GTX 780 Ti or 970?

[Gameplaywarrior]

I have been stumbling over this decision for the last few days and hoping someone here can help me out. My problem is right now I can get a 780ti for roughly the same price as the 970 which is a newer card but apparently less powerful and the 780ti (based on my own research) so I am wondering what to do here.

EDIT: I will be overclocking no mater which I get and the cards I am looking at are PNY GTX 780 Ti XLR8 OC or the ASUS GeForce GTX 970 Strix OC if that helps any.

 

[Dlaw]

The Strix cooler is silent when the card is under 60*C. The fans actually shut off. That, plus the fact that the 970 has more VRAM and is the newer card, pushes me to recommend the 970.

 

[NiHaoMike]

The 970 runs much cooler so that would be very helpful for overclocking.

 

[Bishoff]

Between these 2 cards, the 970 without question.

 

[Mark.]

i would like some additional info on this too,

i recently seen a benchmark session with all graphics intense games, tomb raider. far cry etc, and the 780ti scored far higher than the newer Nvidia cards, im also wondering if i should get a 780ti or 960-970?

Im not sure exactly what card was benchmarked but ive been looking at the Asus 3gb 780ti OC Direct CUII, the Palit Jetstream variant is in the same price range, maybe cheaper.
Im not the most avid gamer and my mobo wont support sli, it will however support xfire. I dont want to upgrade my psu so il just stick with 1 good nvidia card.

can anyone offer some insight as to why the 780 performs better than the 960 or 970 in some areas?

 

[ATMINSIDE]

The 780Ti was the flagship card, the 970 is two steps down from the flagship.
It's normal for the old flagship to still be competitive.

 

[Woomack]

GTX780Ti has more shaders and wider memory bus so it's simply faster but nvidia is already not improving performance in GTX700 series drivers while GTX900 is still getting performance improvements. However 780Ti is still faster card than GTX970.
On the overclocking part. Nearly every GTX970 can be overclocked to 1500MHz on stock cooling regardless if there is 20*C more or less. At the same time every MHz higher is giving these cards less visible performance gain than on GTX700 series simply because stock clock is already much higher.
GTX960 is not bad for a single 1080p display but it's much slower ( 30% or something ) than GTX970/780Ti.

 

[TuKr]

I just personally made this decision, The Strix 970 and 780 TI are very close but from my experience the 780 TI has Performs much better. I had a strix 970 and I pushed it as hard as i could, then i picked up the Asus matrix platinum 780 TI and it still out performed it with a marginal overclock. the head room on the 780TI is much better than the 970. Plus on the Strix 970, the card sag is horrible because the metal Shrouding is not secured to the IO part of the card, Overall it drooped about a CM from case side to the opposite side. I would say 780. Just because its an older model, doesn't mean its not a better card. I am super happy with my swap.

 

[Bishoff]

I just personally made this decision, The Strix 970 and 780 TI are very close but from my experience the 780 TI has Performs much better. I had a strix 970 and I pushed it as hard as i could, then i picked up the Asus matrix platinum 780 TI and it still out performed it with a marginal overclock. the head room on the 780TI is much better than the 970. Plus on the Strix 970, the card sag is horrible because the metal Shrouding is not secured to the IO part of the card, Overall it drooped about a CM from case side to the opposite side. I would say 780. Just because its an older model, doesn't mean its not a better card. I am super happy with my swap.

Not interested in DX12, & 500mb more of fast vram?

 

[TuKr]

Not interested in DX12, & 500mb more of fast vram?

The 780TI will support DX12, Do you think Nvidia would cut support on a 2 year old Flagship card?? And while the 970 does Have 1GB more ram, the 780 has nearly Nearly twice as many Texture maps, Twice as many shading units and a Wider Mem bus. FPS is a knock out too. .

 

[EarthDog]

The 780TI will support DX12, Do you think Nvidia would cut support on a 2 year old Flagship card?? And while the 970 does Have 1GB more ram, the 780 has nearly Nearly twice as many Texture maps, Twice as many shading units and a Wider Mem bus. FPS is a knock out too. .

Id personally rather have that extra 500MB of vRAM (remember the other is slow), and a card that produces half the heat/uses half the power, and trades punches with the 780ti. And the specs are not all the same either....though memory bandwidth is lower, the 970 introduced some better compression techniques which allows it to work very well up to below 4K resolutions. Performance between the two are nearly identical.

Overclocking is up to each card. You could have easily had the exact opposite result if you received a 970 that overclocked really well.

Yes I think NVIDIA will cut support on a two year old card...there are rumors all around that they have... Just look at Woomack's post in this thread. We have seen improvements since release on the 9 series, but I don't believe we have seen anything on the 7 series since. They will have to release something for them to support DX12, but we haven't seen any performance increases.

To me it just doens't make sense to get a last gen card like that when performance is strikingly similar but will only get better with the newer card.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Chances are that the 7XX cards will only support DirectX 12 11_1 and not get the full benefit.

 

[TuKr]

Id personally rather have that extra 500MB of vRAM (remember the other is slow), and a card that produces half the heat/uses half the power, and trades punches with the 780ti. And the specs are not all the same either....though memory bandwidth is lower, the 970 introduced some better compression techniques which allows it to work very well up to below 4K resolutions. Performance between the two are nearly identical.

Overclocking is up to each card. You could have easily had the exact opposite result if you received a 970 that overclocked really well.

Yes I think NVIDIA will cut support on a two year old card...there are rumors all around that they have... Just look at Woomack's post in this thread. We have seen improvements since release on the 9 series, but I don't believe we have seen anything on the 7 series since. They will have to release something for them to support DX12, but we haven't seen any performance increases.

To me it just doens't make sense to get a last gen card like that when performance is strikingly similar but will only get better with the newer card.

My choice on the cards was price factor, i managed to find 2 asus MP 780 TIs for 288 each before tax, and a full refund 2 year warranty for 30 extra each. My strix 970 cost me 350 before tax and 50 in warranty. When i returned it i got 4 something back towards my 780s, it was worth the 150 for sli... thats all. Like i said im happy with it. Hopefully nvidia covers them but if not im halfway to a titan lol

 

[EarthDog]

Heh, I won't touch SLI/CFx with a 10' pole if I can help it either (ok, kind of a lie because I am running a 295x2, LOL - but Im trying to sell it!!!). I don't need it to play games at 2560x1440 and don't want the added hassle that inevitably comes with it. I do enough messing around with my review/benching rig. For my 24/7 rig, it just needs to work with minimal effort.

 

[Tyerker]

If you look at any modern benchmarks, the 780ti still competes or beats the 970. And, like TuKr, I got my 780ti Classified for $250 from a guy upgrading to 980ti SLI. The 970 is at least $75 more, for the baseline models. They do produce less heat, but the additional memory is negligible, and the raw horsepower of the 780ti is stronger.

If you can find a 780ti sub-$300, I think it is your better bet. And the 780ti will support DX12.0 with software acceleration, while the 970 will do 12.1 with hardware acceleration. Either one should support a majority of the DX12 features, though.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Tyerker, I'd love to see where you got the info that it will work with 12.0 for sure, as I haven't seen anything suggesting it'll have a feature set above 11_1 which is where DX12 shines.

 

[EarthDog]

And the 780ti will support DX12.0 with software acceleration, while the 970 will do 12.1 with hardware acceleration

Assuming that is true. I wonder how that will affect performance with one being software and the other hardware...

Performance is about the same, yep. But the 9 series will see improvements... and have already from a lot of benchmarks. The 7 series will not.

, but the additional memory is negligible

That depends on what res you game at. 1080? Sure, no wories. 2560x1440... Id rather have the 3.5GB.

 

[Mark.]

Glad to see all of the replies to this as im still stuck with my decision..

I can understand buying into newer technology as opposed to old, but any test ive seen shows the 780ti is much better for raw power, there were huge FPS differences in all tests on modern games on the highest settings.
Id like to just point out im by no means a hardcore gamer, im currently using an old EVGA 280gtx and it still runs tomb raider 2013 on normal settings at around 60fps constant, which is perfectly playable for me.
My mobo wont support SLI and i dont want 2 AMD cards as i would need to upgrade my PSU which i dont want to do.

Im trying to find the best Nvidia card i can get on its own and so far the 780ti looked to be the best option. Of course this all comes down to system requirements and personal requirements too so il quickly list my system spec..

AMD FX6300 OC @ 4.5ghz
Asus M5A97 MB / supports crossfire, not SLI
16gb HyperX Fury 1600mhz
730w bronze BeQuiet! PSU

The system is air cooled and i use a 50" Samsung plasma thats 6 years old as a monitor , so im not looking for 4k gaming either. Price wise i dont want to go much more north than 300ish, which is roughly the prices of the cards in question

I appreciate the insight on this guys, and apologies to OP for hijacking the thread

 

[EarthDog]

there were huge FPS differences in all tests on modern games on the highest settings.

Id like to see these benchmarks. The ones I look at show they are the same or the 780ti beats it by a couple %. For example:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_970_Gaming/27.html
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/nvidia_geforce_gtx_970_and_980_reference_review,12.html

 

[Mark.]

In some places here there can be 20fps difference from what i see, depending on resolution. Heres a link to one i was looking at, although i dont think its exactly the same list, i may have compared a 960 to 780ti i cant really remember..

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_970_SLI/2.html

The benchmark list i originally seen was also on that website but i cant find the comparisons i seen before. like i said i might have compared 960 to 780ti, i cant remember,but the FPS difference was pretty big im some areas.. all i know is that an old GPU was outperforming a new GPU haha.
Im just looking to get the best Nvidia GPU i can for the least amount of money really