New GTX 970 & 980: Dream GPUs for Skyrim modders?

[PingouinMalin]

To those of you who are already upgrading : any feedback will be appreciated greatly ! I'm really hesitating : my 760 is not so old (14 month and I usually change my GPU every two years) but the 2gb is really lacking some punch.

[TechAngel85]

To those of you who are already upgrading : any feedback will be appreciated greatly ! I'm really hesitating : my 760 is not so old (14 month and I usually change my GPU every two years) but the 2gb is really lacking some punch.

I have a GTX760 4Gb and I'm not seeing much reason to upgrade at the moment. With STEP:Extended + ENB @ 1980x1020 I'm staying in the 40-55 FPS range even in the most intense areas. I also have an ASUS mobo that supports Fan Xpert 2 so I never hear my rig. The apartment AC is louder and I'm right next to the tower. I might end up upgrading eventually, but it won't be until Spring, at the earliest.

[Razorsedge877]

I don't know it these two cards are a good example since they are so close in model number but which is better? One higher end card are two lower end cards set on SLI and at what point  is it worth getting the higher end card over 2 low end cards.

[mattfromoz]

I am lucky the choice was easy with only 1.2gb memory and a card I had for nearly 3 years.

Will see how things run with the ssd and new gpu.

[EssArrBee]

The Anandtech article mentions that the Titan cooler is now being used with the 980 and 970 which is a very good thing. They are excellent in terms of keeping the GPU cool and noise levels. Not sure why they waited this long to integrate them into their gaming GPUs where cooling is so important. Maybe there was a cost or supply issue. It also said these have the highest build quality they've ever seen and that is pretty impressive for the 970 at it's current price. Durability is super important for anyone that may use their GPUs for something other than gaming.

 

The only drawback to Maxwell so far was native support for shared memory being pushed back. Nvidia has been a bit quiet on the problems they have had, so I'm guessing it was harder than they expected it to be. CUDA already has the software APIs, but they are very conservative for current gen architectures, nothing that common software could make use of at this point. I want discrete processors with shared DDR4/GDDR5 memory now dammit!!!!  :angry:

[Spock]

The Anandtech article mentions that the Titan cooler is now being used with the 980 and 970 which is a very good thing.

According to the techpowerup article the Asus cooler on the 970 is absurdly quiet. It got 9.9 and at least back in the days wizard was a harware guru. The Strix cooler is not a blower design like the titan cooler, but it looks similar to the DirectCU II wich blew about 30% of the heat out of the case. With the low power consumtion it shouldn't be much of a problem anyway.

[DanielCoffey]

It also appears that the physical layout of some of the 980 card variants means that they share water blocks with earlier generations but compatibility needs to be checked carefully.

[bern43]

How much benefit do you guys actually think the 4gb vram is for a modded skyrim?  I'm running SLI 780s and my vram is consistently at or around 3gb when I'm in any sort of town.  This is with REGs.  Frame rates seem ok though, just the occasional stutter/slow down.  I can't actually afford an upgrade right now, so this is more of a hypothetical question.

Edited September 23, 2014 by bern43

[crime_syndicate]

It certainly is a benefit if you're running very high res textures and stuff. I personally have slight issues with my setup at 1920*1200 with a single 780 (3gb). No doubt at 2560 res it would be quite a lot worse, and that's not even using an ENB preset with very demanding settings (like say, K ENB or Serenity at full force) or monster ini settings. Got to say, I got this card 2 months ago and am pretty happy with it, but even though I got it at a great price (basically the same as a 970) and a 970 would have fairly little more performance (like, idk, 10% at most when comparing the 2 overlocked cards?), the vram thing is almost making me regret not waiting lol.

It will help making the card more future proof not only for hardcore skyrim modding, but for downsampling/4k in other games too.

[Spock]

How much benefit do you guys actually think the 4gb vram is for a modded skyrim?

More vram means you can use larger textures. Madwizard reported that 4gb seems to be right for 2k exterior color maps+1k exterior normals. How much difference that makes visually is completely subjective.

[bern43]

Should have been a little clearer in my post.  I'm curious about how much real world difference there will be with the 4gb card given that we now have ENBoost and the memory patch/hack.  

[Nearox]

@1080p I don't think you will notice a big difference between 3gb and 4gb, even with REGS and lots of other mods. If you are constantly hitting the 3gb limit, it is possible to have some extra stutter due to ENBoost offloading. So in that sense you may see an improvement. I dont think FPS-wise it will make a significanty difference though, only in overall smoothness. 

 

If you already have 780 SLI... I seriously would not upgrade now. Would be a waste of money if you ask me. 

[bern43]

I've got a 1440p monitor so that might explain hitting the 3gb limit.  But it's highly unlikely I'm going to upgrade.  Too much money, for not enough bump in performance.  Now if a 980ti comes out a few months from now, that might be a different story. :)

Edited September 23, 2014 by bern43

[Amyr]

It's totally my dream GPU, everything I could ask for. Gonna make an SLI of 970 and enjoy 4K downsampled Skyrim.

[Nearox]

It's totally my dream GPU, everything I could ask for. Gonna make an SLI of 970 and enjoy 4K downsampled Skyrim.

Lucky you :P