Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: -ammo- on February 22, 2015, 03:45:43 AM
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Had a great night at Hold'em cash game yesterday and walked away with $571.
I want to purchase a new NVIDEA card AFN leaning toward a 980. Is there a lot of difference between the models (EVGA, MSI, etc?). I'll be replacing a 770.
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The biggest differences are in cooling solutions and some are factory overclocked.
Check reviews to see which card has the combination of speed and quiet.
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While the Nvidia cards produce less heat than the R9 Radeons, whatever card you get, look for GOOD aftermarket cooling, for instance I have the ASUS GTX970STRIX DirectCu OC card. The extra cooling pays off in overclocking potential if it's what you want, or just prolongs the life of the card if you don't OC. There are several good Factory OCed cards, with great warranties.
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EVGA is popular due to their warranty and RMA. I don't know if you've followed the memory allocation/970 card stuff going on in the media, but eVGA took my 2 970 cards back after nearly 5 months, and gave me full credit +tax/shipping for them, and even added $ to that since the exchange rate and other factors have caused nVidia card prices to spike 20% here since I bought my 2 970 and single 980.
Gigabyte has a loyal following as well, their 970 card is easily the best IMO, but I'm not sure how their 980 compares.
The only thing I would say is that if AH is your primary focus, avoid SLI, it isn't worth it, at all. I'm seeing better performance, quite a lot, from a single eVGA Superclock 980 (the 2nd card I turn off for AH) than 970 SLI. As good as the 970 card is, if you plan on any 4k or really high resolution gaming in the future, or even if you're concerned about future resale value, due to all the wanking about the memory issue with the 970 (problems I had to actually go and try and recreate, as I hadn't seen them myself), I would buy the 980 for the extra $ right now instead.
The other option is to wait a bit, some new cards from both companies are in the pipeline and due out fairly soon, the 970/980 current cards are all 6 months old already.
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likr MrRipley said, its about cooling, and also some about power.
I like MSI twin frozr series for both nvidia and amd cards.
980 will probably be a bit overkill for AH3, but other game-titles can be played maxed out.
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Thanks Gman/save
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Thanks Gman/save
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHIM_1uGWPo
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Ahha, I hadn't seen that yet. The whole thing has been way overblown, like I said, I hadn't even heard of it until reading about it here, and I read a lot of other gaming chans/forums, which is odd. I had to actually go try and recreate the problem, I hadn't seen any issues with my 970s, either in sli or just running a single card. I waited until day 15 of my RMA (the last day) to even replace them, as it seemed like a bit of a PITA to even bother with. The only reason I went ahead was that all the complaining about it has driven the resale speed and price down. That and due to the exchange rate and cost of the cards going way up since I bought them, and nVidia covering the replacement, not original price, I said wth.
The lawsuit that's been launched against nVidia is a bit overboard as well. If they are guilty, where are the lawsuits vs piles of games that have been sold as pre-orders that don't live up to their own statements when released, right? On the other hand maybe some punishment will keep companies more accurate in describing their products pre release. I'm certainly not switching back to AMD over it, not until they make something that's either cheaper and equal or better at the same cost.
Most gamers I know in the games I play don't even have or need a 1440p or 4k monitor anyway, which is where the problems start with 970 usually. Having bought one of each from the same place I bought my video cards, they took my 970 cards back no questions asked, but still, even with these monitors, the 2 best gaming Gsync out there (for now) IMO, I still never noticed any performance drops that made me go searching google for this issue. Like I said, I only heard it here first, and I think single 970 users in those few games that caused issues saw them more easily, as those "bigger" games have decent SLI profiles, and probably that caused some kind of difference in the fps on screen to be not as noticeably bad.
I still wouldn't hesitate to tell anyone the 970 was and is a good card for the $, especially if gaming in 1080p, and if there is no plan on reselling it in a year when the next big thing comes along.
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Nvidia may actually win the lawsuit if they claim the 970 only uses 3.5Gb. It in fact has 4Gb of ram, the last memory block only shares the cache and controller with the last block of the 3.5Gb. That makes accessing it much slower but still faster than if it was system ram.
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I bought an EVGA 980 SC. I wanted a card that could push 1440P with all the sliders maxed for AH3. I hope it does that :pray
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Ditto Ammo. I have 2 980s, but because of nVidia not creating a decent SLI profile for HTC, having a 2nd 980 currently isn't going to mean much I would bet, so I'm with you, and hoping, and confident, that the new game will be a great leap ahead, yet still be able to be maxed out with current tech, of course, not counting the environmental reflection slider, that even the current game can pwn the best system with on max when in busy areas.
I've always actually liked that about AH, that it has through the means of its creators the potential to pretty much beat on a very fast enthusiast gaming rig and monitor when absolutely maxed with the reflection slider maxed. Try it with your 980 Ammo, put reflections on max and fly into 20 planes and 30 tanks over tank town. I bet you get the same result I do. And I like it.
Can't wait to punish my new x99 system I'm currently putting together when it comes out (I got a slightly used 5960x CPU for 450$ Canadian, which is 360$USD now due to the stupid exchange rate, a complete steal, so why not).
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You will be fine ammo. I have dual SLI 980s running three monitors turned to portrait mode at 3420x1920 and the view is fine. I do not foresee any issues with AHIII, either.
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Hey fellas. Got the new card in today and have a question.
Since the new card uses the same driver as the old 770, I should be able to simply power down and install the new card, right? I have the latest WQHD driver and GeForce experience. Let me know please.
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I would recommend you uninstall the driver before swapping cards.
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It's always best to uninstall existing drivers when changing a card. During the installation the brand, model and even some unique identification code gets written to the Registry. So it's quite important to have that information correct in order the card to work at its maximum potential. Generic drivers are only for showing an image on the screen to enable installing the dedicated drivers.
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It's always best to uninstall existing drivers when changing a card. During the installation the brand, model and even some unique identification code gets written to the Registry. So it's quite important to have that information correct in order the card to work at its maximum potential. Generic drivers are only for showing an image on the screen to enable installing the dedicated drivers.
On the other hand there's a thing called 'plug and play' which will reconfigure your hardware on install.
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On the other hand there's a thing called 'plug and play' which will reconfigure your hardware on install.
Also known as "plug and pray", but apparently only by apple/linux fanbois? :bolt:
Seriously speaking, a clean uninstall/reinstall takes about five minutes while trying to figure out what can possibly have gone wrong with the automatic reconfiguration may take five weeks, even months.
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Ammo, because drivers have caused so many problems with different people and their systems the best solution is to completely clean the related drivers from your system every time. Then you should also really consider in depth if any driver update is actually going to offer you a benefit before installing anything new. Additionally, I recommend that you wait for other people to test new drivers for a week before you adopt a new driver, so you don't fall victim to a poor driver (which can be costly).
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I installed the new card without cleaning the old driver and reinstalling and as some predicted, the new card is not running at its potential. At first my thought was "awesome, that was incredible easy". But then I started AH. If FPS is any indicator, the 980 isn't performing as well as the 770.
Had a date with the wife so had to leave it for tomorrow to fix. I'll uninstall the drivers and install the software that came with the card.
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Driver sweep it Ammo, then reinstall the latest nVidia drivers before trying the old ones (you can always uninstall and re-sweep, then try some older drivers that are popular, which those CD based ones won't be). Also check your settings in nVidia control panel, make sure all the power mode settings are on performance, and other stuff like that.
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Driver sweep it Ammo, then reinstall the latest nVidia drivers before trying the old ones (you can always uninstall and re-sweep, then try some older drivers that are popular, which those CD based ones won't be). Also check your settings in nVidia control panel, make sure all the power mode settings are on performance, and other stuff like that.
Thanks Gman - you da man.
I did driver sweep it but I installed the software from the disc that came with the card. Then installed Geforce Experience and updated using it.
The card is working well. I maxed out the sliders in AH for best eye candy and I'm getting good results. Tried to find the "most bestest" action to test the card last night on the deck with shat loads of GVs, CV, AAA, and planes. While my FPS would drop to low 50s, I never had a stutter.
I do have the card over clocked a little though. I increased the Mem and GPU clock by 240 MHz.
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NVidia 980 is a sweet card. Price/performance is still with the NVidia 970 though, even with the controversy over the memory size. Yea its "missing" some ram but it is also priced down where it ought to be considering its performance. It handily beats the previous generation card at that price point, and for people not running huge monitors or multi-monitor setups, it will give results almost as good as the 980 at 2/3 the cost.
I priced out my system refresh wishlist recently, and after reading and re-reading dozens of reviews and benchmark comparisons I just couldn't get past the bang for the buck with the 970. So my wishlist has the 970 and the top of the line i7 cpu instead of i5 cpu, since I play around with virtualization so the extra $100 on the i7 cpu gets me more than the extra $200 for the 980 would get me.
Of course, its still a wishlist :( I just had major back surgery and might be out of a job within a year, so spending money to replace working computer hardware is not a good idea for now. My socket 775 quad core Q9550 will have to do for a while longer. But my point is still that I think the 970 is a better bang for the buck price point unless you're pushing enough pixels that you really do need the 980.
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I agree Eagl, I bought 2 970s and was very happy with their performance, and still think it's the best bang for the buck out there. The only reason I took advantage of the nVidia buy back/replacement was future resale value may, and it's just may, be affected, and I replace GPUs every year at a minimum, so the whole "scandal" will still be on buyers minds, and may make selling them a bit harder. Possibly. Also, the exchange rate and cost of the cards up here went way up, so I made a fair bit of $ in the exchange as my retailer credited me replacement with 980s best on current price, not the lower one I paid before which was over 15%.
The 970 really kicks in Aces High, I don't see one bit of difference tbh between a single 970 and single 980. Only in 4k have a seen anything to even really take note of in terms of advantage. The new Titan should be interesting.