GTX 970/980 owners thread

[lehtv]

It's an i7 920 at 4ghz with 16GB memory. I might get a Haswell if Microcenter has their usual CPU deals next month, but looking at BFG10K's tests, the improvement is pretty minimal in most games.

i7-920 is going to be okay in some games, but it will not handle the card to its full potential in many others. I had an i7-920 @ 3.36Ghz two years ago. I upgraded my 560 Ti to a 7950 but noticed the CPU would not handle it properly in many games (a couple of examples: Alan Wake stuck to 40fps due to being dual core, Skyrim and BF3 had poor lows, Planetside 2 didn't like the slow cores either). GTX 980 is almost twice as fast as 7950 Boost, while your CPU is only 20% faster than what I had, so you can see why I'm a bit concerned

Nevertheless, a huge upgrade is ahead of you, and I guess you can view it as a positive that when you also upgrade your CPU, you'll notice another bump in framerates.

 

[Rhezuss]

For you guys with a GTX 970, what is your Firestrike score?
I'm at 10102...is that good?

 

[RaistlinZ]

Stock 9,856
Overclock 11,277

 

[Rhezuss]

Ok so my SSC is doing normal stuff

 

[toyota]

For you guys with a GTX 970, what is your Firestrike score?
I'm at 10102...is that good?

the 970 I had was throttling like crazy but still got this score.


upload pics

 

[Tweak155]

Disaster during my PSU / Video Card upgrade... somehow the plastic clip on the back of my SSD broke where the power connects. I think there isn't a lot of room back there so possibly the cable stayed bent over time and eventually broke it off.

Now the clip is stuck in my old PSU and in order to use my 500gb SSD, I have to use the connector on THAT PSU. Think something like that is covered with warranty? The drive is probably only a little over a year old.

Other than that, the 970 seems like quite the upgrade so far (old card was a 670) on my 1440p monitor. I play MOSTLY older stuff so it's not like it's a huge change for me there, but even things like SC2 run smoother with all the settings up. I will have to retry Metro & The Witcher 2 and Tomb Raider which push my graphics a little more out of the games I own.

 

[lehtv]

The Witcher 2

Thanks for reminding me! I should replay that game once again when I get my 970.. great game, can't wait for the third one (which I've preordered)

 

[wand3r3r]

Disaster during my PSU / Video Card upgrade... somehow the plastic clip on the back of my SSD broke where the power connects. I think there isn't a lot of room back there so possibly the cable stayed bent over time and eventually broke it off.

Now the clip is stuck in my old PSU and in order to use my 500gb SSD, I have to use the connector on THAT PSU. Think something like that is covered with warranty? The drive is probably only a little over a year old.

Other than that, the 970 seems like quite the upgrade so far (old card was a 670) on my 1440p monitor. I play MOSTLY older stuff so it's not like it's a huge change for me there, but even things like SC2 run smoother with all the settings up. I will have to retry Metro & The Witcher 2 and Tomb Raider which push my graphics a little more out of the games I own.

I'm going to venture a guess that it won't be covered, but if you try explain it they *might* take pity on you and RMA it. They generally explicitly state that physical damage isn't covered to cover themselves.

Definitely worth a try though.

 

[kachaffeous]

Bought the Gigabyte G1 970, but now on boot up it sits on the bios splash screen for 2 mins, can't enter bios or anything, after 2 mins windows will boot fine. I'm assuming it is some sort of time out that is happening during boot. Previously could do a cold boot to windows desktop < 30secs.

As far as I know the gtx 970 should be compatiable, the mother is also a gigabyte (z68xp-ud3p) which is PCI express 2.0. I have opened a ticket with gigabyte, just wanted a sanity check that it should work.

i5 2500k cpu
16gb rams
600w ps
z68 mb
crucial ssd

 

[96Firebird]

I have a 970 with a Z68 motherboard and don't have that issue. Is there a BIOS update for your motherboard?

 

[exar333]

For you guys with a GTX 970, what is your Firestrike score?
I'm at 10102...is that good?

About what I get, although my CPU physics score is pulling me down. No HT and only at 4ghz.

 

[Tweak155]

I'm going to venture a guess that it won't be covered, but if you try explain it they *might* take pity on you and RMA it. They generally explicitly state that physical damage isn't covered to cover themselves.

Definitely worth a try though.

Yeah that's what I was thinking :-/

At least the drive still works.

 

[aigomorla]

koolance 980GTX blocks are in stock.

I ordered 2 of them. ETA 10-15

I will show u guys load temps with and without blocks.

Looks like i can finally break the seals on my 980 GTX boxes which have been sealed since launch.

 

[AdamK47]

It's been almost a month with my 980s and they are feeling old now. When are the new cards coming out?

 

[kachaffeous]

I have a 970 with a Z68 motherboard and don't have that issue. Is there a BIOS update for your motherboard?

That was it, updated my bios and boot times went back down to 25secs. Thanks.

 

[exar333]

It's been almost a month with my 980s and they are feeling old now. When are the new cards coming out?

Waiting for Big Maxwell and/or 20nm?

 

[Leadbox]

Three and 4 way Sli testing here
It's ugly stuff for the most part, wish more games used the Cryengine, its superb.

 

[AdamK47]

Waiting for Big Maxwell and/or 20nm?

Big Maxwell and 20nm. Hopefully at the same time.

My 980s are fantastic though. I was only kidding... partially.

 

[Grooveriding]

Three and 4 way Sli testing here
It's ugly stuff for the most part, wish more games used the Cryengine, its superb.

Yikes that is terrible. The quickly diminishing scaling is no surprise, it's always been that way with a 3rd and 4th card. What is ugly are those terrible frametimes and stutter on 3 and 4 way configurations.

I've been considering getting a third 780ti until big Maxwell and that puts me off the idea. Although I feel pretty confident that a 28nm Big Maxwell is going to arrive sooner than we expect. My guess is it is available by January.

 

[AdamK47]

I started playing with the 344.24 WHQL drivers. Had a heck of a time getting SLI enabled. NVidia completely changed how SLI is enabled now. It requires a reboot. I would select "Maximize 3D Performance" and click on Apply. A dialog would popup stating that a reboot is required to apply the settings. After a reboot SLI would be disabled and the control panel would show that "the SLI configuration has been changed" and another apply would be required. This, of course, requires another reboot. After this reboot the same message is displayed in the control panel and SLI is always disabled. No amount of applying and reboots can enable SLI.

Then I came up with the bright idea to uninstall the 344.24 drivers and install the 344.16 drivers. Installed 344.16, enabled SLI, and then installed 344.24 over top of that without the clean install option. The driver installed, but of course SLI was disabled in the control panel immediately afterwards. I then selected "Maximize 3D Performance" and clicked apply. It asked for a reboot. I rebooted and wouldn't you know it, SLI was enabled. The workaround worked.

 

[Freddy1765]

It's the frame time variance that's the cause of microstutter, right?
And if so, at what kind of latency differential does that stutter become apparent? Looking at the pcper review's numbers for 2-way SLi (which is the one I'd be interested in trying) the increase is usually no more than 2ms in games like BF4 and Metro: LL. In Crysis the variance even appears to be lower for all SLi configs compared with the single GPU solution, what's going on there?

I'd very much like to finally try out SLi by adding a 2nd 970, but I suppose the sheer number of negative comments and poor experiences people seem to have had with microstutter have left me a bit paranoid, and I'm just not sure what to expect.

 

[CP5670]

i7-920 is going to be okay in some games, but it will not handle the card to its full potential in many others. I had an i7-920 @ 3.36Ghz two years ago. I upgraded my 560 Ti to a 7950 but noticed the CPU would not handle it properly in many games (a couple of examples: Alan Wake stuck to 40fps due to being dual core, Skyrim and BF3 had poor lows, Planetside 2 didn't like the slow cores either). GTX 980 is almost twice as fast as 7950 Boost, while your CPU is only 20% faster than what I had, so you can see why I'm a bit concerned

Nevertheless, a huge upgrade is ahead of you, and I guess you can view it as a positive that when you also upgrade your CPU, you'll notice another bump in framerates.

That's what I figured. The differences look pretty small in the benchmarks here, but I will probably change the CPU at some point anyway for non-gaming work I do. At this point, I've held off playing a lot of games this year because of my old card. The 980 might be overkill for me over the 970 and I wouldn't have paid the regular price for it, but it was worth the discount (at least $80-90 over Amazon or Newegg in total), especially since I expect to keep this card for a long time too. Game graphics aren't advancing at quite the same rate they used to, and a lot of games still use the old UE3 and/or are poor console ports where the PC version is an afterthought.

 

[RockinZ28]

I'm still sporting an i7 920 at 4ghz. Just replaced my gtx 580s with gtx 970s.

Has given a big performance bump. Can play all the latest games at ultra settings at 1080p and pretty much keep it pegged at 60fps. Before I was having to set a lot of effects down to medium, or even off. So there is still some life left in the 920 with a decent OC.

 

[toyota]

i7-920 is going to be okay in some games, but it will not handle the card to its full potential in many others. I had an i7-920 @ 3.36Ghz two years ago. I upgraded my 560 Ti to a 7950 but noticed the CPU would not handle it properly in many games (a couple of examples: Alan Wake stuck to 40fps due to being dual core, Skyrim and BF3 had poor lows, Planetside 2 didn't like the slow cores either). GTX 980 is almost twice as fast as 7950 Boost, while your CPU is only 20% faster than what I had, so you can see why I'm a bit concerned

Nevertheless, a huge upgrade is ahead of you, and I guess you can view it as a positive that when you also upgrade your CPU, you'll notice another bump in framerates.

hmm I am not buying all of that. for one thing Alan Wake uses 4 cores but it just does not get much faster with more than two modern cores because its not a very cpu bound game at all. there is NO WAY it was limited to 40 fps with oced 920. no way at all.

EDIT: here is STOCK i7 930 getting 111 fps for an average.


image hosting

 

[AdamK47]

I decided to look at some benchmarks I've run before and posted on this forum.

Here's one from Hitman Absolution on Dec. 31st 2012: http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=34437751&postcount=100

Old Specs:
Intel Core i7 3960X @ 4.5GHz
ASRock Extreme11 @ 36 x 125MHz
32GB G.Skill Ripjaws Z @ 2333 DDR
Two Nvidia GTX 690s in Quad SLI

Results @ 2560x1600 with 8XAA

Current results with a 5960X @ 4.0GHz, 32GB DDR4 @ 2666, and four 980s @ ~1360MHz (same game settings)

Tomb Raider on Apr. 26th 2013: http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=34942518&postcount=53

Intel Core i7 3960X @ 4.5GHz
ASRock Extreme11 @ 36 x 125MHz
32GB G.Skill Ripjaws Z @ 2333 DDR
Three Nvidia GTX Titans in 3-Way SLI

Current results with a 5960X @ 4.0GHz, 32GB DDR4 @ 2666, and four 980s @ ~1360MHz (same game settings)