Which 970 Should I get.

Currently I have a 960 SC and it runs most games just fine however I want something that's going to allow me to play games on High Settings and Support Direct x12. I'm looking at a 970 because its within my budget but what card and version is where I need help. The 980's are over my budget. My current build is below. Currently the only game I play is Ark Survival and I know its not fully rendered but I've heard it runs better on the 970's 980 cards. Gimme some suggestions. I've never overclocked so I'm looking for something I don't need to tweak too much.

My Budget is 350.

I5 2500k
HAF X
EVGA 960 SC
Asus Sabertooth Z71

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121899&ignorebbr=1

Assuming you are in US ?

Hi there!

As of right now I would actually consider waiting a little bit until the muddied waters of whether or not nVidia's 9-series GPUs fully support DX12 or not. There's a lot of discussion on if they can/do support a-synchronous calculations, which can provide a seemingly not-insignificant amount of performance increase. AMD's GPUs have shown to fully support it, and with the only DX12 benchmark available (from a pre-release game) the increase was quite large. nVidia didn't see any increase or even a decrease with DX12 features turned on. As of right now we are in a holding pattern to determine if the issue is more hardware related (did nVidia develop the hardware to mostly only focus on maxing out DX11 and set aside DX12 performance?) or if it is just drivers that need to be improved to better support the features.

I don't think you would get such a significant increase in performance upgrading to a 970 from a 960 that you would find it worthwhile. You also didn't mention which resolution you are playing at (1080p?) which can make a difference in terms of how much VRAM is available to the card as if I remember correctly the 960 has a 2GB VRAM buffer while the 970s have about 3.5GB.

Sorry I mean to say I have a 760 sc. I'm running at 1080p.

- - - Updated - - -

I am in the US so you recommend Asus over Nvidia WitchDoctor?

Asus is a 3rd party provider (such as eVGA, Gigabyte, Zotac, PNY, MSI, etc), nVidia doesn't sell cards under their name.

Ah ok. So Between the Asus 970 STRIX and the EVGA 970 FTW ACX 2.0 which would you recommend? I'm leaning more towards EVGA since I have a Nvidia Console already.

I like eVGA's warranty better than Asus. Both will perform pretty much identically.

What nVidia console do you have? I'm confused by your statement.

Also EVGA is not nVidia. EVGA is a separate company, just like Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, etc. Assuming that is what you are stating in your post.

The Strix has a superior power section and larger PCB for better heat dissipation no contest here IMO

I have the Nvidia Shield Console (Nvidia Android Console) that lets me stream games via the Geforce client to my TV anywhere in the house wireless. I'm thinking I'll see some boost coming from a 760 to a 970 with 4gb instead of 2gb. I can always sli two 970's in the future if I wanted since I have more than enough room.

Oh okay, my only guess was the shield, but I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1038?vs=1355

I think you will be happy with whichever one you decide to get. The STRX is a very nice card as well with a great cooler.

NoobModder said:

Currently I have a 960 SC and it runs most games just fine however I want something that's going to allow me to play games on High Settings and Support Direct x12.

Click to expand...

http://www.geforce.co.uk/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-970/specifications

According to DXDiag u get 12.0 with the 960s and 970s, 12.0 and 12.1 with the 980s.

If you are stuck between the Strix and the EVGA i would go for the Strix even with the "hickups" they had at start, better card overall.

I bought the strix 970. Love it! Haven't over clocked it yet, it runs everything maxed at 1080p that I've played so far. It was my first "high end" GPU, upgraded from a gtx560ti. Very quality card, built very well!

your first high end beats mine: Geforce 2 64mb. it was blue

I would have to agree with Kenrou's assesment on cards.

My very 1st "high-end" card was a nVidia Riva TNT2 16MB, was brutal back in the days of Quake III.

At least you guys had "high-end" cards. ;P My 1st 3D card was Matrox Millennium G200 8MB (I think), and it wasn't "high-end" even when it was new (2D picture quality was top notch, 3D performance sub par). Then I moved up to an Elsa Gladiac GeForce2 MX, which was a mid-range card, and now I'm running a used GTX 650. But one day...

Edit: On topic I'll just say to the OP that you will likely be happy with any GTX 970 you buy. Just make sure the card fits inside your case without issues, as some cooling arrangements take up quite a bit of space.

Don't dismiss those early boards, my father had a PowerVR that nuked everything else on Unreal back then, might have been the Matrox m3D. Apple is using that architecture on the iPhone nowadays so still going strong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerVR

Couple things to consider. Two of the EVGA models make 9.5 inch cards, length wise, which for some beats having a 11+ inch card in their system.

Also, if you're planning to OC it, I hear the Gigabyte G1 970gtx oc's very well.

If you plan to overclock, stay away from the STRIX 970, they're severely limited with a 1 x 8 pin power connector and are hardware limited at the VRM to 1.212v.

The Gigabyte G1, MSI 970 Gaming (NOT LE), the EVGA 970 FTW+ and the ZOTAC 970 AMP EXTREME are all great cards for overclocking with decent power limit and attainable voltages without a bios mod.

If you know how to make it then you will overclock it high regardless what version it is. I can only tell you that I passed 1720MHz on water on GTX960 ITX from Gigabyte which has 1x 6 pin connector.
Other thing is that none of GTX900 series are hardware limited to 1.21V. All are ~1.27V max in turbo mode which you can override with good BIOS but later depends from version it will hit OCP/OVP wall which is usually set at ~1.3V. 1.21V is 3D voltage without boost.
EVGA is nearly reference card so except better cooler it's just like stock card. All of EVGA GTX970 are actually the same with different limits in BIOS. For OC you need good BIOS ( even with good BIOS there are better cards in similar price ). MSI are good for OC but have warranty stickers and there are bad batches with moaning coils. Zotac has good power section etc but has issues with overvolting as they failed something in card's design ( maybe they fixed it but I haven't heard about it ). Gigabyte is pretty good, no warranty stickers, reasonable price etc.

Uh, no. The STRIX 970 is limited at the VRM to 1.212v. It doesn't matter what you do to the bios. It takes a hardware mod to get around it. Same with the cheaper Galax cards. The EVGA 970s are all limited at 1.262v via the bios, same with most of the rest of them, but...unlike the STRIX and the cheaper GALAX cards (and I'm sure a few others), they aren't limited at the VRM and can go much higher than 1.275v. I know a few guys that are running 1.325v through their 970, verified via multimeter, because none of the software will register voltages past 1.275v on the GM204.

The trouble with running such a high clock with limited power availability, would be the power limit perf cap. If you start getting the clocks and memory up there too high, you'll start to see REALLY limited returns in benchmarks etc, because your card will be throttling. I'm sure you're probably running a modified bios in order to get power limits high enough to see those clocks. = )

I have the 970 FTWs with custom bios files and they're the fastest 970s I've seen. They even hold their own in single card benchmark runs against the other "better overclockers". Also, all of the 970s by EVGA are not created equal. The ACX 2.0+ cards all have a 6+2 power phase instead of the 4+2 that the ACX 2.0 cards have.