GeForce GTX 970 specifications

[DanielCoffey]

The thing the current generation of NVidia cards have brought over the AMD ones is power efficiency.  Those 970s were cool and quiet and had enormous overclocking potential as a result. If you are paying for your own electricity, it is a serious consideration.

[Aiyen]

The reason for the Nvidia recommendations have been mostly because for the past many many many ENB .dll´s they have been superior in every single way. With hacks, and weird bypasses, and general reliance on Boris´s mood if it even worked on AMD. It has nothing to do with one vendor being better then the other as such.. just for our little niche of the internet then it has been. It is only in these later versions where Boris´s have managed to get more control over the AMD issues and become faster to fix them as they pop up that it has improved. 

 

As for people reporting bad performance on various ENB threads.... in almost 90% of all cases it comes back to them not having optimized their mod lists or setups... some even tend to forget they set the shadow res to 4k in the ini´s. Which because the engine is so unoptimized will just never really work because it was never ever meant to. 

 

As for the more general recommendations around here with the current generation. As Daniel says... the power efficiency is so superior that whatever marginal gains in performance the current AMD cards have is entirely irrelevant. You will end up paying a premium using AMD cards.. and in some countries that premium gets much higher even after a 3 month period. Considering that most people tend to skimp on power supply choices the power bill gets even larger. 

But there are high hopes for the next generation from AMD.. they finally got the console market down, and as such more engines will most likely get more optimization made over the next decade that will make it the better choice. We shal see. 

[Vexzarium]

I can see the power consumption being a major concern in countries other than the U.S. From what I gather, running my 290x Lightning shall only cost me $7-$10 per year more than a gimped 970. The 970 also costs more and is out performed by my particular 290x. Actually, not sure if my 290x costs less, mine was $369 at purchase. For me, after a few weeks of unrelenting research into GPU's from $199 up, I'd not put anything less than a GTX960 in a low budget build(around $600) and from that GPU I'd go to a Sapphire 280x, straight to a MSi 290x Lightning, then to the G1 GTX980. Then the most I'd go to is the 295x2. What's my point? The GTX 970 is a card, in a price bracket, that is gimped and severely lacking a reason to exist. So much so that, as a consumer, I completely overlook it. Now, if it still had a solid 4gb VRAM, it would be a fair contender to a higher end 290x, maybe even a better option, and would have plenty of reason to exist to maintain contention with AMD. Nvidia really has to either lower the cost of their 3.5gb GPU to a sub $300 card or fix the VRAM... which is not possible apparently as it was intentional.

 

Honestly, if you're going for a very high end build, there are only two cards I'd even be looking at. And the GTX980 or 295x2 would be my point of interest. If you're going for a high end build, the GTX970 can no longer be considered an option, and AMD dropping the cost of the 290x line makes that card the only option in that price bracket.

 

Forgive my ramble, I'm still pissed at Nvidia.

 

On a side note... speaking of power consumption, what the hell do I do with this 3rd PCI power slot on my GPU? I mean it runs with 2x8pin but has another 6 pin. 

Edited February 18, 2015 by Vexzarium

[Aiyen]

Some cards have excess power pins for no reason other then it is required for other versions and or setups. At least afaik. 

[Jverv]

The Coolmaster 212 evo cost me $24 and lets me overclock to 4.8 gh on my i5. Screw $150 liquid coolers!! Cool setup tho Neo. Looking over your home office setup and with the way you keep the guide so clean makes me feel your a military man?

[Vexzarium]

I too have the same CPU cooler, but I'm too scared to take my i5 past 4.4 ;)

[TechAngel85]

Personally, I have yet to find a reason to overclock my i5... curious to know the reasons why you guys did.

[Vexzarium]

Personally, I have yet to find a reason to overclock my i5... curious to know the reasons why you guys did.

I put mine back to default, 3.5/3.8, and it's working perfectly... at installing a STEP/RealVision hybrid modlist.

[Neovalen]

The Coolmaster 212 evo cost me $24 and lets me overclock to 4.8 gh on my i5. Screw $150 liquid coolers!! Cool setup tho Neo. Looking over your home office setup and with the way you keep the guide so clean makes me feel your a military man?

No military experience here. However, I do work on government contracts so I see military folk (active and former) on a daily basis.

 

On the video card front, spent time last night working on my overclock. So far not able to get it as high as I was hoping but still tweaking more tonight. It appears I did not win the Silicon lottery, ofc I have always been fairly unlucky in that regard. If I want to push higher (really feel I could) then I will need to bios mod, not sure it's worth the effort.

 

So far max temp is 67c on load with max software boosted voltage. Getting ~1500 on observed boost clock with 8000Mhz memory.

[Spock]

The thing the current generation of NVidia cards have brought over the AMD ones is power efficiency.  Those 970s were cool and quiet and had enormous overclocking potential as a result. If you are paying for your own electricity, it is a serious consideration.

Yes, there where many very bad 290 coolers. The high TDP and small chip make cooling that card a real challange. The Sapphire Vapor-X one is very good and quiet though.

 

The 970 also costs more and is out performed by my particular 290x.

Sorry mate, all depends on the task. There is no "this card outperformes that card" if their average performance is somewhat similar. But as you can guess from my previous posts I think NVidia is currently working on an inferior architecture for the tasks I think are important.

 

On a side note... speaking of power consumption, what the hell do I do with this 3rd PCI power slot on my GPU? I mean it runs with 2x8pin but has another 6 pin. 

I've read a lot about the various r9 290(x) cards and I think it's a marketing gag. You could apply very high voltages to your chip but I wouldn't do that. The two 8 pin power connectors are more then enough.

 

But there are high hopes for the next generation from AMD.. they finally got the console market down, and as such more engines will most likely get more optimization made over the next decade that will make it the better choice. We shal see. 

If we can believe the rumor mill the TDP of the new cards will be fairly low and performance exceptional. But rumors are rumors, only actual benchmarks will tell. HBM will certainly lower TDP though and the memory bandwidth will probably help for high resolution performance. Since cooling and TDP probably cost AMD a fair amount of sales, I think they worked hard on those aspects. It also seems like their new generation architecture is maturing. They spent a lot of time to move from the 7000 series to the 290 cards but it still felt like they couldn't get some core optimizations done. Hopefully the 390 series will be more mature.

On a side note, if people are looking for those cards, it might be advisable to grab one rather quickly. If the 22 nm rumors are true the yields might be low and the card might be even more interesting for computing tasks then the 290.

 

As for people reporting bad performance on various ENB threads.... in almost 90% of all cases it comes back to them not having optimized their mod lists or setups... some even tend to forget they set the shadow res to 4k in the ini´s. Which because the engine is so unoptimized will just never really work because it was never ever meant to.

Sure, those are not real comparison benchmarks. But tbh, 4k shadow res isn't an overly big deal either.

My remark wasn't about them reporting bad performance, they were just upset that their cards didn't have better performance then a 290 like the benchmark websites indicate. My goal was to underline that shaderperformance is fairly important for many aspects of gaming graphics, I personally think it is worth weaker overall benchmark performance. But that of course depends on what you want to do. Far too many people fall for the "NVidia has the fastest cards" trap (which is a marketing trap just like Physics, True Audio, CUDA, Mantle etc). In the past I always chose the architecture with better shaderperformance, it's usually the better choice if you only look for performance (there are other aspects ofc like TDP, cooler noise etc).

 

The reason for the Nvidia recommendations have been mostly because for the past many many many ENB .dll´s they have been superior in every single way. With hacks, and weird bypasses, and general reliance on Boris´s mood if it even worked on AMD.

Hmm, maybe I'm just not around long enough. Over the past 1 1/2 years I personally never had any problems with ENB on my AMD cards. Not that there weren't any, but they where fixed within days.

Edited February 18, 2015 by Spock

[Jverv]

Personally, I have yet to find a reason to overclock my i5... curious to know the reasons why you guys did.

Simple answer; because I can MUHAHAH! Jk, sort of. The reason I did it is because I bought a "K" version chip which is unlocked for OC'ing. If I was not going to OC, then I could have saved money with a non-"K" version. You have a "K" version, so if you're not going to OC at least a bit, you wasted some hard earned cash to a mega-corporation who does not need it. Another reason is because it has become much easier these days with modern MoBo's. And with the adaptive power settings, (set on only after finding a stable OC) it has better power usage and does not throw too much power through your chip all day long. Last reason is because it's fun to see if you hit the "overclocking lottery" or not! Even if you don't keep it OC'd, it's still fun to test. You can look it up online and compare. My i5-4690k is about average at 4.7 or 4.8 don't remember. That's a lot of free processor speed (10+ GHz on some i5's). You can even play it safe on those chips and OC a few GHz. 4.0 on my chip is extremely stable and safe. From what I've read, you can shave a year or two off your chip's 10+ year life span so I'm willing to take the risk since I'll probably upgrade in 3-4 years at most. My chip was $170, so it's a relatively cheap upgrade.

 

EDIT: Here are some good links I've used for overclocking: BTW TechAngle, I notice you use an HDD, You can upgrade to a cheap 120GB SSD and put Steam and Skyrim on it. Helps loading in Skyrim a ton!

 

Video 1

 

Good Forum

 

Good Guide

 

Video 2

 

Another Guide

Edited February 18, 2015 by Jverv

[TechAngel85]

Simple answer; because I can MUHAHAH! Jk, sort of. The reason I did it is because I bought a "K" version chip which is unlocked for OC'ing. If I was not going to OC, then I could have saved money with a non-"K" version. You have a "K" version, so if you're not going to OC at least a bit, you wasted some hard earned cash to a mega-corporation who does not need it. Another reason is because it has become much easier these days with modern MoBo's. And with the adaptive power settings, (set on only after finding a stable OC) it has better power usage and does not throw too much power through your chip all day long. Last reason is because it's fun to see if you hit the "overclocking lottery" or not! Even if you don't keep it OC'd, it's still fun to test. You can look it up online and compare. My i5-4690k is about average at 4.7 or 4.8 don't remember. That's a lot of free processor speed (10+ GHz on some i5's). You can even play it safe on those chips and OC a few GHz. 4.0 on my chip is extremely stable and safe. From what I've read, you can shave a year or two off your chip's 10+ year life span so I'm willing to take the risk since I'll probably upgrade in 3-4 years at most. My chip was $170, so it's a relatively cheap upgrade.

 

EDIT: Here are some good links I've used for overclocking: BTW TechAngle, I notice you use an HDD, You can upgrade to a cheap 120GB SSD and put Steam and Skyrim on it. Helps loading in Skyrim a ton!

Thanks. I'm actually very proficient when it comes to computers/hardware/networks. All of my traditional schooling is in IT. The reason I have a K version is because if the need ever arises, I can overclock it and get nearly the same performance as a stock i7. On that point, however, I have yet to find any reason to overclock as it currently handles everything I do just fine. I even fold in the background most of the time without issue. So my reason for the K version was future-proofing my system since I can't afford to upgrade very often.

 

As for overclocking itself, I have no issues in that area either. I have an ASUS z87 board. If I wanted to, I could press one button and the system would automatically run through a series of tests and pick the most stable overclock automatically (ASUS AI Suite 3). My system RAM is the only thing in my system that is slightly overclocked.

[Jverv]

I figured you were tech savvy, your name sort of gives it away and the fact that you've put together many STEP guides. I appreciate all the people who do that so thank you! Just giving my reasoning. So then my simple answer is; because I can OC. As a test when you have an hour or two you should OC your chip, preferably without the suite as you can get slightly better results yourself. Then you will see if you got a good chip or not. It's a techgeeks (like myself) scratch offs!!

Edited February 18, 2015 by Jverv

[TechAngel85]

I have been curious about that and one of the main reasons I have tested it just to that point yet is because I'm running the stock cooler. Don't want to push it too much with that on there.

[Jverv]

That is a very valid reason Keep an eye on the EVO, here's a link to PCpartspicker. I got mine for $24 from Micro Center. Can't recommend it enough. I can run my i5 at a stable 4.8GHz as I said, and have not had heating issues. Mind you it's been cold as hell (edit: bad analogy) here for the last few months, so that might change in the summer. Sorry if this has all been off topic, but I did start the post Blame Neov for posting his computer pics!

Edited February 18, 2015 by Jverv