Video card

[alskahawk]

 Since I haven't done a lot of upgrading on my computers for the past 3 years I've decided to start the process. In short I need to upgrade my tv computer with a new video card. The 1060 Shorty just can't handle the TV. My thought is moving the 970 to the tv computer and then putting a 1080 in the gaming computer

Anyway, I am looking at upgrading to the GTX 1080 since the prices are dropping. I did a quick search on the 1070 an the prices were only about 10-20% lower. Thoughts?

Gaming computer                             TV computer

GTX 970                                           GTX 1060 Shorty
28 inch 144mhz monitor                    40 inch HD TV
win 10                                             Win 7
Gigabyte 990   MB                             Asus 970 MB
AMD 8370                                         AMD 8350
16 GB Ram                                       16 GB Ram
120 GB HD                                        240 GB HD, TB 7200 HD

[Gman]

Not sure if you'll see a whole lot of advantage in switching the 970/1060 around - perhaps a bit, but probably moving up a bit in GPU power would be the best solution.

To that end, wait to see what the fallout is after Monday at Gamescon when nVidia is going to release more information about the upcoming 20xx series of new graphics cards.  They may be opening up pre orders next week for the next gen cards, and that will very, very likely have an effect on the currently available 10xx series of cards (ie price dropping).  You probably will be able to snag a 1070 or 1080 card for much less in the next couple weeks than what they are currently priced at, as dealers, nvidia, and nVidia's partners/resellers like Asus/eVGA, MSI/etc will want to move out the current stock, and fast.

IMO you will have picked a great time to look up upgrading if that's the route you pick due to this timing, and there will be lots of posts I imagine here and elsewhere about this topic.

For my primary home theater system I have a 1080ti, but ran a 1080 for quite a while, pushing a 65" LG NanoCell 4k screen (we have a home theater room with a projector but I don't use a PC to run that, yet).  Both worked fine, and I also run a 970 to a 50" 1080p Sony TV, and it worked really well too for TV/HTPC type stuff, but didn't perform all that hot with games on that TV, the few I tried at least.

 IMO your 40" TV (I'm assuming by HD you mean 1080p), a 1080 will no doubt work great, but I think a 1070 should as well.  Are you gaming on the TV or just using it for home theater PC type stuff?  I'm surprised actually that a 1060 isn't good enough for just TV type applications for a 40" 1080p, unless of course you're playing games on it too, which then I could understand some games not performing as well.

[Bizman]

The GTX1060 should slightly outperform the GTX970 independently of the physical length. The short version should be equal to the long one, cooling being the most significant difference. If it slows down because of the ambient temperatures around the cooler being high, double or triple fans won't do much to help.

For AH the 1060 should work fine on a HD/1080p monitor independently of the physical dimensions. Some other games may need something stronger but basically you should be able to run almost anything at default settings. Going Ultra may drop performance with both 970 and 1060 on some games.

Another important thing to check with your TV is to disable all the built in image enhancers when using as a monitor.

If by chance you meant 4K by HD, then a GTX1070 is the minimum for gaming.

[alskahawk]

 I use the tv computer for web surfing kind of stuff, some movie watching. (it's a bed room TV)

As for the 1060 video card, I am not pleased with the performance. On paper it should out perform the 970 but it doesn't. Pages load slow, hang up. Just too much. I did have win 10 on the computer and that was just marginally better. I keep win 7 on there now to play certain games. When I throw my gaming computer on the 40 inch it all works great.

The 1060 shorty is just going to end up in a mini computer build.

Should have noted both computers have 750 watt PSU's. So power isn't an issue.

Thanks I didn't know Nvidia was coming out with a new line. Should be able to get a 1080 at a decent price.

[alskahawk]

 Both computers have SSD Hard drives unless noted otherwise.

[Bizman]

Good thing you mentioned having cross checked the TV with the other computer. Have you done the same the other way around?

To me the huge gap in performance sounds suspicious especially since you aren't talking about games. I've read some reviews about the 3 GB version of the GTX 1060 having some issues compared to the 6 GB version, but that was when the card was new and thus the drivers not fully optimised. Other than that I haven't heard negative feedback from the 1060 users. And nonetheless loading web pages and watching movies basically any modern card should do at 1080p.

[alskahawk]

I did cross check the 1060 on the gaming computer. Still same problem. It just doesn't perform like it should.  I should mention to that the 1060 is the 6gb version.

[Drano]

I did cross check the 1060 on the gaming computer. Still same problem. It just doesn't perform like it should.  I should mention to that the 1060 is the 6gb version.

Yeah but if it's a shorty card as you said your problem may be heat. The cooler on it is tiny. Those guys are made to fit space requirements more than gaming. All 1060 cards aren't the same. My MSI 1060 6gb gaming x has an awesome cooler on it. It's hard getting it to 70c overclocked on a stress test. Never have a problem with it playing AH. I have all but environmental max'd. Steady 60fps in all situations @1080p.

Sent from my Moto Z2 Force using Tapatalk

[Bizman]

I did cross check the 1060 on the gaming computer. Still same problem. It just doesn't perform like it should.  I should mention to that the 1060 is the 6gb version.

Did you uninstall the 970 drivers and install fresh ones for the 1060? If not, that alone can cause issues. Although they use the same driver pack, the way they use it is different.

As Drano said, it can also be a heat issue. Modern chips can protect themselves by reducing performance if the temperature gets too high. The 6 GB version should perform well no matter what size it is, it doesn't produce that much heat if the cooler is intact. Do you have any monitoring program installed to check the temperature? If it gets too high, the reason might be an improperly seated heat sink, or the cooler fan being set at "silent mode" providing  too few RPM for proper cooling. For the latter (and I don't know if that's even an option) there's programs like MSI Afterburner or similar from other manufacturers. Also, if it has run hot for a long time, replacing the heat paste is recommended.

[Denniss]

Use Hardware info or a similar hardware monitoring program to look for the GPU's temps and clock rates under load.
Power supply is way overdosed - what brand/type is this PSU ?
It may be an issue with the Bulldozer platform and nvidia's way of using the CPU for driver workloads. Ensure that your mainboards properly support the high clocked Bulldozer CPU, multiple motherboard manufacturers specify to use a top-blow CPU-cooler to ensure airflow over the voltage regulators (VRMs)

[alskahawk]

 I have played with the speeds via monitoring program. Marginal improvement. Powers not an issue. It's just a bad card

[guncrasher]

I have the 970 it is still a great card for ah.


semp