Do you think the GTX 970 will still play games 2 years from now?

[SharpShooterPOR]

I' going to builld my first PC and I'm planning on buying a GTX 970. I know Pascal is coming out soon but let's say that I still buy the 970. Is it still a good graphics card after a year and a half? And the most important question to me is: Will it still play high demanding games at 1080p coming out in 2 years from now? (at 60 fps, medium details).

I know you can't predict how games and hardware will be 2 years from now but what's your opinion, will it handle the games by then?

How does 4 year old cards handle today's games?

Thanks in advance.

[ybriK]

4 minutes ago, SharpShooterPOR said:

I' going to builld my first PC and I'm planning on buying a GTX 970. I know Pascal is coming out soon but let's say that I still buy the 970. Is it still a good graphics card after a year and a half? And the most important question to me is: Will it still play high demanding games at 1080p coming out in 2 years from now? (at 60 fps, medium details).

I know you can't predict how games and hardware will be 2 years from now but what's your opinion, will it handle the games by then?

How does 4 year old cards handle today's games?

Thanks in advance.

R9 390 anytime of the day.

 

On release day 780 Ti destroyed the 290X which made sense, but now the tables have turned... lots of possible reasons as to why.

 

-Nvidia Gimp Drivers Controversy

-VRAM Consumption

-AMD Driver efficiency overtime

 

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/the_division_pc_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,6.html

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/far_cry_primal_pc_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,7.html

[stealth80]

[LawrenceBarnes2013]

1080p @ 60FPS 2 Years from now, hell yeah, though if you won't be building any time soon you should wait for pascal and polaris, if you don't want to wait, a 390X will do better. 

[TrigrH]

I'd wait for polaris 10

[FatalityDiablo]

hard to say, because amd kind of raises the bar dramatically with the new polaris line-up. 2017 we are going to see vega which will be the real upgrade as far as I know, so I bet nvidia will step up their game as well. I would say the 970 would still be passable for 1080p gaming, although 3.5 gigs of vram might hurt performance here and there, but thats just speculation of mine..

[Bl00dgod]

do you think in 2 years the games and resolutions dont "evolve" and need more power? more than 3,5gb vram? etc

i'd wait for the new generation thats only a few months away

 

[I am an SSD]

Definitely not at high or maybe even medium.

 

With all this talk and hype about pascal, Developers may decide to make their games even more demanding than it is now.

 

However on the bright  side, expect its price to decrease by a lot because of the introduction of the aforementioned pascal. 

[SharpShooterPOR]

Just now, ybriK said:

R9 390 anytime of the day.

 

On release day 780 Ti destroyed the 290X which made sense, but now the tables have turned...

 

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/the_division_pc_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,6.html

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/far_cry_primal_pc_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,7.html

I know but please can you answer the question?

[HardwareFoundry]

1 minute ago, LawrenceBarnes2013 said:

1080p @ 60FPS 2 Years from now, hell yeah, though if you won't be building any time soon you should wait for pascal and polaris, if you don't want to wait, a 390X will do better. 

I agree, I was going to say the same but you beat me to it

[ybriK]

Just now, SharpShooterPOR said:

I know but please can you answer the question?

Sure you can buy the 970 it will be a capable GPU in 2 years time you'll just have to tone down the settings if you want 60 FPS consistency.

[stealth80]

Sorry I love getting my ball out!

 

In all seriousness the 970 is already over 18 months old so how it will run games in the next 2 years is hard to tell. Also taking into account that Direct X 12 will soon start to be utilised more, I guess it will age quickly, which is annoying as I have 2!

 

Now just isn't a great time to be making a long term GPU purchased with DX12 and pascal/polaris so close with the HBM improvements they are going to make. Also the market is trying to push into 4k meaning the vram on the 970 will become an issue unless they really do implement vram stacking in DX12 and make it common place meaning SLI will overcome that issue.

 

A 4 year old card I guess is a 670GTX which is in my wifes PC, it runs wow and such fine but I think Witcher 3 would kill it lol

[pagani123]

my gpus almmost 2 years old running on a 3 or 4 year old architecture and it chugs along fine 

[manikyath]

5 minutes ago, ybriK said:

Sure you can buy the 970 it will be a capable GPU in 2 years time you'll just have to tone down the settings if you want 60 FPS consistency.

and the 390 will magically get faster over time?

i'm sorry, but your logic is flawed.

[stealth80]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

and the 390 will magically get faster over time?

i'm sorry, but your logic is flawed.

I think people assume that because it has 8gb vram it will last much longer.

 

Its like saying a car will get faster because it has a bigger fuel tank 

 

- The card can only process so many polygons per second, it doesn't matter how big the memory is, it just means that as games mature the card will have the memory space available to load the textures, but the chip wont be able to process them any faster than it does now, meaning it ill still stutter etc

[Guest]

Who knows where games will be in 2 years. A 970 proobably won't be able to play VR games in 2 years and 4k could become the new standard.

[manikyath]

Just now, stealth80 said:

I think people assume that because it has 8gb vram it will last much longer.

 

Its like saying a car will get faster because it has a bigger fuel tank

well, more vram is more "future proof" (if that even means anything)

 

but 2 years is a rather short time in the big scheme of things, and theres not a single game on my steam library right now that fills up the 3.5GB vram on my 970 without completely tanking down the GPU itself.

[manikyath]

Just now, Bobby_Joe_90 said:

Who knows where games will be in 2 years. A 970 proobably won't be able to play VR games in 2 years and 4k could become the new standard.

4K will take a long time to become a standard, look at how long DVI has been around, and consider that the majority of displays and GPUs out there still support VGA (and a lot of people still use it)

 

as for VR, i can tell you a single 970 will be a quite meager experience right now, as will be a 390.

[stealth80]

5 minutes ago, manikyath said:

well, more vram is more "future proof" (if that even means anything)

 

but 2 years is a rather short time in the big scheme of things, and theres not a single game on my steam library right now that fills up the 3.5GB vram on my 970 without completely tanking down the GPU itself.

nah, the chip will fail before the vram for sure, its like the old budget cards with 4gb vram on them, the chip cant process the information fast enough to make use of the memory. Don't get me wrong it will help for a while, but as games mature, the chip just wont be able to process the info fast enough, the 390 is what, 14 months newer than a 970 with over double the vram, and it is still only around 5% faster (on average). The chip will be the bottleneck before the vram, for sure.

Don't get me wrong the 390 is a better card than the 970, I aint a deluded fan boy, I recommend AMD for everything bar the 980ti, they are just better at the moment. I just don't think the 390 will last any longer than the 970 just because it has 8gb vram, much like a Titan X wont last any longer than a 980ti

 

Fail - bad choice of word, I mean stagnate/become the bottleneck

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, stealth80 said:

nah, the chip will fail before the vram for sure, its like the old budget cards with 4gb vram on them, the chip cant process the information fast enough to make use of the memory. Don't get me wrong it will help for a while, but as games mature, the chip just wont be able to process the info fast enough, the 390 is what, 14 months newer than a 970 with over double the vram, and it is still only around 5% faster (on average). The chip will be the bottlenect before the vram, for sure

 

Fail - bad choice of word, I mean stagnate/become the bottleneck

to me, the 390 is the excuse game devs use to say we have plenty of vram to not bother optimizing their games.

[ThomasD]

Software developers walk a fine line.

 

Their new releases have to offer the best eye candy to the people who buy the latest and greatest hardware.  That generates the hype. 

 

But those games also have to be playable on systems that weren't built yesterday.  That guarantees the sales.

 

If you want an idea of what happens over the course of 2-3 years think of how a GTX 760 does playing today's latest releases - ie. it does fine, but it doesn't do the best.

 

For people who do not insist on riding the bleeding edge of performance figure on upgrading your GPU every 2-3 years and your CPU every 5-6 years.

[stealth80]

15 minutes ago, Maybach123 said:

my gpus almmost 2 years old running on a 3 or 4 year old architecture and it chugs along fine 

To be fair that is still quite high end architecture and I would be upset if it didn't lol! Also the 780 was a great card, question is, how is a 770 fairing (which is sort of the direct range/model comparison to what the OP is asking)

[DXMember]

Does the GTX770 play modern games?

You'll probably be fine

[pagani123]

1 minute ago, stealth80 said:

To be fair that is still quite high end architecture and I would be upset if it didn't lol! Also the 780 was a great card, question is, how is a 770 fairing (which is sort of the direct range/model comparison to what the OP is asking)

processing power might be there. But the struggle with that card is the 2gb of vram 

[DioOmicida]

I think a good benchmark is the GTX 750 Ti. It's over two years old and still holding on pretty strong.
I have an old rig with a Radeon 77..7777 (4 years old) and it does not hold up well in the current market.