So I have two MSI Gaming 970s arriving tomorrow. B&H had them for $350 in stock. A lot of people overlook B&H for video cards but they do often have things that newegg and amazon mark up or don't have in stock.
The performance advantage over the 980 is 45-65%, and performance is up there with 780Ti SLI, a setup that was $1400 just 1 year ago.
Nice! MSI Gaming 970/980 are amazing for performance and noise levels this generation - probably the best cards out of the box. It's telling that despite running sandwiched so close to each other in SLI, they are still quieter than a Noctua NH-D14, one of the quietest coolers out there!
I also like that your real world experience dispels the constantly repeated myth on AT that it's better to run dual reference blower cards than high quality after-market cards in SLI/CF. Most importantly hopefully you got the upgraded performance you were hoping for in the games where your 670 SLI struggled.
If those cards had a backplate you'd be in trouble with your CPU heatsink. Looks awfully close.
What are the temperature differences between the cards?
If those cards had a backplate you'd be in trouble with your CPU heatsink. Looks awfully close.
What are the temperature differences between the cards?
Why's that with the backplate/CPU heatsink?
I've never used nonstock coolers because I always end up being too lazy to actually OC.
And I don't know what resolution you're running OP but any reports on how DSR is?
So far so good.
Set them to the following settings
Voltage +87 mV
Power Target 110%
Temp Target 80c
Core Clock +185 (both cards boost to 1565 and settle down at 1550)
Memory Clock +500 (brings it to 8Ghz)
Set a fan profile to keep the fan off until 60C then ramp up to 70% which is near silent compared to my CPU cooler and my previous 670s which really pushed some air when they got hot.
Cards barely hit 70c. One card is noticeably hotter because I have a mATX Motherboard which places them very close together which you can see in the third picture below. Overall I'm very happy. As I mentioned my CPU cooler is now the loudest component in my system. If I turned it off it would be lower than a wisper. Everything seems stable at these settings for now. Going to run a series of benchmarks and tests to be sure this is stable.
Nice. That cooler definitely seems to be doing a great job with the cards sandwiched together so closely.
Just curious, have you run into any issues where one fan spins at 100% and the other sits still? I'm in the market for a 970, and I ran across some people having this issue with MSI cards. I'm wondering if they fixed this.
I normally run 2560x1440 and haven't tested DSR yet. At times I put my PC up on the TV and DSR would probably benefit more at 1080p. I'll have to try it out and do some benchmarks to see the performance hit.
I settled in on stock voltage to 1430 core and 8000 memory it prevents hitting the power target too early and reduces the temps a bit.
3DMark Firestrike went from a score of 10,776 on my 670 SLI setup to 15,429 with the 970s. This is the default free one. I didn't pay to unlock extreme.
Do you mean between the two fans on the single card? No they both spin when they are supposed to on both of my cards. I made sure the fans worked before I started benchmarking.
This is primarily what I'm interested in doing is getting crossfire/sli GTX 980s/R9 390s (most likely R9 390s as I think they'll be cheaper but we'll see), and doing VSR/DSR on my HDTV/Projector.
I'd be very interested in your results!
What specifically would you like me to test? I can run the tests you are looking for and see what the results are.
Anecdotal gaming experience I guess. I'm not sure what setup you're coming from but I'm assuming you've used your HDTV before without DSR. So I just want to know your observations on IQ while using DSR at 1080p.
Like you have mentioned Crysis 3 and Dragon Age Inquisition. If you played them at 1080p before on your HDTV, did you then decide to simply up the graphical settings, or use DSR to improve the IQ? What was better in improving IQ?
Stuff like that. So more of a "User Experience" type thing.
I'm really curious in VSR/DSR since I don't know if I'm ready to do 4K yet and will be at 1080p for awhile (might have to do 4K sooner than I want though because I don't think I can take my 70 inch panel with me when I move which will mean a new 70 inch when I get the chance which will most likely be 4K).
20c difference at full load. It's basically because the top card gets less airflow.
Yeah it is close and a backplate would actually help. The retaining clips for the fans stick out slightly and I have to cover them thoroughly with electrical tape so that it doesn't touch the back of the card. A backplate would eliminate the need for tape, but it does fit. I remember reading about this when the board released.
I normally run 2560x1440 and haven't tested DSR yet. At times I put my PC up on the TV and DSR would probably benefit more at 1080p. I'll have to try it out and do some benchmarks to see the performance hit.
I settled in on stock voltage to 1430 core and 8000 memory it prevents hitting the power target too early and reduces the temps a bit.
3DMark Firestrike went from a score of 10,776 on my 670 SLI setup to 15,429 with the 970s. This is the default free one. I didn't pay to unlock extreme.
The backplate is what actually caused me to switch to an H100i. I had a Noctua NH-U14S and it would hit up against the fan brackets and not let me install the card due to the backplate having a space between the PCB and it.
Ok yeah I'll play with it some in the next few days and see what I think about it. Ideally I'm hoping for slightly better than MSAA results with acceptable performance hit. Bonus to the fact that it works on every game where MSAA won't.
edit: One thing I found out is that DSR requires you to use Geforce Experience to set the resolution for the game there. I tried Crysis 3 and at 4k it's a little slower than I'd like. Above 1440p you see some dropoff in performance. Everything under 4k resolution was playable to me. Without AA anyway. I'd say it may really depend on the game. Obviously not every game is going to be playable at extreme resolutions but there are probably games that run so fast at 1080p that there is enough headroom to crank up in this way. It also appeared to be superior to just using MSAA. I did not play with the slider which can adjust the smoothness or sharpness. Sharper picture has more jaggies but the smoother picture is supposed to get blurry. So there is some tradeoff. More testing and experimentation is needed with different games to find the sweet spot. I can imagine myself playing a game on the TV at 1440p or slightly better resolution. I wouldn't see myself going to 4k, that seems a bit much yet.
Thanks!
The way I saw it so far was that if I got the Vizio P Series, I could go 1080p/120hz. So I'd use DSR/VSR to scale from something like 1440p/1600p down to 1080p. I'd do native 4K, but I doubt I'll have enough GPU horsepower to do so.
Then, come 2017 or so, I can use 4K. Maybe even downsample! Haha, one can dream.
Look forward to hearing how you feel about the tech.