Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: captain1ma on February 01, 2015, 05:56:19 PM
-
anyone have anything good or bad to say about this card, im thinking about getting one to replace my radeon 4890.
comments? opinions?
-
It's three times the power of your previous card. You might want to sort out any system issues before you move forward though, as they will likely be magnified as you demand more power and heat out of your system.
-
what do you mean, I think its a card issue, not a system issue
-
Just make sure you have enough power supply to run the card and enough cooling fans in the PC. Even then, shadows off is a big boost to even these high end cards.
-
The 4890 is a dual GPU card. The PS should be fine.
Unless you've already updated DX9 I suggest you try that since it can only help, regardless of which video card you end up with.
-
Hey Jaeger, when I made my decision a couple of years ago, I believe I used Tom's hardware site to compare video cards.
It showed specs, pros/cons of one vs another, up to 5 comparisons at same time iirc. I ultimately chose a different brand (MSI) because of the minute details provided. I went with a 660 TI, but as I could see not all 660 TI's were created equal.
Hope that helps and see you in FSO (hopefully this week).
:salute
And as mentioned, I needed a PSU upgrade, went with a Corsair 800w. Absolutely no complaints with my choices so far after 2yrs. Purchased from Frys.com iirc, because NewEgg has restocking fee.
-
The 960 has received some disappointed reviews, especially performance above full-hd resolutions. It gets beaten in benchmarks by old cards like GTX670, 770 etc.
For 220 bucks it can provide playable speed on full-hd screens though. But so can many other cards.
-
A thing to think about is that Radeon 4890 was the flagship of the 4800 series whereas 960 is the weakest of the 900 series. So although it's new and powerful it lacks some of the features and much of the power of the best model of the series.
-
Jag,
I know you're made of money so just pony up for a 970,if I had your cash I'd get a 980 but I think the 970 might be a better bang for the buck!
Not that it matters with all the cash you're sitting on...... :noid
You should be good with your PSU,these new cards actually use less power than the previous series cards!
:salute
-
^ also, Morfiend was a great help and resource in helping me to choose my card.
:salute
-
The 970 is definitely the way to go atm. Sweet spot of performance vs price.
-
The 4890 is a dual GPU card. The PS should be fine.
PSUs get old. In some cases badly, so . . .
The reduction in single die size from 282mm2 to 214mm2 should result in less heat (especially since 2 GPUs vs a single), but just like the PSU will age so will the cooling solutions.
-
guys, thank you all for your advice. for the record I have the following:
I7-266
18gigs of ram
Radeon 4890--which is why I'm asking
3.5TB of space-- 1TB RAID, 1TB backup, 500Gig Backup
Full tower with 2X250mm side fans
850W power supply
morfiend is right, I have the money, its just a question of do I want to spend it! LOL
-
An old friend of mine told me way back when, when it comes to building your computer build it as big as you can afford. The idea was that as technology moves along what you build today is out dated tomorrow. By building a big as you can afford you don't put yourself in the hole, but you get the biggest computer you can and it will last the longest technology wise.
If you can afford to go big, then Id go big, or in 6 months you'll wish you had :devil
-
GTX980 here, and very happy with it.
-
A friend has a 4890 which got some extended life by extra case fans blowing cool air directly to its cooler. As Chalenge said, their cooling solutions age.
My humble suggestion looking at your specs would be either the GTX 980 or the Radeon R9 290x. Also, if your PSU is more than a couple of years old, replacing it with something known good like this would be advisable: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151087 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151087)
-
The 970 is definitely the way to go atm. Sweet spot of performance vs price.
You may have missed the fake specs nvidia had on their website for the 970, the upper 512 MiB gfx memory are extremely slow and responsible for lags/stuttering in very high resolutions.
-
You may have missed the fake specs nvidia had on their website for the 970, the upper 512 MiB gfx memory are extremely slow and responsible for lags/stuttering in very high resolutions.
You may have missed the real world benchmarks which show that that last .5Gb of the 4Gb is not a performance bottleneck in a real world scenario. It hits only a certain benchmark which saturates 100% of VRAM on every run and that's not what games do.
The 970 is the price/performance leader despite the confusion with the specs.
-
If I pay that much for a gfx card I wouldn't want to run into such a scenario, regardless how slim the chances are. Nobody knows how long nvidia will apply fixes to their driver to ensure the 970 stays at the lower 3.5 GiB. BTW it's sufficient to run into 3+GiB VRAM use to vastly increase chance of stuttering.
-
If I pay that much for a gfx card I wouldn't want to run into such a scenario, regardless how slim the chances are. Nobody knows how long nvidia will apply fixes to their driver to ensure the 970 stays at the lower 3.5 GiB. BTW it's sufficient to run into 3+GiB VRAM use to vastly increase chance of stuttering.
Then go ahead and buy the 980 or Titan what stops you? For most users who do not run 4K or triple monitor systems a 970 gives much better bang for buck.
-
You may have missed the real world benchmarks which show that that last .5Gb of the 4Gb is not a performance bottleneck in a real world scenario. It hits only a certain benchmark which saturates 100% of VRAM on every run and that's not what games do.
The 970 is the price/performance leader despite the confusion with the specs.
Actually, it does hit in the real world, if you are running resolutions higher than 1920x1080 with any anti-aliasing and large (4Kx4K) textures (most games released in the last couple of years have those). When it hits in a game, you know about it as performance tanks.
It makes sense as to how NVidia got the price so low to start with. Cheaper low speed ram, fewer than advertised ROP's, less level 2 cache than advertised as well. At least they were honest about the memory path size (256).
NVidia did not do themselves any favors by being deceitful about the specifications. When a company does that, it says they are not confident in the product.
One thing for certain, it gave AMD/ATI a windfall in sales. Dumb move. I was looking at getting a 970 myself, until this broke. I run higher resolutions, with anti-aliasing a lot. I am not going to gamble I will hit that performance wall. I'll just wait a bit because the AMD offering runs way too hot (i.e. consumes too much power) for my tastes.
-
Actually, it does hit in the real world, if you are running resolutions higher than 1920x1080 with any anti-aliasing and large (4Kx4K) textures (most games released in the last couple of years have those). When it hits in a game, you know about it as performance tanks.
It makes sense as to how NVidia got the price so low to start with. Cheaper low speed ram, fewer than advertised ROP's, less level 2 cache than advertised as well. At least they were honest about the memory path size (256).
That would be weird since the 970 has excelled in game based benchmarks even at 1400p resolutions.
(http://tpucdn.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_970_Gaming/images/farcry3_3840_2160.gif) (http://tpucdn.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_970_Gaming/images/farcry3_2560_1440.gif)
As you can see the much more expensive Titan plays the second fiddle.
-
One only needs to peruse various game boards and you will find a lot of complaints. Early on, players thought it was their game that was the problem.
Benchmarks really do not mean much as AMD and NVidia do insure their products will run benchmarks well.
-
One last thing. NVidia only released the truth after gamers were complaining about performance issues, which caused others to take notice and explore why there were complaints.
NVidia claims they are working on a driver which will work to move off functions into that 512MB space and make the effort to not use that space for real time operations. How successful that will be is yet to be seen.
NVidia's failure to disclose truthful specifications aside, the card is a good card for a number of things. It is a shame NVidia felt they had to lie about the specifications.
-
One only needs to peruse various game boards and you will find a lot of complaints. Early on, players thought it was their game that was the problem.
Benchmarks really do not mean much as AMD and NVidia do insure their products will run benchmarks well.
So what you're saying is that Nvidia is cheating in all the 10 game titles typically used for benchmarks. The benchmarks are nothing but scripted runs of the game - they must be pretty clever to cheat in each one of them while managing to collapse in performance while playing a game using that same engine.
Just out of curiosity, what would be Nvidias motive in placing the cheap 970 ahead of the super expensive Titan?
-
So what you're saying is that Nvidia is cheating in all the 10 game titles typically used for benchmarks. The benchmarks are nothing but scripted runs of the game - they must be pretty clever to cheat in each one of them while managing to collapse in performance while playing a game using that same engine.
Just out of curiosity, what would be Nvidias motive in placing the cheap 970 ahead of the super expensive Titan?
I am not saying it. It has been well known for many years that NVidia and AMD optimize for benchmarks.
You would need to ask NVidia why they lied about the specifications. You do realize NVidia has admitted they lied about it?
-
I am not saying it. It has been well known for many years that NVidia and AMD optimize for benchmarks.
Static benchmarks are one thing, game engine based benchmarks are a harder thing to optimize for without accidentally improving the actual game performance lol.
-
Static benchmarks are one thing, game engine based benchmarks are a harder thing to optimize for without accidentally improving the actual game performance lol.
Any static iteration of any 3D graphics exercise is easy to optimize for, and it may or may not improve game performance, all depending on the nature of the optimization and how it is triggered.
If you knew how these things actually worked, you would have understood that. Maybe NVidia chose 3.5GB as the threshold as they knew that would be just enough for any given benchmark available today. Speculation on my part, but it would not surprise me.
-
So what you're saying is that Nvidia is cheating in all the 10 game titles typically used for benchmarks. The benchmarks are nothing but scripted runs of the game - they must be pretty clever to cheat in each one of them while managing to collapse in performance while playing a game using that same engine.
I have a 970 myself, but Nvidia's been busted doing this before, as has ATi/AMD.
Read the comment thread for a brief walkthrough of various tech manufacturers that have done this.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/10/12/2341240/intel-caught-cheating-in-3dmark-benchmark
-
Any static iteration of any 3D graphics exercise is easy to optimize for, and it may or may not improve game performance, all depending on the nature of the optimization and how it is triggered.
If you knew how these things actually worked, you would have understood that. Maybe NVidia chose 3.5GB as the threshold as they knew that would be just enough for any given benchmark available today. Speculation on my part, but it would not surprise me.
I find all this conspiracy mongering a bit laughable. There's no logic in Nvidia intentionally crippling its products and then cheating in benchmarks. If they want to segment their products by throttling a cheaper model it defies logic that they then would try to cheat in benchmarks in order to prove it's really not any slower than the more expensive model they intentionally throttled to sell it cheaper.
Here's the whole memory issue explained and also why it's not a big deal in real life: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/NVIDIA-Discloses-Full-Memory-Structure-and-Limitations-GTX-970
NVIDIA has come clean; all that remains is the response from consumers to take hold. For those of you that read this and remain affronted by NVIDIA calling the GeForce GTX 970 a 4GB card without equivocation: I get it. But I also respectfully disagree. Should NVIDIA have been more upfront about the changes this GPU brought compared to the GTX 980? Absolutely and emphatically. But does this change the stance or position of the GTX 970 in the world of discrete PC graphics? I don’t think it does.
-
You would need to ask NVidia why they lied about the specifications. You do realize NVidia has admitted they lied about it?
Well, in their statement they don't really lie. It DOES have 4GB of VRAM and *unfortunately* they can market it as such. I've seen countless posts of "sue the company for false advertisement" etc but false advertisement didn't happen. If they wanted to be specific I suppose they could have advertised it as 3.5GB+512MB.
-
NVidia claims they are working on a driver which will work to move off functions into that 512MB space and make the effort to not use that space for real time operations. How successful that will be is yet to be seen.
NVidia's been pretty good about fixing problems with their products in the past. I have confidence that if it's a real issue they'll sort it out.
-
NVidia's been pretty good about fixing problems with their products in the past. I have confidence that if it's a real issue they'll sort it out.
Nvidia has used a similar solution with the 660ti in the past and it made no major headlines then.
-
Well, in their statement they don't really lie. It DOES have 4GB of VRAM and *unfortunately* they can market it as such. I've seen countless posts of "sue the company for false advertisement" etc but false advertisement didn't happen. If they wanted to be specific I suppose they could have advertised it as 3.5GB+512MB.
Actually, they lied about the number of ROPS (claimed 64, only has 56) as well as the size of of the level 2 cache (claimed 2MB, only has 1.7MB).
There's no logic in Nvidia intentionally crippling its products and then cheating in benchmarks.
Who said they intentionally cripple their products? On the 970, they simply lied about the specifications. Cheating in benchmarks is done by both ATI/AMD and NVidia. It's all about getting a leg up on the competition.
Here are the facts, so far.
1) Nvidia released the 970, and it was a good time for them as everything looked awesome. Reviewers rejoiced.
2) Performance complaints started pouring in. Reviewers started looking harder at it.
3) Suddenly, it was discovered the hardware did not match the specifications released for the product.
4) NVidia finally admitted they were less than honest about the specifications for the card.
There is no conspiracy here. The performance complaints were very real. Now we know why they happen. Avoid those situations and the card runs fine.
The manufacturer has admitted they did not disclose correct information about the hardware. The manufacturer has acknowledged the performance issues and has stated they will work to correct them.
-
Actually, they lied about the number of ROPS (claimed 64, only has 56) as well as the size of of the level 2 cache (claimed 2MB, only has 1.7MB).
Who said they intentionally cripple their products? On the 970, they simply lied about the specifications. Cheating in benchmarks is done by both ATI/AMD and NVidia. It's all about getting a leg up on the competition.
Here are the facts, so far.
1) Nvidia released the 970, and it was a good time for them as everything looked awesome. Reviewers rejoiced.
2) Performance complaints started pouring in. Reviewers started looking harder at it.
3) Suddenly, it was discovered the hardware did not match the specifications released for the product.
4) NVidia finally admitted they were less than honest about the specifications for the card.
There is no conspiracy here. The performance complaints were very real. Now we know why they happen. Avoid those situations and the card runs fine.
The manufacturer has admitted they did not disclose correct information about the hardware. The manufacturer has acknowledged the performance issues and has stated they will work to correct them.
I said so. The 970 is based on the same exact GM204 architecture like the 980. In order to make it slower and sell it cheaper, a couple of ROPs and 1 lane of L2 cache was cut. The L2 cache cut is the whole reason why the last 512Mb is slower because it shares cache and memory controller with the previous-to-last 512Mb memory block.
They very intentionally crippled 970 fully knowing what they did so they could make it artificially handicapped versus the 980. It was their full intention to make the cheap product slower and more limited in functionality. This doesn't change the fact that the heavy cut in MSRP makes the 970 awesome value for money. If it didn't have the feature cuts it would be just a 980 with a slower clock.
-
No matter the price, if it does not fit the application, it is useless. Within its now known limitations, it is a nice card.
-
I'm going to get a new system. Do I want this card?
-
I going to get a new system. Do I want this card?
If you plan to run super high resolutions you'll want the 980 or three probably. For regular full hd 970 works great.
-
I'll put some recorded video up from various games using Fraps and other means for recording in game FPS. I'm one of those using the"high resolution" in games, I have the best 1440p gaming monitor you can buy, an ROG Swift, and I have a 4k Gsync Acer monitor on my other system. I've ran games at 4k, but mostly use 1440p with both.
I have 2 eVga 970, the best/fastest 970s eVga released running SLI, and a 980 eVGA as well in the other system.
I haven't ran into a lot of this tanking performance, running games like Alien Iso, Star Citizen, Rome Total war2, CoD, CS Go, pretty much every "new" game around, and the performance with the SLI 970 system has never dumped, and in fact usually has higher FPS than my 980 system in games with decent/newer SLI profiles.
I'm interested to see if I can force my 970s into a situation where the FPS radically drops - anyone know what games and situations these complaints are about? Odds are I have the game, but googling hasn't given me a very accurate picture so far. I have a lot of different games, a wide variety of simulations, FPS, RPG, and so on, and haven't noticed any real world massive drops in any of them, and that's running with all detail settings at full blast, Gsync enabled in both systems on both monitors, one IPS 4K and one 1440p and 144hz and not IPS. Obviously there are some games where limits have been pushed to over 3.5 vram and the problem noticed, I just haven't seen it yet, and want to.
edit - It looks like Far Cry 4 and Assassins Creed are two guilty culprits, but I don't have either, and with everything maxed in Far Cry 3 I've not seen my fps tank on the 970sli system. I do have Skyrim somewhere, and apparently there are issues with it and running up/over 3.5, so I'll give it a whirl and record it and see what happens, but I don't recall it doing anything strange and having massive fps drops when I tested it with the 970s when I first installed them.
I would agree about the 980 and 4k as Ripley said, it doesn't take a lot to squash my 980 with a few of the newer games in 4k, I wouldn't have believed that 980x2 or even 3 would be necessary, but if you truly want to game at 4k and have decent playable frame rates all the time, some of these newer games pretty much require it. Sure looks good at 4k though.
This has been one of the better articles I've found so far - I really haven't found any limitations comparing my 970s vs my single 980, we play games side by side, one PC on our fiber the other on our cable connection, and it's pretty much been performance as expected with a good 25 different games. Granted, we don't have Far Cry 4 or AC U, but like this article showed, maxing out on both a 1440p and 4k Gsync'd monitors, and switching them back and forth between systems a few times - nothing has really concerned me, at full detail with anti aliasing and anti/filtering maxed out in most games.
http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/NVIDIA-Responds-GTX-970-35GB-Memory-Issue
I haven't found any situations in any game I've tried or tested so far that I've had to avoid in order to not have my 970 equipped system plummet in performance. Max resolution with the 1440p monitor and max detail settings haven't crippled performance once for me yet, or even shown anything but much greater performance over previous 780 and 680 cards. 4k is another story, but our 980 gets smoked down into the 30s or even lower at my detail settings @4k with some games, so the same thing happening with the 970sli setup isn't surprising@4k.
-
I have no issues with 2x980s in SLI at 3240x1920. It certainly runs better than 5760x1080 (or 1200).
I play Insurgency, ARMA3, DCS World, COH2, ETS2, ESS, FS15, MP3, MLB 2K10, SEV3, TS15, Watchdogs, WiC, and Wolfenstein: TNO without problems.
We have one guy in our squad that has the stutter/lag/auger problem and he uses the 970, but I honestly do not think this is the cards' architecture in his case.
-
Well, I was able to replicate it in DOTA and a few other games with known issues. It REALLY bogged down the FPS, out of knowhere it would plummet into the 20s once it hit the limit.
I wasn't too concerned about it, until I considered that who knows what the future year will bring - I usually upgrade every year, the vid cards at least, and everything else every 2 or 3 depending on what the tech and $ is doing so far as bang for the buck. Most of the stuff I'm playing isn't affected, but some future stuff may be, as I got the SLI 970 set up to run the 4k monitor mostly, not the 1440p 144hz one.
So I called up Nvidia and my retailer I've used since the 90s, Mem Express which is a small chain of about 15 stores in Western Canada. They both were very helpful, and issued me and RMA an hour ago to return both 970 cards for full refund including shipping. I only wonder if nVidia is doing so with all their retailers? I certainly have no complaints, so it looks like I'll be back to running 2 single 980s, or perhaps I'll get 2 980s to replace the 970s. I'm just happy that they are stepping up to fix the issues.
-
If your looking for bang for the buck the R290X is also a decent choice right now as AMD has cut the prices on them due to the 970's intro.... saw a couple for $300 bucks on newegg. They run a bit warmer and use more power than the 970 but are right in the ball park performance wise.
-
Im looking at the R9 290. even with the extra heat and power, my box is well ventilated and my 850w power supply is more then enough to handle it.
when I look at those benchmarks, I cant see an extra $250 for 2 or 3 more FPS.