Need opinion on GPU upgrade

[Sbeeer]

Hi,

I have a GTX 660 oc and so far it served me well. I can still play all games (some just at min settings though) and I was planning to upgrade to the Pascal equivalent of the GTX 970.

To put you in perspective, when the 970 came out in USA at 330$ it was available here in Italy over a month later and at more than 400€. It finally went down to 350€ after more than 6 months and it still is at around that price, depending on the manufacturer. 

Yesterday I came across a Gigabyte 970 G1 on amazon.fr at 299€ (310 including shipping) and it's bugging my mind ever since, it might be a nice Christmas present to myself...

Now, the card it's just now a year old and my GPU is still fine to play just about everything but considering Pascal will not be released for at least 4-6 months, by the time it reaches a "reasonable" price (which means 350 to 400€ unfortunately) it will be already Christmas 2016. So I'll have to wait a year and spend 50 to 100€ to get Pascal... My question is: is it worth it?

 

I know everything they said about 3D memory, NVlink, etc., which will probably effect just server stuff. The gaming related improvements are speculation for now and I don't know if it's gonna be the same 15% or so improvement or more... Looking at release history, the "next generation 970" will probably be around the 980 performance, I think.

I stop here cause I could speculate for hours, so let me know if in your opinion I should wait or just buy now a 970 and enjoy games like Battlefront, Fallout  etc. in full glory (yes, I play almost all new tripleA titles and Ubisoft ones are especially annoying with my 660). 

P.S. Does the Gigabyte G1 gaming have any negative I should know about? I know it fits my case and system (you can check the specs below) and that unfortunately it has no 0-rpm mode (is noise gonna be an issue?)


i5-3570k at 4,3GHz
Maximus V Gene

16GB DDR3 Corsair at 1600MHz

GTX 660 OC

CoolerMaster V650 PSU

Corsair 350D

[Aytex]

390x? 390??

[Najuno]

Well the Gigabyte G1 GTX970 is a fantastic GPU without a doubt. The only thing for me is the R9 390 is as of right now (of course depending on the currency and price in your country) the better choice. Does it has to an nVidia card?

And the other thing is, comparing a current gen GPU with something that doesn´t exist at this time and point doesn´t make much sense honestly because all we know is a bunch of codenames at the moment. Pascal will be in 16NM but the question is, what kind of GPU are we going to see? A performance chip in 16NM with HBM2 or will they bring the big shot with HBM2 that could go up to 1000$?

For me personally the answer is easy, if you need hardware now, then buy it now. There will always be coming out something new some time, in other words you can wait forever or game and enjoy today .

[Sbeeer]

390x? 390??

AMD unfortunately is out of the question. I'm well aware of the performance and I quite like the 8GB buffer but I rely often on features provided by Nvidia (Shadowplay, Gameworks, Gamestream, CUDA) and AMD optimization doesn't quite match Nvidia on most games (driver issues, maybe).

And it costs more, at about 370€ you're paying for the difference, it's not a bargain.

[Najuno]

AMD unfortunately is out of the question. I'm well aware of the performance and I quite like the 8GB buffer but I rely often on features provided by Nvidia (Shadowplay, Gameworks, Gamestream, CUDA) and AMD optimization doesn't quite match Nvidia on most games (driver issues, maybe).

And it costs more, at about 370€ you're paying for the difference, it's not a bargain.

Well if you need an nVidia GPU (and I use Shadowplay myself it is fantastic) and you need it now, then the Gigabyte G1 GTX970 is for 1080p gaming a truly good choice.