a GPU well beyond the speed that your current CPU is capable of producing in hopes that the GPU's legs will be stretched down the line when you upgrade to a faster CPU. The thing is, you'd be better off getting a GPU fast enough, pocking the savings and then selling that GPU and getting something much faster with the savings realized now. I rarely recommend someone overspending for a GPU and it's usually in cases where you are going from a GTX750Ti to an R9 270/270X and you can just apply extra AA for free due to a CPU bottleneck but usually the price difference is $20-40. In your case a 970 costs significantly more than say a used R9 290.
1. An after-market market R9 290 = Reference 290X.
2. You can buy a used Sapphire Tri-X 290 for $225-235, sometimes less. Alternatively a new Sapphire Tri-X is $255 with the $25 AMEX off $200 Twitter deal.
3. Reference 290X = after-market 290 = after-market 970 at your resolution in games with a proper modern CPU:
So why would you pay more to get identical performance with the 970? In fact, as I said, with your CPU, you can just buy a used HD7970Ghz/R9 280X and then once you upgrade the CPU, then consider buying something much faster from R9 300/GM200 series. Your idea to spend $350 now in hopes to keep the card long-term is a bad one since a $700 GTX780Ti's performance can now be had for $350 in a 970. You see how fast GPU's drop in price/get faster?
Get an HD7970Ghz for $120, get Skylake in 12 months, sell the 7970Ghz for $70, losing just $50 and get a way faster card than a 970 for $350 by early 2016. That's what I would recommend as one of the options.
Besides EVGA Classified 980, lower quality PCB components, worse cooler in terms of noise and temperatures vs. other brands. The main reason to get EVGA is warranty, but the card itself is lower quality than MSI Gaming, Gigabyte Windforce, Zotac Extreme AMP!, Inno3D, Galax, etc.
I wish AIB's also offered reference GTX 970s.
BB has one, but it's already on the pricey side, and after sales tax it would be over $400.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/nvidia-g...&skuId=9855169
Newegg has them too, but you can only buy it as part of a combo.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814132038
/shakes fist at newegg
I have the BB reference 970. It's a nice card for sure. Solid card so far! 77.2 ASIC quality. Testing mine at 1531/8072 currently
Stop by the post office and pick up one of the movers packets. Should be a 10% off any 1 single item coupon code included in it. I used one without any issues along with some reward zone $'s to offset the price. The 10% off makes it competitive with other 970 offerings.
I'm in CA so I pretty much get raped with sales tax all over the web.
The 970 will run circles around the 290X overclocked though.
not exactly. It takes a GTX 970 OC to match a stock R9 290X at 1440p. btw a R9 290X can overclock to 1150 mhz quite easily with a bit of voltage tweaking. agreed power consumption will increase a lot but still the GTX 970 is not going to beat a R9 290X when both are overclocked.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/11/03/asus_gtx_970_strix_directcu_ii_video_card_review/1
http://gamegpu.ru/test-video-cards/igry-2014-goda-protiv-sovremennykh-videokart.html
Well, I've decided I'll just wait for AMD to release their next generation cards then upgrade the entire platform all at once. I was getting annoyed at my GPUs being my bottleneck, hence the itch to only upgrade that and make it useful for the future build.
Thanks, all!
If you are bothered by the waiting game, how about getting a used R290 or something similar now and then sell it later? Should do you just fine until prices drop and new hardware is on the market.
Well, I've decided I'll just wait for AMD to release their next generation cards then upgrade the entire platform all at once. I was getting annoyed at my GPUs being my bottleneck, hence the itch to only upgrade that and make it useful for the future build.
Thanks, all!
I'm not saying get the EVGA over the STRIX, just pointing out the that the bashing of the EVGA cooler is a little overblown IMO.
The 970 will run circles around the 290X overclocked though.
That's kind of an older review, which used one driver revision post launch so I think it's too old to be used to support your case.
Maxwell is a brand new architecture, whereas Hawaii had been around for over a year when that review was done.
The first genuinely optimized driver for Maxwell architecture is the 347.09. I noticed a significant performance increase with those drivers compared to previous ones across all titles.
Anyway, gamegpu roundup uses the 347.09 drivers, but uses reference models only. The GTX 970 reference model is clocked pitifully low to keep it within the prescribed TDP threshold, and also to make sure that there is a large enough gap between it and the higher priced GTX 980..
Have you ever tried the XEON LGA 771 mod ? Maybe you can extend the life of your rig for another year or two & get skylake/cannonlake thereafter ?Yup, it's been overclocked for about 3 years, hehe. I have a Xigmatek S963 that's worked pretty well the entire time. I was messing with the OC primarily around when Crysis 2 came out and boosted FPS by around 25% by the higher clocks. Got it stable and it's been there ever since.
I've heard that the P45 board is fairly sought after as well, so I may sell it if I don't make it a server machine. Kinda crazy there's a demand for it, but yeah, I agree: I enjoyed my OC experiences with it.
The first genuinely optimized driver for Maxwell architecture is the 347.09. I noticed a significant performance increase with those drivers compared to previous ones across all titles.
That's kind of an older review, which used one driver revision post launch so I think it's too old to be used to support your case.
I agree with Carfax. Even their latest 900-family review of the 5th of January, 2015 used a dated driver (344.65).Still keep ignoring that Dec 18, 2014 review of MSI Gaming 970 at TPU, huh?
W1zzard said:I'll be starting a full rebench soon, with latest drivers and AC Unity + Far Cry 4. Gonna take me like 2 weeks non-stop.
True. These "aftermarket" cards rarely make into general round-ups. TPU included. So, it's very important to have a nice reference card, even just for PR/reviews.Anyway, gamegpu roundup uses the 347.09 drivers, but uses reference models only. The GTX 970 reference model is clocked pitifully low to keep it within the prescribed TDP threshold, and also to make sure that there is a large enough gap between it and the higher priced GTX 980..
True. These "aftermarket" cards rarely make into general round-ups. TPU included. So, it's very important to have a nice reference card, even just for PR/reviews.
Wish those TPU "charts" had included non-reference cards as well. Drop down menu or smth. But yeah, all these numbers are just a bunch of numbers which can easily be prone to a statistical error / driver. 5,10%? Give or take.
I believe this is why the Evga is not high on some peeps list:
The cooler was designed for earlier gen cards and rather than redesigning it for the 970, Evga just didnt bother. So the heat pipes dont fully cover the GPU core.
http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/evga-geforce-gtx-970-acx-has-misaligned-gpu-vs-heatpipes.html
Not sure if it was fixed but I did hear of newer coolers either for the 970 or 980.
Still keep ignoring that Dec 18, 2014 review of MSI Gaming 970 at TPU, huh?
Unless they state specifically they are using aftermarket parts, one must assume they are using reference models.Why do you start making stuff up? GameGPU operates out of Russia. Reference 970 is only sold exclusively at BestBuy. Where in the world would GameGPU get a "reference 970" from? The gap in their review between a 970 and a 980 is reflective of the average 16-19% performance delta the cards have. I know it's hard for you to this day to admit that an after-market 290 and an after-market 970 are basically tied, besides from a 6% delta at 1080P, and that dual after-market $500-550 290s are nearly identical to dual after-market $700 970 G1s at 1440P and above, but those are the facts. The saddest part is instead of considering what works best for the OP, you once again decided to focus on 970 vs. 290, ignoring the context, which isn't helping him make the best purchasing decision/CPU+GPU upgrade strategy.
Everything besides the warranty is worse about EVGA non-Classified cards:
- Inferior cooling performance to noise level ratio at both idle and load
- Inferior/cheaper VRM/Mosfet/digital power circuitry components
- Generally worse overclocking as a result
If we are talking strictly the card itself, not the service, MSI, Gigabyte, Zotac, Galax all make better products now. Plenty of reviews have confirmed the same.