GTX 970 1080p or 1440p G-Sync monitor?

[Mindaugasinas]

Ok, so I have a GTX 970 graphics card and finaly I got some spare money to get a new monitor. I play most of the games on my 1080p 40" Smart TV, accept of FPS games, that I play on my crapy 19" monitor. I want to get a G-Sync monitor, but a dillema is, that in Lithuania there is only 2 options 1080p 24" AOC G2460PG or 27" 1440p ASUS ROG Swift,which coast almost double the price.

1* So is GTX 970 is capable to run games on ultra in 1440p?

2* Do I need SLI GTX 970 to run games in 1440p?

3* Is 4gb GDDR5 is enough for 1440p?

I have a i7 860 oc@ 4ghz and so far I did not noticed any bottleneck, but the thing is, my mobo has only one PCI-E 16x slot (no 8x slot for GPU). So if I want to go in SLI I will have to upgrade my mobo, cpu and PSU.

4* What platform and CPU you would sugjest for SLI?

[APrettyCoolWalrus]

A 970 can run 1440p

[Enderman]

1440p gsync

[quintencapital]

1440p G-SYNC

[Swndlr]

4k ez

[ItsAFeature]

a 970 can run most games at a reasonable setting at 1440p. The nice thing about G-Sync is that even if you fall below 60 fps you'll have a perfectly playable experience.

[jfing14]

You will find that 1440p is really nice to game on and you will appreciate it in the long run, so Id go with that. The issue with anything above 1080p on Maxwell architecture is that it doesn't have the memory bus width for the best performance. 256-bit starts to choke out and the graphics card then falls back on the processing horsepower, this is where AMD's 290X begins to show its muscle with 512-bit width. So its not necessarily how many GB, its the amount of headway that the card has to push the frames. Depending on how the game is optimised, you may see differences in how well the 970 will do (i.e. Skyrim for example will choke because of the massive VRAM content, especially with mods). You are better off getting a couple of 970's in my opinion. The power consumption is reduced to a point that in comparison to the 290X, you are spending about the same amount of money after you purchase  a power supply decent enough for SLI/Crossfire. I would recommend  a EVGA G2 850watt, the best on the market for that price point and only second to the corsair ax 850i in terms of quality and nitty gritty PSU details, but for a significantly less amount of money due to the exclusive contract they have with their OEM. CPU wise, you are starting to get a little old, although I doubt an upgrade is 100% necessary, but if you want to get a 4690k. Exact same architecture as a 4790k but with hyper threading disabled and binned slightly lower. You will see perhaps at most 5fps difference. For a motherboard it becomes more of an ambiguous decision. You don't seem like you are going to push this card to the absolute limit so between 4-6 phase design is what you are looking for. Z97 if you want to overclock, and H97 if you don't. Most of those boards support SLI. Memory doesn't matter. Give me a price point for your motherboard and I'll find you a decent one.

Edit: You will not need 850 watts of power, so get the EVGA G2 750 watt.

[VIhul]

The 970 crushes 1440p. You won't ever use over 4 GB of VRAM. The only time I've seen a need for it is in the ultra-wide setup that Linus did a little while back.

[Mindaugasinas]

You will find that 1440p is really nice to game on and you will appreciate it in the long run, so Id go with that. The issue with anything above 1080p on Maxwell architecture is that it doesn't have the memory bus width for the best performance. 256-bit starts to choke out and the graphics card then falls back on the processing horsepower, this is where AMD's 290X begins to show its muscle with 512-bit width. So its not necessarily how many GB, its the amount of headway that the card has to push the frames. Depending on how the game is optimised, you may see differences in how well the 970 will do (i.e. Skyrim for example will choke because of the massive VRAM content, especially with mods). You are better off getting a couple of 970's in my opinion. The power consumption is reduced to a point that in comparison to the 290X, you are spending about the same amount of money after you purchase  a power supply decent enough for SLI/Crossfire. I would recommend  a EVGA G2 850watt, the best on the market for that price point and only second to the corsair ax 850i in terms of quality and nitty gritty PSU details, but for a significantly less amount of money due to the exclusive contract they have with their OEM. CPU wise, you are starting to get a little old, although I doubt an upgrade is 100% necessary, but if you want to get a 4690k. Exact same architecture as a 4790k but with hyper threading disabled and binned slightly lower. You will see perhaps at most 5fps difference. For a motherboard it becomes more of an ambiguous decision. You don't seem like you are going to push this card to the absolute limit so between 4-6 phase design is what you are looking for. Z97 if you want to overclock, and H97 if you don't. Most of those boards support SLI. Memory doesn't matter. Give me a price point for your motherboard and I'll find you a decent one.

Edit: You will not need 850 watts of power, so get the EVGA G2 750 watt.

I dont have exact number for mobo, cpu and etc yet. If I buy a new CPU, mobo and etc, it will be in summer. Because now I need to get a new monitor and DSL camera. But I'm thinking, if upgrade, why not to upgrade to the latest? So I'm thinking of X99 with i7 K, with DDR4, M.2 and so on, with x2 GTX970 in SLI mode.

Does it make sence to go for 5th gen i7 and DDR4, or not yet?

Mostly I play games, but I work with photoshop and correl alot. Also I do some music production, and I'm using some heavy VST plugins, so i7 is a must for me.

[jfing14]

I dont have exact number for mobo, cpu and etc yet. If I buy a new CPU, mobo and etc, it will be in summer. Because now I need to get a new monitor and DSL camera. But I'm thinking, if upgrade, why not to upgrade to the latest? So I'm thinking of X99 with i7 K, with DDR4, M.2 and so on, with x2 GTX970 in SLI mode.

Does it make sence to go for 5th gen i7 and DDR4, or not yet?

Mostly I play games, but I work with photoshop and correl alot. Also I do some music production, and I'm using some heavy VST plugins, so i7 is a must for me.

Maybe a low end X99 platform, I don't know your workload exactly so I can't precisely say. Gaming won't benefit though, but its not going to bottle neck either. If you get all that stuff than you are going to be set for a few years.

The 970 crushes 1440p. You won't ever use over 4 GB of VRAM. The only time I've seen a need for it is in the ultra-wide setup that Linus did a little while back.

Its entirely situation depended and no I wouldn't say it crushes it (min FPS above 60 is crushing it) in  all the latest titles at ultra with anti-aliasing on. You will use over 4gb of VRAM if you are playing with ultra high textures (4K) and have many many fleating points on screen, or if playing an unoptimised game. Its not the space that bottle necks the card, its the bus width. 256-bit does not suit the horsepower that the cores produce.e

 

 e

[VIhul]

 

Its entirely situation depended and no I wouldn't say it crushes it (min FPS above 60 is crushing it) in  all the latest titles at ultra with anti-aliasing on. You will use over 4gb of VRAM if you are playing with ultra high textures (4K) and have many many fleating points on screen, or if playing an unoptimised game. Its not the space that bottle necks the card, its the bus width. 256-bit does not suit the horsepower that the cores produce.e

 

 e

There is also the new memory compression tech in the 900 series though which is why I suspect they went with only a 256 bit bus. Besides, they are going to be using a G-Sync panel which will allow for smooth looking gameplay under 60 FPS (until about 40 according to Linus).

[jfing14]

There is also the new memory compression tech in the 900 series though which is why I suspect they went with only a 256 bit bus. Besides, they are going to be using a G-Sync panel which will allow for smooth looking gameplay under 60 FPS (until about 40 according to Linus).

This is true also, although I wish they had gone with a wider bus. I forget exactly what card it was, but years ago I had an nvidia with 16mb of memory that utilised memory compression and its ATI brother completely killed it with a wider bus and slightly more memory when I modded Neverwinter Nights. The good old days.... I wish I had a g sync monitor though, they sound amazing