TIme for a GPU (970/980/other?)

[inkyserifs]

Wooo hoo!

 

It is time for inky to FINALLY get a gpu. And it's about time.

 

or IS it? O_o

 

Back around New Year's I completed my very first build, geared towards mid-range PC gaming and some design work (stuff like photoshop, after effects, and a variety of 3d software). Because I'm from Poland and parts are expensive here, and I was working with a pretty tight budget, I decided to skip the GPU altogether in order to avoid skimping on my other parts just to fit a 750 ti in there, but I've finally saved up some extra cash and I think it's about time to get the goodies I've been looking forward to for so long.

 

My initial thought was a GTX 970 (probably ASUS). It currently costs around 390 USD where I live, it comes with Far Cry Primal and The Division, and to my knowledge it's a solid 1080p gaming card. I like to max things out whenever possible (pretty visuals are my thing, sorry) although I'm willing to sacrifice a few small settings for that precious 60 FPS we all love. Unfortunately I researched and found out about the 3.5 GB issue, which I'm not crazy about, so I looked for the next card up, bringing me to:

 

The GTX 980. It's 600 bucks and I have no idea if it's worth the speed and vram improvement. Although I am TECHNICALLY in possession of such money, it feels like a HUGE amount of cash to spend and I'd rather not if it isn't worth it, so I was looking for some feedback from you guys. It's about as much as I can afford at the moment, and I probably wouldn't want to get anything significantly more badass on account of the meek little i5 4460 and 650 watt psu currently sitting in my build.

 

My main concern is work. I guess that the upgrade from 970 to 980 would give me a few extra frames in gaming as well as a tad more future proofing, but I'm not sure if the boost is worth the MASSIVE price jump. I'm pretty sure if I lived in the US  I could get a 980 ti for almost that amount of money, but here it costs 750 usd at minimum, which I really can't afford X'D

So I'm currently stuck deciding between these two, right? And that is when I heard that Pascal is coming and could potentially blow the price/performance ratio out of the water, leaving me conflicted. On the one hand I would REALLY like the GPU now (and I don't really have faith in the prices being reasonable here) but it would REALLY suck to upgrade now and find out that there is something for nearly the same price but much more performance coming in a few weeks.

That being said Pascal still has no release date or prices or anything like that, so I'm hesitant to go that route unless someone can convince me that it's REALLY worth it.

 

 

Oh, and before people ask, I HAD considered AMD cards and they are they cheaper option, but my teachers have all recommended NVIDIA on account of better compatibility with the applications we're using at school.

 

 

So, anyone willing to help me untangle this mess?

 

 

[rhyseyness]

Personally, I'd get a 970 or wait for Pascal.

Imo the extra money for the 980 isn't worth it.

You should be able to max everything at 1080p with a 970

Hope this helps

[stealth80]

15 minutes ago, inkyserifs said:

Wooo hoo!

 

It is time for inky to FINALLY get a gpu. And it's about time.

 

or IS it? O_o

 

Back around New Year's I completed my very first build, geared towards mid-range PC gaming and some design work (stuff like photoshop, after effects, and a variety of 3d software). Because I'm from Poland and parts are expensive here, and I was working with a pretty tight budget, I decided to skip the GPU altogether in order to avoid skimping on my other parts just to fit a 750 ti in there, but I've finally saved up some extra cash and I think it's about time to get the goodies I've been looking forward to for so long.

 

My initial thought was a GTX 970 (probably ASUS). It currently costs around 390 USD where I live, it comes with Far Cry Primal and The Division, and to my knowledge it's a solid 1080p gaming card. I like to max things out whenever possible (pretty visuals are my thing, sorry) although I'm willing to sacrifice a few small settings for that precious 60 FPS we all love. Unfortunately I researched and found out about the 3.5 GB issue, which I'm not crazy about, so I looked for the next card up, bringing me to:

 

The GTX 980. It's 600 bucks and I have no idea if it's worth the speed and vram improvement. Although I am TECHNICALLY in possession of such money, it feels like a HUGE amount of cash to spend and I'd rather not if it isn't worth it, so I was looking for some feedback from you guys. It's about as much as I can afford at the moment, and I probably wouldn't want to get anything significantly more badass on account of the meek little i5 4460 and 650 watt psu currently sitting in my build.

 

My main concern is work. I guess that the upgrade from 970 to 980 would give me a few extra frames in gaming as well as a tad more future proofing, but I'm not sure if the boost is worth the MASSIVE price jump. I'm pretty sure if I lived in the US  I could get a 980 ti for almost that amount of money, but here it costs 750 usd at minimum, which I really can't afford X'D

So I'm currently stuck deciding between these two, right? And that is when I heard that Pascal is coming and could potentially blow the price/performance ratio out of the water, leaving me conflicted. On the one hand I would REALLY like the GPU now (and I don't really have faith in the prices being reasonable here) but it would REALLY suck to upgrade now and find out that there is something for nearly the same price but much more performance coming in a few weeks.

That being said Pascal still has no release date or prices or anything like that, so I'm hesitant to go that route unless someone can convince me that it's REALLY worth it.

 

 

Oh, and before people ask, I HAD considered AMD cards and they are they cheaper option, but my teachers have all recommended NVIDIA on account of better compatibility with the applications we're using at school.

 

 

So, anyone willing to help me untangle this mess?

 

 

Don't believe all the hype about the 3.5gb vram, it was found during very specific and directed testing and the instances it occurs in are very isolated (iPhone 6 bending). I have had a 970 for 18 months now and never encountered the bug even at 4k, I recently added another for SLI.

 

However that said, how much is a 390 in Poland? its a little faster and has more Vram which may help in the long run.

 

As already said, if you can, you should try to wait for the new GPU's which will land later this year

[Moonzy]

the 3.5gb issue is not much of a problem in 1080p imo...

 

 

 

that said, if you are going to get a pascal, just wait and dont buy anything, its best for your budget  
investing in graphic cards is never a good idea anyway, since better products will be on the cheap in the future

my suggestion is you just get w/e card u want at the current moment u can, unless pascal is coming out in a week or two

 

my sugestion is getting a 970, been using mine for 1080p for few months now, didnt even touch 3gb of vram with ultra settings (or its just the games i play XD)

it lessen your pain when you leave it aside after an upgrade in the future

[inkyserifs]

2 minutes ago, stealth80 said:

Don't believe all the hype about the 3.5gb vram, it was found during very specific and directed testing and the instances it occurs in are very isolated (iPhone 6 bending). I have had a 970 for 18 months now and never encountered the bug even at 4k, I recently added another for SLI.

 

However that said, how much is a 390 in Poland? its a little faster and has more Vram which may help in the long run.

 

As already said, if you can, you should try to wait for the new GPU's which will land later this year

Hmm, I can find a 390 for roughly 375 and a 390x for about 450 (this actually seems like a very good price/performance deal)

 

My only concerns were power consumption (as I only have the 650 watts)  and potentially issues with doing CUDA tasks.

 

If the Pascals had a release date I'd be way more willing to wait, right now I'm on integrated graphics which are useless and it hurts. but perhaps it is indeed a good idea.

[stealth80]

4 minutes ago, inkyserifs said:

Hmm, I can find a 390 for roughly 375 and a 390x for about 450 (this actually seems like a very good price/performance deal)

 

My only concerns were power consumption (as I only have the 650 watts)  and potentially issues with doing CUDA tasks.

 

If the Pascals had a release date I'd be way more willing to wait, right now I'm on integrated graphics which are useless and it hurts. but perhaps it is indeed a good idea.

The 390X is a good card, I would take that especially if it's $125 less than a 980, however you will have issues with CUDA coding, the power supply should be fine as long as it is a quality unit

[inkyserifs]

3 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

the 3.5gb issue is not much of a problem in 1080p imo...

 

 

 

that said, if you are going to get a pascal, just wait and dont buy anything, its best for your budget  
investing in graphic cards is never a good idea anyway, since better products will be on the cheap in the future

my suggestion is you just get w/e card u want at the current moment u can, unless pascal is coming out in a week or two

 

my sugestion is getting a 970, been using mine for 1080p for few months now, didnt even touch 3gb of vram with ultra settings (or its just the games i play XD)

it lessen your pain when you leave it aside after an upgrade in the future

Huh, thank you, that is very encouraging to hear.   I guess it's just a matter of my impatience then. I haven't gamed in like two years so I'm antsy X'D

[inkyserifs]

20 minutes ago, rhyseyness said:

Personally, I'd get a 970 or wait for Pascal.

Imo the extra money for the 980 isn't worth it.

You should be able to max everything at 1080p with a 970

Hope this helps

yes, thank you. all feedback is appreciated

[i_build_nanosuits]

GTX 970 would be an ideal match for your i5-4460 for gaming at 1080p...i would suggest you go with that.

[inkyserifs]

1 minute ago, stealth80 said:

The 390X is a good card, I would take that especially if it's $125 less than a 980, however you will have issues with CUDA coding, the power supply should be fine as long as it is a quality unit

Yes, I thought that this might be a better idea. I'm still trying to figure out just how much I should care about CUDA, as AMD offers very tempting performance and price.

 

My PSU is a Corsair that a gamer friend with a 970 recommended, but I later found out it's not THE most efficient as it's a cheaper VS series (which blows because it wasn't sold for cheap at all, X') ). Its reviews mostly said it was very reliable, silent, and powerful so I'm not sure how much I should worry.

 

I think that it kinda toes the line. It might not blow up, but idk if I'd put my money on running a 390x

[inkyserifs]

2 minutes ago, i_build_nanosuits said:

GTX 970 would be an ideal match for your i5-4460 for gaming at 1080p...i would suggest you go with that.

Thanks for the advice most people seem to be recommending the 970.

[i_build_nanosuits]

4 minutes ago, inkyserifs said:

Thanks for the advice most people seem to be recommending the 970.

yes it's a very efficient chip, it overclock well and the drivers for it are good and wont require a ton of CPU overhead like the AMD drivers tend to do in drawcalls heavy scenes...for your little i5 it's a better match than the high powered radeon counterparts for sure...it will also likely run cooler and quieter and cost about the same or less...and if you use softwares that can leverage CUDA acceleration, or use shadowplay or other nvidia features...yeah.

[inkyserifs]

15 minutes ago, i_build_nanosuits said:

yes it's a very efficient chip, it overclock well and the drivers for it are good and wont require a ton of CPU overhead like the AMD drivers tend to do in drawcalls heavy scenes...for your little i5 it's a better match than the high powered radeon counterparts for sure...it will also likely run cooler and quieter and cost about the same or less...and if you use softwares that can leverage CUDA acceleration, or use shadowplay or other nvidia features...yeah.

Yeah, it seems like this option makes the most sense for me then Thank you.

 

Now I only have to figure out how many pieces my heart will shatter into once Pascal releases X'D I don't think I'm going to wait for that. It's too far in the future, and I need GPU for work as well as play, so it could be months before Pascal gets to my country, and it might not be affordable anyway. In a worst case scenario (Pascal outperforms current cards by a wide margin for the same price) I will just try to sell back my card and upgrade or wait things out and deal with something that is still a very good card until I'm ready to upgrade in a few years.

 

^u^

[max_headroom]

The 970 runs out of steam before it hits the 3.5gb ceiling.

Just like the 390 drowns when it approaches the 4gb.  As to why they gave it 8gb vram... it's purely marketing.

[inkyserifs]

Just now, max_headroom said:

The 970 runs out of steam before it hits the 3.5gb ceiling.

Just like the 390 drowns when it approaches the 4gb ceiling.  As to why they gave it 8gb vram... it's purely marketing.

Yeah, I figured as much. The advantage 8 gb might have only really seems to show in some 4K tests, and it's not beneficial in my kind of workload because of CUDA. XP

[max_headroom]

Just now, inkyserifs said:

Yeah, I figured as much. The advantage 8 gb might have only really seems to show in some 4K tests, and it's not beneficial in my kind of workload because of CUDA. XP

The 390 will only make use of all 8gb at 4K as a power point slide show.  It can barely sustain 60 fps on high settings at 1440p.

 

Fans keep harping that DX12 will change everything and some how, some way, a door from heaven will open up and allow the 390 to tear thru games at 4K and make use of its 8gb vram in 60 fps glory.  It's not going to happen.

[inkyserifs]

Just now, max_headroom said:

The 390 will only make use of all 8gb at 4K as a power point slide show.  It can barely sustain 60 fps on high settings at 1440p.

 

Fans keep harping that DX12 will change everything and some how, some way, a door from heaven will open up and allow the 390 to tear thru games at 4K and make use of its 8gb vram in 60 fps glory.  It's not going to happen.

Yeah, that makes sense X'D I also don't care about DX12 in the slightest, because I feel like all the supposed improvements it's supposed to make will turn out to be mostly hype (same possibility with Pascal, actually, but meh).

At any rate, I can't run it because I have an embedded edition of windows 8.1 and I couldn't upgrade to 10 if I wanted to

[max_headroom]

3 minutes ago, inkyserifs said:

Yeah, that makes sense X'D I also don't care about DX12 in the slightest, because I feel like all the supposed improvements it's supposed to make will turn out to be mostly hype (same possibility with Pascal, actually, but meh).

At any rate, I can't run it because I have an embedded edition of windows 8.1 and I couldn't upgrade to 10 if I wanted to

While I see that DX12 may have its benefits.  However, game developers aren't going to completely ditch DX 10 and 11.  It's going to take a few years for the industry and gamers to adopt 12.

 

As we know, 2 years in the gpu market is a looooong time and technology gets outdated quickly.

 

So by the time DX12 gets even close to mainstream status, we would probably be on the 2nd or 3rd generation of Pascal and Polaris making the 970 or 390 purely obsolete.

 

Work is work.  If cuda gets the job done and brings the bacon home, then stick with that.

[inkyserifs]

5 minutes ago, max_headroom said:

While I see that DX12 may have its benefits.  However, game developers aren't going to completely ditch DX 10 and 11.  It's going to take a few years for the industry and gamers to adopt 12.

 

As we know, 2 years in the gpu market is a looooong time and technology gets outdated quickly.

 

So by the time DX12 gets even close to mainstream status, we would probably be on the 2nd or 3rd generation of Pascal and Polaris making the 970 or 390 purely obsolete.

 

Work is work.  If cuda gets the job done and brings the bacon home, then stick with that.

lol yep. Hopefully by the time DX12 becomes a necessity, I'll figure out a way to upgrade to windows 10 smoothly. X') Until then I shall be very happy with what I'm getting for my money right now. Thanks for the help!

[SteveGrabowski0]

The 980 is about 14% more powerful than the 970, while the 980 Ti is about 22% more powerful than the 980. So I would either buy the 970 or the 980 Ti since the jump in price between the 970 and 980 is huge while the jump in price between the 980 and 980 Ti looks pretty small. Since you can't afford the 980 Ti, that makes the 970 the go to choice I think if you need something now.

 

Pascal seems like it should be out around September or so. So if you can wait 6 months you might end up with a much better gpu out of it. And it should be a big upgrade with the drop to much smaller transistors, since they can pack a lot more into the gpu and still hit even lower power targets. Transistor shrinks have in the past corresponded to enormous gains in performance. Consider the 40 nm GTX 580 from 2011, which was the Fermi equivalent of the 980 Ti. With the shrink to 28 nm in 2012 the GTX 680, roughly the Kepler equivalent of the GTX 980, outperformed the GTX 580 by about 23% or so at 1920x1200 at launch (and now 40% in the long term). The 28 nm equivalent of the GTX 580 was the GTX 780 Ti released in 2013, and it outperformed it by a jaw dropping 82% at 1080p.

 

So I don't think the 970 is at all worth its price right now, it basically sells for its launch price from a year and a half ago. I think it's a horrible time to buy a gpu right now. But six months is a long time to wait while playing games on the integrated HD graphics, so you should probably get the 970. I have a 970 myself, and it's awesome to game on.

[inkyserifs]

4 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

The 980 is about 15% more powerful than the 970, while the 980 Ti is about 30% more powerful than the 980. So I would either buy the 970 or the 980 Ti since the jump in price between the 970 and 980 is huge while the jump in price between the 980 and 980 Ti looks pretty small. Since you can't afford the 980 Ti, that makes the 970 the go to choice I think if you need something now.

 

Pascal seems like it should be out around September or so. So if you can wait 6 months you might end up with a much better gpu out of it. And it should be a big upgrade with the drop to much smaller transistors, since they can pack a lot more into the gpu and still hit even lower power targets. Transistor shrinks have in the past corresponded to enormous gains in performance. Consider the 40 nm GTX 580 from 2011, which was the Fermi equivalent of the 980 Ti. With the shrink to 28 nm in 2012 the GTX 680, roughly the Kepler equivalent of the GTX 980, outperformed the GTX 580 by about 23% or so at 1920x1200 at launch (and now 40% in the long term). The 28 nm equivalent of the GTX 580 was the GTX 780 Ti released in 2013, and it outperformed it by a jaw dropping 82% at 1080p.

 

So I don't think the 970 is at all worth its price right now, it basically sells for its launch price from a year and a half ago. I think it's a horrible time to buy a gpu right now. But six months is a long time to wait while playing games on the integrated HD graphics, so you should probably get the 970.

Well damn. I guess this is what worries me. Especially if upcoming games start taking advantage of newer architecture, making it difficult for something like the 970 to keep up even in the pretty near future. I don't upgrade often as I'm a student with limited funds for this sort of thing. It also occurred to me that it might be difficult to sell back a 970 for any decent price if Pascal hits the market. I just seriously wish that we knew more about actual performance and specifications already, so that I could make a solid decision rather than speculating about what kind of performance I'll get and what price tag will come with it.

 

Even if pascal came out in 6 months I'd probably wait for proper reviews and such to happen. This is assuming the cards would even come with a price tag I could afford. Which is a LONG time to wait for games, but even worse considering my field of study/work, so I might just have to upgrade now and cut my losses/lament later.

 

To be honest though, waiting that long is almost tempting considering Pascal's potential.

[Citadelen]

1 hour ago, inkyserifs said:

Yes, I thought that this might be a better idea. I'm still trying to figure out just how much I should care about CUDA, as AMD offers very tempting performance and price.

 

My PSU is a Corsair that a gamer friend with a 970 recommended, but I later found out it's not THE most efficient as it's a cheaper VS series (which blows because it wasn't sold for cheap at all, X') ). Its reviews mostly said it was very reliable, silent, and powerful so I'm not sure how much I should worry.

 

I think that it kinda toes the line. It might not blow up, but idk if I'd put my money on running a 390x

Your PSU will be fine for a 390X, and why not use programs that utilise OpenCL instead of CUDA, in some instances it will be faster than CUDA. If you decide on AMD, avoid ASUS and Gigabyte.

[Majestic]

35 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

The 980 is about 14% more powerful than the 970

lol wat, no it isn't. It has 23% more CUDA cores and has 256bit memory instead of 224bit. It's generally about ~20% faster, sometimes more.

 

OP also has a 4460, i'd opt for the 970 or 980.

[inkyserifs]

Just now, Citadelen said:

Your PSU will be fine for a 390X, and why not use programs that utilise OpenCL instead of CUDA, in some instances it will be faster than CUDA. If you decide on AMD, avoid ASUS and Gigabyte.

I love the price/performance of 390x, but I don't always get the option of choosing what program to work in so I'll sometimes be forced to do things with CUDA programs. I'm not sure just how much that's going to impact work performance though. It might even be worth the overall boost...?

[Citadelen]

Just now, inkyserifs said:

I love the price/performance of 390x, but I don't always get the option of choosing what program to work in so I'll sometimes be forced to do things with CUDA programs. I'm not sure just how much that's going to impact work performance though. It might even be worth the overall boost...?

Which programs do you use?