GTX 760 to 970; worth the upgrade?

[DentureDynamite]

I know the GTX 970 isn't perfect (coil whine, 3.5GB issue), but must admit the lower prices for it are tempting me to upgrade from my GTX 760 (Superclocked).

 

I plan on sticking with my 1920 x 1080 monitor, and would just enjoy the improved overall gfx performance...

 

Am curious if this is a good idea?

[lydianduck]

I upgraded from a 680 to a 970 about a month ago, if im not mistaken, both the 760 and 680 are pretty similar in performance and the upgrade was definately worth it, I was able to pump the graphics a lot more while keeping the 60fps target.

 

Of course, this game also benefits from a good cpu, but im glad I upgraded. Also, the whole 3.5gb thing has been totally blown out of proportion imo, i have not had a single problem with it when approaching the memory limit (for example, modded skyrim), smooth as butter!

Edited March 2, 2016 by lydianduck

[stretchx9]

I would wait until the Pascal cards are released Q3 or maybe later. Going from a 760 to a 970 means you can do 1440p Dsr no problem, but unless you own a 120hz+ monitor the 970 will not make that much of a difference. But if your monitor is a [email protected] I suggest a 960 4gig.

[_MK_]

The VRAM matter isn't as you think it is,people maxing their cards will eventually lead to stutter,most of them suffer from full RAM usage thanks to the settings that they've used to test the card then end up thinking that it's the cards fault(not to mention the full VRAM usage itself will cause stutter),i've gone to 3.9GB with Watch Dogs 3.8GB with GTAV absolutely no stutter,besides getting the card to go over 3.5GB(3.8-3.9) in most cases means you're using extreme settings that come with very low FPS that you won't even be able to play at.

As for the coil whine,not all cards are effected by it,think it was just a few cards with the first wave AFAIK,doesn't exist on my G1.

Edited March 2, 2016 by _MK_

[southparkmayor]

I would wait until the Pascal cards are released Q3 or maybe later. Going from a 760 to a 970 means you can do 1440p Dsr no problem, but unless you own a 120hz+ monitor the 970 will not make that much of a difference. But if your monitor is a [email protected] I suggest a 960 4gig.

Or also wait for AMD polaris/400 series because Nvidia arent the only GPU makers and god forbid that be the case.

[Nick930930]

I went from a 780 to a 980ti.

 

Definitely felt it was worth it.

 

A jump from a 6 series to a 9 series seems like an even better upgrade. Go for it.

[Crystal3lf]

I went directly from a 760 to a 970. Coil whine has never been an issue with all of my ASUS cards in the past, and the 3.5GB of RAM issue isn't and issue; that's what makes the difference between a 970 and a 980.

 

I run max settings @1080p, prior to Valentines update had 70-90FPS. Your CPU is similar to mine so I would expect similar results. I have run 1440p in the past and it can still handle max settings fine(excluding some advanced graphic settings of course). A 760 to 970 isn't a step up, it's a very large jump.

 

I don't know about EVGA, but my friend has EVGA SLI-980's and they came with no backplates, which is a huge no-no for me. Newer cards are so large now that they tend to sag and distort. Even my ASUS 760 had backplates. You can buy EVGA backplates for them, as my friend did, and I'm not sure if they include them now, but it's your choice. I would go with ASUS, Gigabyte or MSI which are actually doing really well now.

[DentureDynamite]

Wow; great feedback--many thanks to all! Am heavily leaning toward the 970, but will do a bit more research first.

[driftingcloud]

i went from a 760 to a 970 and have not been let down yet, It is a fantastic card. I got a strix and have had little to no coil wine, In fact i had more on the 760

[stobe187]

i went from a 760 to a 970 and have not been let down yet, It is a fantastic card. I got a strix and have had little to no coil wine, In fact i had more on the 760

 

I prefer coil vodka.

[DentureDynamite]

Thanks to everyone who replied--order placed for the GTX 970 Superclocked (http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=04G-P4-2974-KR).

 

I went with EVGA since they typically have better support than other manufacturers (and I personally have had good results with their cards). Also, part of the decision was the 9.5" card length (it just fits in my Dell 8700--my 760 is the same length).

 

BTW, any recommendations on optimimal GTAO settings? (Haven't done any research yet, but thoughts/links are welcome).

Edited March 2, 2016 by DentureDynamite

[Jax765]

I went from the 770 to the 970. The upgrade in VRAM alone is worth it (even with the whole 3.5GB debacle). More and more games are requiring larger amounts of VRAM, so 2GB isn't going to cut it anymore unless you want to use low textures in the latest games.

 

As for settings, here are mine (using a 970 G1 and i7 4770K CPU overclocked to 4GHz). Without mods, get a mostly stable 60fps. With mods like VisualV and GTA Realism (the latter of which adds larger amounts of traffic and peds), I still get mostly 60fps, but with more drops when there's tons of sh*t going on. Compared to when I was using the 770, I can now enable DOF without frequent drops, as well as crank up normal settings to very high. Advanced settings are still hugely intensive, but you can afford to increase stuff like shadow distance without major drops. This is all at 1080p. The game actually runs fairly respectably at 1440p, but obviously with larger, more frequent performance drops.

 

Also, my VRAM usage is higher than normal because I've increased ped/vehicle variety via the settings config file beyond their normal limits.

 

Edited March 2, 2016 by Jax765

[srps-ryan2010]

If you do get a GTX 970 I'd avoid ASUS i bought a GTX 970 a few weeks ago it doesn't work properly i can't access my BIOS because it doesn't show any picture until my OS has loaded and i keep getting white squares all over the screen, i tried to get support from ASUS but they are useless!

[SilverRST]

I upgraded from a 680 to a 970 about a month ago, if im not mistaken, both the 760 and 680 are pretty similar in performance and the upgrade was definately worth it, I was able to pump the graphics a lot more while keeping the 60fps target.

 

Of course, this game also benefits from a good cpu, but im glad I upgraded. Also, the whole 3.5gb thing has been totally blown out of proportion imo, i have not had a single problem with it when approaching the memory limit (for example, modded skyrim), smooth as butter!

Actually the 760 is similar to 670 and 770 to 680 on steroids.

 

As to the OP, in my opinion it's not worth. Not now because the new generations GPU's will be released this year.

[DentureDynamite]

@ Jax765: Many thanks! Will put those screenshots to good use this weekend when I install it.

 

@ srps-ryan2010: I have a couple of ASUS products that I've been very happy with, but support is why I went with EVGA. I hope you can get your money back somehow (maybe from your credit card company?)

 

@ SilverRST: I hear ya, and agree; but I admittedly gave in to the 970 (patience is not my best quality). It should last a couple of years though.

[Nick930930]

Your card should be plenty powerful. My recommendation is to set everything maxed out. Set anti-aliasing to 4x MSAA. Set Shadows to PCSS if you like, though soft shadows arguably looks better in some cases.

 

And most importantly.. lower the extended draw distance. It will destroy your FPS. Those "Advanced Settings" are meant for titan users. I have a 980ti and extended draw distance + high resolution shadows kill FPS.

 

OH! And grass quality. Set that to high. Very High/Ultra grass quality will absolutely destroy your FPS.

 

 

 

 

Note: FPS will still get pretty low when in the woods by paleto. All the moving leaves and shadows can kill your performance. I bet if I had a stronger processor (i7) it might help, but i have an i5 3750k so it's not really worth the upgrade just to get 10 more fps

Edited March 3, 2016 by Nick930930

[Ewok626]

I went from a r9 270x which is similar to the gtx 760 to a msi gtx 970 and I am very happy with it.

[Jax765]

Your card should be plenty powerful. My recommendation is to set everything maxed out. Set anti-aliasing to 4x MSAA. Set Shadows to PCSS if you like, though soft shadows arguably looks better in some cases.

 

And most importantly.. lower the extended draw distance. It will destroy your FPS. Those "Advanced Settings" are meant for titan users. I have a 980ti and extended draw distance + high resolution shadows kill FPS.

 

OH! And grass quality. Set that to high. Very High/Ultra grass quality will absolutely destroy your FPS.

 

 

 

 

Note: FPS will still get pretty low when in the woods by paleto. All the moving leaves and shadows can kill your performance. I bet if I had a stronger processor (i7) it might help, but i have an i5 3750k so it's not really worth the upgrade just to get 10 more fps

MSAA is most of a performance killer than very high grass. Downsampling from 1440p will do a good job with cleaning up jaggies, while also having less of a performance impact, and also avoiding the transparent grass bug.

 

No MSAA

 

MSAA

 

You can crank up extended draw distance by a few notches and still maintain a stable 60fps. Might not seem like much, but even 3 notches help quite a bit with LOD pop-in.

 

As for shadows, PCSS shadows do a much better job of making the shadow box less obvious, but they also have more of a performance hit in certain areas. During a police chase in the desert, I noticed that switching to softest shadows resulted in a stable 60fps instead of the frequent dips to 50-55fps that I was getting (though it was in a more demanding area of the game).

Edited March 3, 2016 by Jax765

[DentureDynamite]

If I may, one more question--is there a particular version of the GeForce drivers that seems to work best with the 970?

 

(I've been using 353.62 on my 760; just figured this would be the best place to get some perspective for the 970...)

[Jax765]

Not too sure about that. I always use the latest drivers. Only issue I'm having right now is this thing where the game will, on occasion, temporarily freeze, then unfreeze, followed up by low GPU usage and framerate for a few seconds, then back to normal. Unsure if it's due to drivers or the game itself. I'm banking on it being a game problem, as it only started happening after the Executives patch, and persisted across GPUs (happened on my 770, still happens on my 970). Plus it never happens in any other games.

Edited March 4, 2016 by Jax765

[DentureDynamite]

OK, thanks--will start with the latest and go from there...!

[ProdigyHD]

get an r9 380/x