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Building a new rig : 980 or 970 ?

Hey everyone !

 

I'm currently deciding the components I will use in my new gaming rig and would greatly appreciate some advice.

I would like to know what is best : one of the most powerful GTX 970 available, or one of the cheapest 980 ? How about performance right out of the box, and how about performance in the future ? Is one solution easier to upgrade/overclock than the other ?

I'm not talking about price for performance. I would just like to know if a standard 980 will bring a noticeable difference compared to a "custom", top of the line 970.

I should tell that I will play on a single 1080p monitor, that I plan to get a Core i5 4690K, with 8 GB (is it Gb ?) of RAM (CAS 7). Also, apart from gaming, the computer will be used for normal internet browsing, watching videos and whatnot. So no very demanding activities for the graphics card.

Your advice would be very helpful. ;-)

Thanks for reading me.

I forgot, here is one card I am interested in :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
It is among the most expensive 970 you can get (at least in France), and apparently one of the most powerful.

Compared to this one :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125696

One the cheapest I could find. The performance of the 970 seem a bit better. Something I am missing out ? I'm a bit lost :/

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If youre only playing 1080p the GTX 970 will be more than enough :)

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A 980 would perform better. The 970 could potentially be slightly quieter, but the extra cores on the 980 boost it quite a bit ahead.

 

Sidenote: are none of you guys actually reading the OP?...

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A 980 would perform better. The 970 could potentially be slightly quieter, but the extra cores on the 980 boost it quite a bit ahead.

At that point, save up for a 980ti. the titan x and 980 don't have much use now. Although saying that, the 980 is more useful than the titan X considering the 980ti is nearly the same as the titan x

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970, just because the price/performance compared to the 980. Most 970 can OC in the 1400mhz - 1550mhz range.

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970 is enough for 1080p. 980 doesn't add much (in 1080p).

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A properly cooled high end 970 will easily beat a stock 980 when overclocked.

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If youre only playing 1080p the GTX 970 will be more than enough :)

If a 970 is more than enough at 1080p then now i really cant wait for my 980ti (i play at 1080p)

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At that point, save up for a 980ti. the titan x and 980 don't have much use now. Although saying that, the 980 is more useful than the titan X considering the 980ti is nearly the same as the titan x

Actually the 980 and 980ti have practically identical price vs performance ratios. They will overclock to pretty similar clockspeeds (though the 980 is slightly higher anyways, proving my point even more), so the main thing you need to look at is cuda core count. If you divide the number of cuda cores by the price of a card, the 980 is 4.24 and the 980ti is 4.27. Thats a difference of just 0.6%. The 980ti does have a little more ram, but that isn't that important at the moment. So is the 980ti better than the 980? yes. Is the 980ti actually a better value than the 980? also yes. But does the 980ti make the 980 pointless? Not even close.

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If a 970 is more than enough at 1080p then now i really cant wait for my 980ti (i play at 1080p)

Yeah man I wish I could afford a 980Ti :(

 

Youll be able to run anything at 1080p with crazy fps :)

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If you're looking into gaming, the 980Ti and the 970 offer the best value. The Ti provides even up to a 35% increase in performance in some games. The 970 on the other hand, is way cheaper than the 980 bit you only lose about 10-15% of performance. So, either you pony up for a 980Ti or take the 970. Since your gaming on 1080p, the 970 will absolutely crush Any game on even Ultra settings so that's the one you should go for but you Olean to upgrade your monitor, then in terms of future proofing, you might want something faster.

Oh, and also, get an i7, if possible, because with consoles now having 8 cores, it will pray huge dividends, probably, in the future to have a processor with the same number of cores.

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First of all, thanks a lot for the many answers, and so quickly on top of that ! Trouble getting asleep perhaps ? ;-)

 

From what I understand, a 970, especially a stock overclocked one would be enough for gaming with a 1080p monitor. That's good to know. But, on the other hand, a 980 would perform better. Even if just slightly.

 

There is one thing I forgot to mention. I do plan to get a 144 Hz monitor. I'm not sure whether or not this makes a difference.

 

And what about power consumption ? I guess the 980 will consume more power, but how much more is the question. I had planned to get a 600W power supply. Might be good with a 970, but a 980 ? Considering that the computer will also have a sound card and a wireless card, this might mean changing the PSU then...

 

On the AMD side, there are some good options too, but I really am lost. I know it's hard to compare these two brands, but performance wise, what cards would equal a 970 or 980?

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A 144Hz monitor doesn't require Amy more graphical power than a 60Hz one but a 60Hz monitor cannot show you more than 60 frame per second while a 144Hz Monitor can show you up to 144. So, if you really want to benefit from the higher refresh rate, then get a 980 so that you actually even go above 60fps (otherwise, you just wasted money for an extra ability you'll never use). I would however suggest going for a G-Sync monitor even if its refresh rate is 60Hz (UNLESS, you're big on competitive first shooters).

On the AMD side, the 390 matches up almost exactly with the 970 (though, if say the 970 is still just a little faster) and the next option, the 390X is actually a bit slower than the 980 - but faster than the 970. It costs $70 less, though. I would refrain from going the AMD route, though. While people can cry all day long about how NVidia is being uncompetitive and wrecking AMD cards' performance with GameWorks, at the end of the day, whenever there's a problem, AMd cards always get the worst of it. If you're paying 350-500 for your graphics card, you want performance, not excuses and promises about drive optimisations, whoever's fault it may be.

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About the 980Ti : despite looking very promising, it is way out of my price range. My bad, I should've explained my situation better.

 

I hesitate between the best 970 cards and the cheapest 980 cards because these are within my price range (please note that prices might change a lot in France). So I wonder, without really talking about price for performance ratios, if a 980 is THAT MUCH better. Hope I cleared the problem.

 

I thought the 970 would be able to perform more that 60 fps. Then a 980 could be the way to go. I'll have to think about that.

 

Thank you for your explaination about the AMD graphics cards, now I see things a bit more clearly. ;-)

 

I have to go to sleep now (yes, I was actually not able to sleep so far ^^) but I can't wait to read all your answers tomorrow.

 

Thanks again guys, this is a great help for me :-)

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If those are the two options you have, then, well, honestly, you need to go check a few benchmarks for the models you are interested in. If you're not an overclocker, the difference night actually be negligible because 5-7 frames doesn't really make or break a game. If you can overclock on your own, though, the 980, for sure because the high end 970's are basically factory overclocked to as much as the vendor could push them. So, what you get is pretty much the best you can get. With a 980, you can buy a stock card but if you know how to, overclock it quite a bit to get a significant boost over even the best 970's. I'm not sure about how warranties work with overclocking, though (I've never really done it).

But, again, if you're not overcloking, the difference might just be negligible and you can just google whatever models/brands you have in mind and just do a simple comparison and buy whichever one you like.

(On another note, the 970 can hit framerates over 60 but it depends on the game and the settings you're using. Unless you're really going to dial down your settings, though, it won't go above 100, let alone 144. So, if you're spending more money on a high refresh rate, you should buy something actually come choose to those numbers. (It all comes back to the performance and overclocking and other stuff I talked about before...You haven't indicated if you're into first person shooters or not because, apart from those, you're much better off saving money with a normal 60Hz monitor or spending your savings on G-Sync, which is supposed to give really smooth gameplay and is all the rage these days.

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970 most bang for the buck at 1080

^this buy the g1 gaming 970 and your away

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You may also look at the amd r390, jayztwocents just posted a review on youtube, it's slightly faster and has double the vram compare to a 970. It's the new "king" from a price to performance perspective

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Why not 390 or 390X? :(

 

390 > 970

390 < 980

390X > 980

390 cost a bit more than 970.

390X is cheaper than 980.

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At that point, save up for a 980ti. the titan x and 980 don't have much use now. Although saying that, the 980 is more useful than the titan X considering the 980ti is nearly the same as the titan x

The Titan X way ahead of the 980Ti

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A properly cooled high end 970 will easily beat a stock 980 when overclocked.

your saying that 970oc would beat 980oc? LOL

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