Are the GTX 750Ti and GTX 950 still good cards?

[IntenseFATE98]

After nvidia revealed the new 1080 and 1070 cards, I decided to postpone my build and wait for a 1050 or 1060.

 

However, a friend of mine has been wanting a PC for a while and he's not really ready to wait. He wanted to get a 750Ti or 950, depending on how much money he has left, but I was thinking, when the 1070 comes out next month, will the 970 get a huge price drop? I was thinking that waiting for just a few weeks and getting a possibly cheaper 970 for him would be better. Also, how well will the 970 perform with the i3 - 6100? Should he get a slightly better processor? (He wants Skylake, not the older ones)

[Manage My Cables]

7 minutes ago, Mr.FATE said:

After nvidia revealed the new 1080 and 1070 cards, I decided to postpone my build and wait for a 1050 or 1060.

 

However, a friend of mine has been wanting a PC for a while and he's not really ready to wait. He wanted to get a 750Ti or 950, depending on how much money he has left, but I was thinking, when the 1070 comes out next month, will the 970 get a huge price drop? I was thinking that waiting for just a few weeks and getting a possibly cheaper 970 for him would be better. Also, how well will the 970 perform with the i3 - 6100? Should he get a slightly better processor? (He wants Skylake, not the older ones)

i5 6400 and a 970 is pretty good combination. Wouldn't recommend putting a i3 with anything higher then a 950 or 370.

[Nena Trinity]

You want a card that is VR ready such as the R9 390 or GTX 970 so maybe yo should wait? Since the Polaris card will probably make the prices go down! (if not the GTX 1070 does)

1 minute ago, Manage My Cables said:

i5 6400 and a 970 is pretty good combination. Wouldn't recommend putting a i3 with anything higher then a 950 or 370.

That i3 is about the same as a 2n gen i5 is it not?

[Imakuni]

10 minutes ago, Mr.FATE said:

After nvidia revealed the new 1080 and 1070 cards, I decided to postpone my build and wait for a 1050 or 1060.

 

However, a friend of mine has been wanting a PC for a while and he's not really ready to wait. He wanted to get a 750Ti or 950, depending on how much money he has left, but I was thinking, when the 1070 comes out next month, will the 970 get a huge price drop? I was thinking that waiting for just a few weeks and getting a possibly cheaper 970 for him would be better. Also, how well will the 970 perform with the i3 - 6100? Should he get a slightly better processor? (He wants Skylake, not the older ones)

You should try your luck at a second hand 960 or R9 380 / 280x rather than a 970. I doubt it'll drop that much, even on the used market, to the point of a 950.

[Megazero]

15 minutes ago, Mr.FATE said:

After nvidia revealed the new 1080 and 1070 cards, I decided to postpone my build and wait for a 1050 or 1060.

 

However, a friend of mine has been wanting a PC for a while and he's not really ready to wait. He wanted to get a 750Ti or 950, depending on how much money he has left, but I was thinking, when the 1070 comes out next month, will the 970 get a huge price drop? I was thinking that waiting for just a few weeks and getting a possibly cheaper 970 for him would be better. Also, how well will the 970 perform with the i3 - 6100? Should he get a slightly better processor? (He wants Skylake, not the older ones)

It wont get that big of a price drop. At least in my country right now (second hand market only), the 750Ti goes for about 1/3 the price of a 970, 950 goes for about half, while the 770 goes for about 2/3 the price of 970. I expected that 970 will drop to around 770 price right now, and 950, 750Ti will only drop a tiny bit. 

IMO, buying a 750Ti or 950 is a pretty good deal, since those card's price wont drop as much as a 970 so it will have a better resell value should you/your friend decided to upgrade to a 1070 or so. ANd even if you dont plan to resell it, you can always use a 750Ti or 950 as dedicated PhysX card

[mikat]

6 minutes ago, Manage My Cables said:

i5 6400 and a 970 is pretty good combination. Wouldn't recommend putting a i3 with anything higher then a 950 or 370.

R9 390/960 is also fine

[dizmo]

I would probably go with an AMD card, or as others have suggested, a used card. Don't get the 750Ti, there are far better cards than that.

What's he playing? Or using the system for? That will help immensely. If he's just into easy to power games, he might not need something powerful.

Generally, cards don't drop that much in price. If they do it's just to clear out old stock, so it would depend on what the stores in your country stock. Remember, AMD and Nvidia simply set MSRP pricing, not what the retailer actually has to charge.

 

15 minutes ago, Nena360 said:

You want a card that is VR ready such as the R9 390 or GTX 970 so maybe yo should wait? Since the Polaris card will probably make the prices go down! (if not the GTX 1070 does)

That i3 is about the same as a 2n gen i5 is it not?

Why? If he can't scrape the money together for a medium tier rig, he likely can't afford VR.

[Nena Trinity]

4 minutes ago, dizmo said:

I would probably go with an AMD card, or as others have suggested, a used card. Don't get the 750Ti, there are far better cards than that.

What's he playing? Or using the system for? That will help immensely. If he's just into easy to power games, he might not need something powerful.

Generally, cards don't drop that much in price. If they do it's just to clear out old stock, so it would depend on what the stores in your country stock. Remember, AMD and Nvidia simply set MSRP pricing, not what the retailer actually has to charge.

 

Why? If he can't scrape the money together for a medium tier rig, he likely can't afford VR.

All you need for VR is a GTX 970, R9 390 or R9 480? (VR is soon more affordable if AMD is to be trusted...)

[dizmo]

5 minutes ago, Nena360 said:

All you need for VR is a GTX 970, R9 390 or R9 480? (VR is soon more affordable if AMD is to be trusted...)

Uhh...and the VR kit itself. Which is almost the cost of the PC the guy is considering building for Oculus, or double it for Vive.

You also shouldn't get the bare minimum for VR. It'll only create tons of issues.

[Nena Trinity]

1 minute ago, dizmo said:

Uhh...and the VR kit itself. Which is almost the cost of the PC the guy is considering building for Oculus, or double it for Vive.

You also shouldn't get the bare minimum for VR. It'll only create tons of issues.

Well I guess it may or may not depends on the VR game! But I feel that regular games will go over to use VR games as a average amount of GPU requirement soon... (mostly AAA titles but yeah...)

[IntenseFATE98]

He's not interested in VR. Basically games like H1Z1, The Culling, GTA 5 (high settings not required), Battlefield 4 etc. He won't be doing any editing, just playing a few games that he likes. Also, getting it used is not an option for us unfortunately. How good are the AMD cards? I've seen numerous people complain that they heat up a lot more than nvidia's. Since we are from India, where its hot most of the time, I want the coolest possible option. Thanka for the suggestions so far!

[SnowyMus]

2 hours ago, Mr.FATE said:

After nvidia revealed the new 1080 and 1070 cards, I decided to postpone my build and wait for a 1050 or 1060.

 

However, a friend of mine has been wanting a PC for a while and he's not really ready to wait. He wanted to get a 750Ti or 950, depending on how much money he has left, but I was thinking, when the 1070 comes out next month, will the 970 get a huge price drop? I was thinking that waiting for just a few weeks and getting a possibly cheaper 970 for him would be better. Also, how well will the 970 perform with the i3 - 6100? Should he get a slightly better processor? (He wants Skylake, not the older ones)

I use my computer's Intel Core i3-6100 with a GTX 960. It's a good 1080p card, and it eats Fallout 4 and Battlefield 4 for lunch on high settings. The GTX 950, and GTX 750 Ti are pretty good matches, as well, if you want to spend less money for decent performance. There's no confirmation on when the 1060 is getting released, so you shouldn't start waiting unless you're happy with what you are currently using for the time being.

 

You could also pair it with a GTX 970. Many games should perform just fine, as Skylake cores are pretty awesome. More games that demand more multi-core performance are being released, so a bottleneck (I said the B-word) may be present when playing these games, which can reduce the performance down to as if you had a GTX 950. At that point, it can become uneconomical to pair a higher-end GTX 970 with only a mid-ranged i3-6100. For the best overall performance, I recommend getting the $200 3.2 GHz i5-6500 or $220 3.3 GHz i5-6600.

 

As for a price drop, they'll just sell them at MSRP until they're out of stock. You'll need to look at the used/secondhand market for price drops which will very likely happen pretty quickly.