Video card upgrade

[PMDG777 231]

I'll reinforce what Michael said. It's great to use as a standard first try base. You can then adapt those settings to your own preference.

[CaptWilliam 0]

Just installed a new Asus GTX 970 STRIX 4Gb OC and it just rocks!!!
Excellent performance on my 40" 4K monitor (that's right: 4K@60Hz) ^_^

The extra money for the 980 is a waste; better go with 2 x 970 in SLI

 

William

[Bert Pieke 7,585]

 

The extra money for the 980 is a waste; better go with 2 x 970 in SLI

 

William

 

 

Why SLI ??

[silla 0]

Today I replaced my GTX 680 with the ASUS GTX 970 STRIX DIRECTCU II. To be honest, playing FSX I noticed absolutely 0 difference.

Playing FSX with the Aerosoft Airbus 320, REX Overdrive and 50 more addons had the following impact on the new GTX970:

- The GPU temperature raised from 29'C to 31'C when there was a lot going on

- GPU usage climbed from 10% to 28%

- GPU memory usage increased by 100MB

 

However, if the OP also states that he also wants to play GTA V, then we are talking an entire new ballgame. With that kind of a game you will be noticing a lot of difference with a GTX970.

 

Performance/price wise, it makes more sense to go for the GTX970 than the GTX980. The latter one only makes sense once you start going to resolutions of 1440p and upwards. In Europe the 970 goes for around 350€, whilst the 980 is about 650€. You can get 2x 970 and SLI them for almost the same price as one 980.

Playing games at 4K you need at least one GTX980. With a single card you can play modern games, but will have to go easy on AA and the likes. If you want to turn all goodies on, you are looking at GTX 980 SLI.

 

And following your suggestion with a little bit of research, I swapped my config from the MSI GTX970 to the ASUS STRIX OC GTX970. Can't say how well it performs yet as I only got the parts today. Assembling the entire rig plus installing the OS, then drivers, etc took a lot of time and I had to pack it again as I'm traveling in a few hours, with the system.

I sure hope I'll see a marked improvement with the new build but the ASUS card looks 'hella sick!'.

 

I don't believe you will notice any difference, unless you are running benchmarks. Even if one is slighty more overclocked, you will get very few extra framerates. In my opinion this isn't worth the swap.

 

Hi Jhon:

An 800W power supply will work out great and will push everything you have listed. If you end up adding a few more SATA drives you might want to even look at 1000w ones...but 800w will do just fine...Let us know how it turns out!

 

An 800W will work just fine. An HDD adds about 3W and an SSD 0.3W. There is no need to upgrade to 1000W, unless you plan on running SLI in the future.

 

Hello guys, thank you for your responses. To quote some of your answers:

 

Well if it was about the looks I would choose the one with the default nVidia case, to me that's the best looking one! ASUS' Strix does look very good, but Gigabyte's doesn't look bad at all either.

 

Oh yes, thank you for mentioning this. I forgot to do so in my previous post. Regarding this scandal, I don't really mind, as I don't think the games I'll run will go past 3.5GB VRAM. Right now I am only using a single 23'' monitor on 1080p (1920x1080). I might consider getting a second and maybe even a third one in the future, but all of them on 1080p. By the time that happens I suppose I will have upgraded my videocard again anyway.

 

Only question I have in this regard is, if I get a second 23'' monitor on the same resolution, and my plans are to have FSX in one and utilities like charts / PFPX / browser / etc. in the other, will I be fine with the 970? I suppose having a second monitor for just programs, etc. should not be that intensive and therefore not have a big impact in performance. It is for me at the moment with my current videocard however.

 

In my case it would be 3.5GB is still better than 512MB! In theory, in the worst case scenario I'll have at least 7 times the VRAM amount I have right now with my 4870.

 

Thanks. It is to note though that my PSU is about 3-4 years old now, so I am not very sure if it is 80+. Other than the videocard, however, I am not planning to add any hardware components for now though, nor am I planning to go SLI in the near future.

 

 

This is going to be a tough decision. I suppose I'll choose it when I am at the store and see both personally.

 

Thank you all guys for your help! Greatly appreciated.

 

The issue with the GTX970 and the 4GB is not really an issue, it is blown out of proportion. Yes, you do not have truly 4GB, what you have is 3.5GB and a slower 500MB memory block. Any in-depth test you read online will tell you that this doesn't really impact any gaming. The stutters reported occur when your memory on the GPU is full, the same will happen if you have a GTX980 with the full 4GB and you also use up all of it.

Unless you play games with heave texture mods or use the GTX970 to play at very high resolutions (1440p and higher) you will never notice any difference. The only scandal was the fraudulent marketing that nVidia did.

[krazyk 157]

I don't believe you will notice any difference, unless you are running benchmarks. Even if one is slighty more overclocked, you will get very few extra framerates. In my opinion this isn't worth the swap.

 

It was a reply to my original post where I had mentioned the specs I am going to order. Check here

At that time, I had the ATI HD5750 1GB GPU so coming up to the Asus Strix GTX970 definitely had a role to play.

[silla 0]

Ah, sorry, I misunderstood you then.