gtx 960 4gb vs gtx 970 4gb

[rtwjunkie]

It is the same cost as an 8GB AMD 390. which performs as good at 1080P and better at all higher resolutions. I honestly don't understand why the 390 is so under-appreciated on the market. Me personally this is the exact situation where I would bypass nvidia and run a single AMD card. The 960/970 definitely aren't worth it.

The 970 is worth it, but at this point, I also would probably choose the 390 as the better card.

The 960 is decent for the people that need to keep cost down, and every penny counts, so for them it would also be worth it.

 

[cdawall]

The 970 is worth it, but at this point, I also would probably choose the 390 as the better card.

The 960 is decent for the people that need to keep cost down, and every penny counts, so for them it would also be worth it.

It is especially better if you ever decide to go higher resolution 970 vs 390 at 4k is a joke, the 390 starts knocking on the 980's door. As for the 960, the only way I see it being worth it is if you have to have the latest gen card. It honestly doesn't beat out the 7970's, 280X's, 780's etc.

 

[P4-630]

GTA V was included in the link I posted above at ultra settings.

VRAM used is not the same thing as VRAM needed to play smoothly. Some games eat up more VRAM than is necessary to play.

GTA V high/very high settings + highest quality textures:

as I said you just can't do that without stuttering with just 2GB vram:

 

[mobiuus]

i can't believe nobody mentioned the upcoming pascal generation of cards!?
if u can wait next 5-6 months u'll be set for next 2-3 years and skip this obsolete 960-970's cards

 

[cdawall]

i can't believe nobody mentioned the upcoming pascal generation of cards!?
if u can wait next 5-6 months u'll be set for next 2-3 years and skip this obsolete 960-970's cards

When I see the cards in person I will believe the hype. The FX 5xx0 series was hyped up pretty heavily by nvidia as well and we all saw how well that worked out.

 

[mobiuus]

yeah u r right but what ever the case is - 960, and 970 won't cope with upcoming directx 12 games
(and i mean high to ultra details on 1080p ** 1440p forget it)

 

[MxPhenom 216]

yeah u r right but what ever the case is - 960, and 970 won't cope with upcoming directx 12 games
(and i mean high to ultra details on 1080p ** 1440p forget it)

By the time native dx12 games are out no one is going to care about the 960 or 970. Hell any card from the current generation for that matter.

 

[cdawall]

By the time native dx12 games are out no one is going to care about the 960 or 970. Hell any card from the current generation for that matter.

When nvidia fully supports DX12 without offloading it to the CPU we can worry about native DX12 games lol

 

[xfia]

yeah u r right but what ever the case is - 960, and 970 won't cope with upcoming directx 12 games
(and i mean high to ultra details on 1080p ** 1440p forget it)

hmm.. dont forget dx12 increases draw call rate. its in developers hands if they want to make a game look better, add performance or take some middle ground.
its silly to think they would just go crazy eye candy at the same time they are pushing for higher res.

 

[cdawall]

hmm.. dont forget dx12 increases draw call rate. its in developers hands if they want to make a game look better, add performance or take some middle ground.
its silly to think they would just go crazy eye candy at the same time they are pushing for higher res.

Doesn't matter the cards aren't fully DX12 compliant anyway

 

[xfia]

Doesn't matter the cards aren't fully DX12 compliant anyway

and whats full dx12 compliance? dx11 or dx11.1? nv is the one with a heads up on compliance but it doesnt matter..
i feel like atm for some of what has been said here

 

[mobiuus]

By the time native dx12 games are out no one is going to care about the 960 or 970. Hell any card from the current generation for that matter.

if u read carefully u would notice that i meant PASCAL gpus!

 

[cdawall]

and whats full dx12 compliance? dx11 or dx11.1? nv is the one with a heads up on compliance but it doesnt matter..
i feel like atm for some of what has been said here

I believe it would be meeting all of the requirements for the DX12 API. Nvidia doesn't do that they offload work to the CPU to have partial support. This is fine when you have a good CPU that isn't already being taxed, but load both the CPU and GPU and then try to render with your CPU on top of it all. Let me know what happens to FPS at that point. Beat you head against a wall at the end of the day nvidia doesn't support the API and is a poor choice if longevity is the only goal.

 

[xfia]

I believe it would be meeting all of the requirements for the DX12 API. Nvidia doesn't do that they offload work to the CPU to have partial support. This is fine when you have a good CPU that isn't already being taxed, but load both the CPU and GPU and then try to render with your CPU on top of it all. Let me know what happens to FPS at that point. Beat you head against a wall at the end of the day nvidia doesn't support the API and is a poor choice if longevity is the only goal.

the hell? show me where you got this from..

 

[cdawall]

the hell? show me where you got this from..

http://www.overclock.net/t/1572716/directx-12-asynchronous-compute-an-exercise-in-crowd-sourcing

Read into this a bit. If that isn't reason enough look into which brand supports 10 bit color as opposed to 8 bit color.

 

[xfia]

http://www.overclock.net/t/1572716/directx-12-asynchronous-compute-an-exercise-in-crowd-sourcing

Read into this a bit. If that isn't reason enough look into which brand supports 10 bit color as opposed to 8 bit color.

interesting.. so nv has to use software emulation to get dx12's async shading working and it causes overhead that is exactly what windows 10 and dx12 is all about eliminating while amd doesnt have the extra compliance nv does but according to them it doesnt matter at all and all those features are already apart of tools used for games now.
hahaha seems like nv wants to sink ship sometimes.. probably a planned shitty situation by them to make people buy a new gpu instead of holding onto one they bought a year or two ago.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

if u read carefully u would notice that i meant PASCAL gpus!

Not in that specific post I quoted. Jokes on you.

 

[cdawall]

interesting.. so nv has to use software emulation to get dx12's async shading working and it causes overhead that is exactly what windows 10 and dx12 is all about eliminating while amd doesnt have the extra compliance nv does but according to them it doesnt matter at all and all those features are already apart of tools used for games now.
hahaha seems like nv wants to sink ship sometimes.. probably a planned shitty situation by them to make people buy a new gpu instead of holding onto one they bought a year or two ago.

Like I said the 390 is a better long term choice

 

[xfia]

Like I said the 390 is a better long term choice

not such a outdated re-branded chip like a lot would have you believe.

 

[erocker]

But not because of the VRAM. Just look at the SLI setup absolute crush everything at 1440p:




It definitely wouldn't be better off without it. The 0.5GB acts as a buffer to using system RAM, which is a lot slower than the 0.5GB. The drivers know to use that last 0.5GB last, it doesn't affect anything that uses less than 3.5GB, and anything that does use more than 3.5GB will run better with the 0.5GB than without it.

Sometimes yes. Though, it seems to me that with many games (be it driver related or otherwise) things will scale down to how much vram is offered. In some of W1zz's reviews, some games will use what vram is available, run fine and that's it. I suppose Nvidia has done a better job recently with drivers making applications avoid the slow ram.

 

[newtekie1]

no no... they tested this on intels tech site. whatever its called and it cant be used like that because you cant access both segments at the same time. if nvidia has said otherwise its just lie to keep less informed people ignorant and keep selling it. the truth is the only optimizing they can do for the 970 is to not use .5gb segment period. people that own it should demand it.

Correct, they can not access both segments at the same time. However, the small switch to access the 0.5GB is still a lot faster than the time it would take to send the command out to system RAM and wait for the response.

Sometimes yes. Though, it seems to me that with many games (be it driver related or otherwise) things will scale down to how much vram is offered. In some of W1zz's reviews, some games will use what vram is available, run fine and that's it. I suppose Nvidia has done a better job recently with drivers making applications avoid the slow ram.

No, they just start swapping out to system RAM if the amount of RAM the game tries to use is beyond the VRAM amount. But, then, any game packing that much into VRAM, doesn't actually need that much in VRAM. And it tries to put the textures closest to the player in actual VRAM, and the stuff that isn't even being used to render the current scene either in the 0.5GB segment or if that fills up, in system RAM.

It is kind of similar to how some software optimizes hard drives. Putting the important, most likely to be used, data a the beginning of the drive. VRAM is mapped in very much the same way. The most likely to be used textures are put at the beginning of the memory map, and the textures are organized from most likely to be used to least likely. Because, really, the driver just reports a memory amount to the game, an area of addressable space. This space includes the VRAM as well as the system RAM the card can access. The game doesn't really care how much VRAM the card actually has, it just puts the most needed textures at the beginning of the memory map, because that is almost definitely going to be VRAM.

 

[xfia]

nv playing in the mud while amd watching from the window wondering what to spoon feed them next and if they can even get it right..
watch them do something screwy with hbm next.. we know you should have good latency for vr but dont worry we got the software emulation!!! haha
the 970 is going to be worth as much as a roll of toilet paper by this time next year

 

[rtwjunkie]

probably a planned shitty situation by them to make people buy a new gpu instead of holding onto one they bought a year or two ago.

It actually was planned, nothing nefarious about it. They saw ahead, same as I did and knew DX12 games would for the most part be a couple years off. So they decided to maximize DX11 performance for the last couple years of its primary life and released Maxwell.

It was a good business decision. They lowered heat and power consumption, improved performance, and solidified their DX11 crown. This way they release true DX12 GPU's at around the time DX12 finally shows up.

Also, by this time next year the 970 will be two and a half years, so yeah, how long do you expect what is basically a high-middle tier chip to be relevant? It's actually going to have been in active inventory for a good, normal amount of time.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

nv playing in the mud while amd watching from the window wondering what to spoon feed them next and if they can even get it right..
watch them do something screwy with hbm next.. we know you should have good latency for vr but dont worry we got the software emulation!!! haha
the 970 is going to be worth as much as a roll of toilet paper by this time next year

And you will probably still have users that are happy with its performance for the games that they play. So who cares.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

It actually was planned, nothing nefarious about it. They saw ahead, same as I did and knew DX12 games would for the most part be a couple years off. So they decided to maximize DX11 performance for the last couple years of its primary life and released Maxwell.

It was a good business decision. They lowered heat and power consumption, improved performance, and solidified their DX11 crown. This way the release true DX12 GPU's at around the time DX12 finally shows up.

So much this