Can a 980 do anything a 970 can't?

[ChineseChef]

Thanks for the input thus far.   General consensus seems to be, if staying at 1440, dual 970s is all that is required.  Don't bother with the 980 unless I OC the crap out of it.  Lots of "lol 4gb vram". 

[sgloux3470]

Other than framerate the only other thing is the VRAM.

[SteveGrabowski]

Thanks for the input thus far.   General consensus seems to be, if staying at 1440, dual 970s is all that is required.  Don't bother with the 980 unless I OC the crap out of it.  Lots of "lol 4gb vram". 

 

Here is a great benchmark of dual 970 vs dual 980

 

[othertomperson]

Thanks for the input thus far.   General consensus seems to be, if staying at 1440, dual 970s is all that is required.  Don't bother with the 980 unless I OC the crap out of it.  Lots of "lol 4gb vram". 

 

Only if you're going for high refresh rate 1440 (can't remember if you said you were or not), otherwise only one 970 is required. Two would be in 4K territory.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

It can give you a bigger epeen than the 970 ever could

 

edit: Someone else already said it :<

[Lewellyn]

I've noted that certain brand cards have better fan speed options (like silent mode) on the 980 that are not on the 970 version. 

[GoodN1ght]

lol....lol and wait for it.....lol. No you are not going to get better fps with more vram. Basically once you can't hit the requirement you run into issues. Having more than what you can use will not make your game run fast at all. At 1440p there is nothing you are going to be playing that a 970 won't have enough vram for anyway. Even at 4k. 

 

But of course you will get better fps because the 980 is faster.

Yeah nobody plays games where they run out of vram. People just discovered stuttering and the lack of the 0.5 by magic. Also nobody plays Shadow of Mordor or stat citizen. 

[alphaproject]

Use 4GB vram  :lol:

 

 

 

[slightlyjaded]

High resolutions. I wouldn't use a 970 for anything over 1080p because of the VRAM problem :L

 

 

Lolzious you just got owned , please don't say something that is wrong when it don't help anyone .

Hmm. hi rez texture pack on shadow of mordor? how about skyrim with a couple of mods? While the 970 is a brilliant card it won't run everything at 1440p on high/ultra settings. A 980 will.+

[slightlyjaded]

I've noted that certain brand cards have better fan speed options (like silent mode) on the 980 that are not on the 970 version. 

yeah, you can do that with any 900 series card.

[Arct1c0n]

Full speed access to all 4gigs of the VRAM

[Lolzious]

Hi , just moved to the MSI 970 card with Asus Mx27AQ Monitor1440p the card seems to smash most games @1440p ultra settings 70-80fps no AA (not needed)

 

I would save a few quid myself and go with 970 , the extra money is wasted in my opinion on 980

Go ahead and uh run Unigine Valley/Heaven at ultra 1440p there for me will ya?

[ChineseChef]

Here is a great benchmark of dual 970 vs dual 980

 

 

Super helpful video, thanks.

[isdouble]

If you want to take advantage of 144 Hz at 1440P, you probably will require 2x 980 sometime down the road on max setting.

I currently have GTX 980 + Acer XB270HU and played some BF4 with max setting and got about ~60-70 FPS.

If I were to turn off the AA then FPS jumps back up to ~90ish.

I'm thinking about adding a 2nd GTX 980 very soon.

[SeanBond]

Yeah nobody plays games where they run out of vram. People just discovered stuttering and the lack of the 0.5 by magic. Also nobody plays Shadow of Mordor or stat citizen. 

Yeah that stuttering thing never actually happened. No reputable source ever came forward with proof of stutter in games because of the vram. I also like how you cherry picked a game that is not even close to coming out and another game that needs more than 4gb to begin with. Good try though.

[GoodN1ght]

Yeah that stuttering thing never actually happened. No reputable source ever came forward with proof of stutter in games because of the vram. I also like how you cherry picked a game that is not even close to coming out and another game that needs more than 4gb to begin with. Good try though.

Cause there isn't a shit ton of games who need more than 3.5 but theyre are and that's the whole fucking point. God damn youre more in denial than creationists. 

[SeanBond]

Cause there isn't a shit ton of games who need more than 3.5 but theyre are and that's the whole fucking point. God damn youre more in denial than creationists. 

There isn't a single game that needs more than 3.5gb but less than 6gb. Please tell me, what game can I not max out on my 780ti? Because there isn't one. Shadow of mordor is the only one that requires more than even 3gb but like I said. It also requires more than 4gb so having that extra 500mb does nothing for you. Don't be so angry because you can't think of a scenario where you words prove accurate. 

[AsGoodAsAHacker]

A 980 can be a 980 better than a 970 can. That's about it.

[SteveGrabowski]

There isn't a single game that needs more than 3.5gb but less than 6gb. Please tell me, what game can I not max out on my 780ti? Because there isn't one. Shadow of mordor is the only one that requires more than even 3gb but like I said. It also requires more than 4gb so having that extra 500mb does nothing for you. Don't be so angry because you can't think of a scenario where you words prove accurate.

If you check that video I posted above for the most part 970 SLI just behaves like 980 SLI, except slower, but no stutters where they weren't also there with 980 SLI. To get the 970 to have the big latency spikes in Shadow of Mordor they had to super sample from 4k with ultra textures, and even then the frame time spike only showed when spinning around. However they were able to get the nasty frame times on 970 SLI that were handled well by 980 SLI by running 4xMSAA at 1440p on AC Unity. Hard to think of Unity as a good representation of what to expect in the future though since that game is such a clusterfuck.

[SeanBond]

If you check that video I posted above for the most part 970 SLI just behaves like 980 SLI, except slower, but no stutters where they weren't also there with 980 SLI. To get the 970 to have the big latency spikes in Shadow of Mordor they had to super sample from 4k with ultra textures, and even then the frame time spike only showed when spinning around. However they were able to get the nasty frame times on 970 SLI that were handled well by 980 SLI by running 4xMSAA at 1440p on AC Unity. Hard to think of Unity as a good representation of what to expect in the future though since that game is such a clusterfuck.

Yeah any result from unity should really not be taken seriously but I definitely believe you. 

[GrimNeo]

@JustCallMeVlad has 4 

And he has 4 Titan X's lol.

[William5849]

Far Cry 4 runs right under 4gb of memory on my SLI GTX 980's. The point here is there are some games that will go over 4gb of Vram if you are at 1440p or higher. And even if we could make that claim that none do now, they will in the future. You can either buy a card for the next few months or actually get a little more out of it for a longer time.