Gtx 960 vs 970

[borkusgod]

Hello to all. I'm new to this board but have been watching the channel since the ncix days. I took a look around the subforums here and couldn't find a thread that mirrors my question. I have a desktop that I am currently trying to revive from the grave. There was a spill that took out the graphics card and the power supply that I need to currently replace. I think I have found a suitable psu, but my question is when looking at these two cards, what are the recommendations considering that I am on a limited budget. I'm looking to spend around $200, give or take.
So I've been looking at several models of the Gtx 960 that now offer 4 gig of vram vs the 970 that mostly comes with 2 gig for a just a bit more. Given that I want to play games like GTA V and The Witcher 3 on decent settings, which card will be the best value? Obviously, if I could spring for the 970 and not worry about it, I would. But can I eek out a decent performance out of a 960 with 4 gig and still make it last for a little while? It would be nice if this card would last me for at least the next year or so. I'm running an AMD Phenom II X4965 Black Edition on an ASUS M4A78T-E (Yes, I know this thing is old. This will be the last upgrade I do before upgrading the cpu and motherboard. I'm just trying to suck some more life out of her because of finances.) and also have 8 gigs of gskill ram. I currently have a terabyte 7200 hd in and plan on installing a second soon running Windows 7 Pro. I would very much appreciate anyone's input on the pros and cons of these two cards up against each other. Also, I have a huge Cooler Master case (can't remember the model) that you can park a small car in. So the size of the card is irrelevant. I'm also purchasing a 500+ watt modular psu to power it all. Thanks so much to anyone that can shed a little light on the subject. The internet has led me all over the place with this particular dilemma.

[Guest]

GTX 960 4GB is a flop, as the actual chip is REALLY quite bad and will never utilize 4gb VRAM

[Dabombinable]

13 minutes ago, ChickenNugget said:

GTX 960 4GB is a flop, as the actual chip is REALLY quite bad and will never utilize 4gb VRAM

People said that the GTX 650ti could never utilise 2GB RAM....guess what? It can.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

People said that the GTX 650ti could never utilise 2GB RAM....guess what? It can.

Oh. But there is proof that the 960 hasn't utilized 4gb in games...

[TheRandomness]

Wait, a 970... with 2GB!? Please show us. Also, what PSU have you chosen? And you should wait on the new cards (1070/1080/4x0 series from AMD) releasing either this month or in the next few.

[Zodiark1593]

In games with very high resolution textures, the 960 can, without a doubt, utilize 4 GB of VRAM. 

 

However, the 128 bit bus holds this card back significantly. Best case scenario, you're looking at approximately 2/3 the performance of an equally clocked 970 which wouldn't be bad. Worst case however(memory interface getting hammered and choking the card), you may end up at less than half the framerate of the 970.

 

I'd take a good look at a 280X, or even make the jump to the 290 if mining hasn't driven the prices astronomically high. At one point, I'd seen them down to $240.

[bigneo]

I owned both cards, 960 and 970 (both G1 gigabyte). My suggestion is 970 all the way, 960 was too weak for witcher 3 and GTA V and had bad coil whine noise. I also was running 4760k at 4Gz.

 

If you are only limited to them two cards I highly recommend 970 (btw all 970 are 4GB ram and not 2GB), but because of current situation with new cards coming out I would wait and get something new for similar price, 1070 perhaps or something from AMD.

[Cereal5]

4 hours ago, ChickenNugget said:

Oh. But there is proof that the 960 hasn't utilized 4gb in games...

It doesn't need to use 4, it only needs to use more than 2.

 

@borkusgod chances are you wont find a 970 for $200, however, if you're lucky, you might be able to find a 780. If you have the PSU for it, try looking at something like an R9 380 or R9 380X

[mckrackin5324]

I'm selling my GTX 960 2GB for $75 in about 3 1/2 weeks. It's got less than 4 months use on it.

Take what you want from that comment.

 

I play most games at medium settings to get a solid 60 FPS.

BF4 is a very playable 45 FPS on high to ultra and rock solid 60 FPS on medium with Vsync.

 

I don't think the 4GB version truly or consistently out performs the 2GB version.