Purchase another GTX 970 for sli or upgrade to 10xx series?

[Insulaventus]

Howdy!

When i bought my MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4GB it cost around 535 CAD, i find used ones for sale around 235 CAD now. Would it be unwise to buy another used one for SLI or buy a GTX 1060 6GB instead, for 390 CAD  and slightly less performance than 970 sli?

GTX 970 SLI Firestrike score:     13355     Price: 235 CAD, for a used card

GTX 1060 6GB Firestrike Score: 10561     Price: 390 CAD NEW

Apart from pascal cards being good overclockers, are there any other features i would miss worth the extra money for the 1060?

[Dabombinable]

3 minutes ago, Insulaventus said:

Howdy!

When i bought my MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4GB it cost around 535 CAD, i find used ones for sale around 235 CAD now. Would it be unwise to buy another used one for SLI or buy a GTX 1060 6GB instead, for 390 CAD  and slightly less performance than 970 sli?

GTX 970 SLI Firestrike score:     13355     Price: 235 CAD, for a used card

GTX 1060 6GB Firestrike Score: 10561     Price: 390 CAD NEW

Apart from pascal cards being good overclockers, are there any other features i would miss worth the extra money for the 1060?

If your not coming any where near the vRAM limit and intend to only play at 1080p with a high refresh rate screen, then yes. If not you'd be better off selling your current GTX 970 and getting a GTX 1070. I myself was toying with the idea for a long time, but I'm constantly having all of the vRAM getting filled and spilling into RAM.

[Insulaventus]

1 minute ago, Dabombinable said:

If your not coming any where near the vRAM limit and intend to only play at 1080p with a high refresh rate screen, then yes. If not you'd be better off selling your current GTX 970 and getting a GTX 1070. I myself was toying with the idea for a long time, but I'm constantly having all of the vRAM getting filled and spilling into RAM.

I have a 1080p 144hz AOC G-sync monitor. I play VRAM heavy games like Ghost Recon: Wildlands, so that may be a pro to the 10xx series. So, it's either sell my 970 and go for a more expensive option with more performance, or get a little better performance for cheaper

[Dabombinable]

15 minutes ago, Insulaventus said:

I have a 1080p 144hz AOC G-sync monitor. I play VRAM heavy games like Ghost Recon: Wildlands, so that may be a pro to the 10xx series. So, it's either sell my 970 and go for a more expensive option with more performance, or get a little better performance for cheaper

Well a GTX 1070 would perform far better in all games not some (when SLI works as it should). And it is if I remember correctly similar in performance to a 980ti...which is barely beaten in a few games by GTX 970 in SLI....

[stealth80]

I upgraded from 2x 970's in SLI, both on water running modded bios's so 1518mhz every day. The speed of that build was awesome, only Just Cause 3 didn't have SLI support. Why did I decide to upgrade?

 

1) VRAM - even with SLI we're still stuck at 4gb vram (or 3.5gb if you're still butthurt about how a guy exposed some slow vram in a very specific scenario) - Which at 1440P max settings presented an issue in vram heavy games like Rise of the Tomb Raider and GTA V

 

2) I wanted to move to a smaller case from a Core X9 and I knew I couldn't do SLI in the INWIN 303 if I wanted 2x radiators, so I opted for the 1080

 

Personally I would take the second 970 and go SLI over a 1060 - the 1060 isn't that much faster than a 970 and would in my eyes be more of a side grade. If you are playing at 1080P, the vram shouldn't become an issue for a while. Just make sure your favourite games either support SLI or can be played on a single 970 and ensure your PSU is upto the job

 

Also, why are people talking about 1070's?

 

[Dabombinable]

28 minutes ago, stealth80 said:

I upgraded from 2x 970's in SLI, both on water running modded bios's so 1518mhz every day. The speed of that build was awesome, only Just Cause 3 didn't have SLI support. Why did I decide to upgrade?

 

1) VRAM - even with SLI we're still stuck at 4gb vram (or 3.5gb if you're still butthurt about how a guy exposed some slow vram in a very specific scenario) - Which at 1440P max settings presented an issue in vram heavy games like Rise of the Tomb Raider and GTA V

 

2) I wanted to move to a smaller case from a Core X9 and I knew I couldn't do SLI in the INWIN 303 if I wanted 2x radiators, so I opted for the 1080

 

Personally I would take the second 970 and go SLI over a 1060 - the 1060 isn't that much faster than a 970 and would in my eyes be more of a side grade. If you are playing at 1080P, the vram shouldn't become an issue for a while. Just make sure your favourite games either support SLI or can be played on a single 970 and ensure your PSU is upto the job

 

Also, why are people talking about 1070's?

 

If you have 2x GTX 970 in SLI you can crank up the settings higher than I can with only 1. And as it is I'm having to start lowering settings so that my GTX 970 doesn't go over its 4GB of vRAM (give me a few minutes in Skyrim, Skyrim SE and Space Engineers and I can demonstrate for the idiots that a GTX 970 can and will use all 4GB of vRAM easily)

[stealth80]

2 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

If you have 2x GTX 970 in SLI you can crank up the settings higher than I can with only 1. And as it is I'm having to start lowering settings so that my GTX 970 doesn't go over its 4GB of vRAM (give me a few minutes in Skyrim, Skyrim SE and Space Engineers and I can demonstrate for the idiots that a GTX 970 can and will use all 4GB of vRAM easily)

I agree with you, I could run Witcher 3 in 4k on 970, it was choppy buy playable, 2x 4k wasn't an issue at all provide hariworks were disabled. Just games like The Division (which I played heavily back then) @ 1440P were running the vram high (by high I mean 4gb - I agree the whole 3.5gb thing was generally bullshit for the average user)

 

Its a great platform, the only thing the 1070 has is lower power and more  vram, performance wise they're very similar

[Dabombinable]

6 minutes ago, stealth80 said:

I agree with you, I could run Witcher 3 in 4k on 970, it was choppy buy playable, 2x 4k wasn't an issue at all provide hariworks were disabled. Just games like The Division (which I played heavily back then) @ 1440P were running the vram high (by high I mean 4gb - I agree the whole 3.5gb thing was generally bullshit for the average user)

 

Its a great platform, the only thing the 1070 has is lower power and more  vram, performance wise they're very similar

1440p is kind of playable on GTX 970 in SLI from what I can tell. But with a lone GTX 970 managing to hit its vRAM limits at 1080p 60Hz......for me I no longer consider it an option especially with the performance offered by single graphics cards. Despite wanting SLI my GTX 970 to match my old Voodoo2 SLI setup.

Edit: Don't forget as well, you can get stuttering with SLI and most games have poor support for it-with some barely utilising the second GPU.

[stealth80]

12 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

Edit: Don't forget as well, you can get stuttering with SLI and most games have poor support for it-with some barely utilising the second GPU.

Not true - Only Just Cause 3 offered zero support for SLI in the 18 months I was running those 970's. The problem with SLI (and a lot of things concerning end users) is we only really hear about the bad experiences. Its not very often someone comes out and says "Hey guys ive been using X and Y product for over a year now and had next to zero issues, thumbs up X company" <------- not without them been paid anyway.

 

Now I cant speak for stutter (I don't think - not sure if it is negated this way) as I was playing on G-sync, and I never had any stutter. The only time I had SLI tech problems was when I upgraded to modded bios's on both cards, I had to basically put the same bios on both cards (rather than use the actuals cards modded bios on the relevant card if you follow me) and that was my fault. All drivers worked flawlessly etc.

 

I have around 70 games maybe more and all but JC3 offered decent SLI support

[Insulaventus]

9 hours ago, stealth80 said:

Not true - Only Just Cause 3 offered zero support for SLI in the 18 months I was running those 970's. The problem with SLI (and a lot of things concerning end users) is we only really hear about the bad experiences. Its not very often someone comes out and says "Hey guys ive been using X and Y product for over a year now and had next to zero issues, thumbs up X company" <------- not without them been paid anyway.

 

Now I cant speak for stutter (I don't think - not sure if it is negated this way) as I was playing on G-sync, and I never had any stutter. The only time I had SLI tech problems was when I upgraded to modded bios's on both cards, I had to basically put the same bios on both cards (rather than use the actuals cards modded bios on the relevant card if you follow me) and that was my fault. All drivers worked flawlessly etc.

 

I have around 70 games maybe more and all but JC3 offered decent SLI support

I am planning to sell my rig this summer to buy a laptop for engineering school.

Would it be more attractive with a 970 sli setup on a 1080p 144hz rig if you were a buyer? 

 

I also have a g-sync monitor so i might luck out on stuttering.

 

I think i will get the 2nd 970 this wednesday if i can get the price a little lower.