GTX 970 v.s. 980 v.s. SLI 970

Getting a gaming PC for my son had a few questions





FIrstly this is what I will have



-Intel® Core™ i7-5820K Processor (6-cores, 15MB Cache, Overclocked up to 3.8 GHz w/ Turbo Boost)



-8GB Dual Channel DDR4 at 2133MHz



-2 TB 7200 HDD





On the fence on Windows 7 or 8. More comfortably with 7 but 8 is cheaper....







Here is what I want



NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 970 with 4GB GDDR5





If I get the NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 980 with 4GB GDDR5 it is $250 extra





If I get the Dual NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 970 graphics with 8GB total (2x 4GB) GDDR5 - NVIDIA SLI iEnabled it is $350 extra







Thoughts?

 

1) You are asking this in the legacy Alienware laptop forum, you will get better answers in another forum.
2) Why so much white space?
3) Are you building or buying? Some my questions assume building.
4) Do you work for a retail chain that sells PC's (Walmart, BestBuy, Staples, etc.)? If so you can get some extreme discounts on i7 CPU's through Intel Retail Edge. You may have just missed the winter deal though.
5) Either go with a single 970, single 980, or two 980's. I am from the school of though that it's always better to get a more expensive single GPU card then two weaker ones in SLI. SLI usually leads to tearing, higher TDP, higher temps in the case, incompatibility with older titles, etc. I could only recommend it when you have already maxed out your single card options and still want more.
6) an SSD w/ the HDD will help load times for game/OS.
7) What mobo? And don't cheap out on a no name brand, it will only lead to problems.
8) Same questions but for PSU as (7).
9) Are you doing the overclock? Do you have experience stability testing an OC?
10) With both 7 & 8 you will get a free upgrade to 10 when it comes out. Personal preference for now.
11) While 8GB should be fine I have seen some games come out with this as the recommended already. Doubt they are using the 8GB but if you afford more it won't hurt. I always spend a little more for a lower latency as well.

 

I would get GTX970 SLI.. Well when SLI works, you'll get double 970 performance which will beat 980.. Even when SLI isn't that good, you'll still be quite well off...

 

Get dual 980GTX SLI. Do what I did(see sig).

 

Wrong forum as mentioned, but roll with the 980, I used 7 for a long time and went to 8.1, actually do not mind it too much.

 

in theory yes, however SLI on 970s are unstable right now at stock voltage and very unstable with even minor over clocking due to massive bug. I know, its what I roll and im about the put the 970s cards on ebay if I cannot get a refund. Sadly even setting manual voltages boost dosn't always work either and once you get a driver crash, a restart is needed to manually set the voltage again. Very annoying.
BTW each card is 100% stable with boost clock of 1400mhz and in SLI, so I know I have 2 good cards. The voltage dip is 0.1-0.12volts, this is more than you can boost in the software, so perfect stability is impossible.

Gone back to my 660ti SLI for now, while I consider which single 980 card to go far.

 

Get GM200 in March/April

 

Install Windows 8.1 and use 'Startisback' to get it to function like Windows 7.

 

I think the safe bet is to go with the best single GPU you can afford at time if you are inexperienced with SLI. However I did not have any problem with my 980M SLI so far.

 

Most important question that nobody asked:
What is the resolution of the monitor that you will be using on this computer?

If you're using 1080p (1920x1080), both the GTX 970 and GTX 980 are overkill for what you need. Get the GTX 970, simply because it's cheaper.

If you're using 1440p (2560x1440), a single GTX 970 will be more than enough for what you need.

If you're driving >1440p (3440x1440p or 3840x2160), then you're going to need at least a single GTX 980. If your pockets are deep and you need even more graphics power at 4K resolutions or higher, then you should start looking into SLI.

 

Eh...I feel like you could drive 1440p with a 970 and get by but...if you want 60 FPS @Max settings on most games at that res (especially stuff like Shadow of Mordor or modded Skyrim) you're gonna want dual 970s or a 980.

@OP Anyways, I recommend that you wait for AMDs offerings.

EDIT: Whoops, I think I just necroed a dead thread.

 

well....

I would like to point out that to properly drive 2560x1440 resolution, 2x 970 or 2 x980 are required, if you want to really max out every game settings. (at least if get >60hz monitor)

 

That isn't the point, any modern game that will fill up you're ram over 3.5gb will cause stuttering esp in sli.

"The GTX 970 is a 3.5gb card. It will perform horribly once 3.5gb of Vram is used and is a deal breaker to many high resolution enthusiasts.

However, if you don't run into the Vram cap (1080p, not a AAA fan), then the card is a very strong performer. Extremely well optimized games like Battlefield 4 will run like butter, but I don't see this card holding its value with texture modded games such as Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto, etc.

Overall, I think the 970 still makes sense for 1080p 144hz users and casual 1440p gamers. As for it being an enthusiast class GPU.. well, I guess it will depend on the game. Since you can't see what future games will bring, I wouldn't pick this card up if I were looking for longevity above 1080p. "

 

That's about a worthless upgrade. Either use W8 or W7 in their form trying to go back to W7 from W8 you should've stayed with W7 instead.

 

Where is did you get such information to make the claim here?

And how did you test this to know this part?

So did you test this already on those games or are you posting what someone else said?

This factors people budget what they can do now and later there will be more updated GPU of which by then they would sold their old GPU and bought new one so your longevity is short sightness here.

 

^Get out from under that rock. The GTX 970 VRAM issue has been beaten to death.

 

You would know.. you kill the horse around here.

 

Yeah, PETA's got me on speed dial

 

I feel like it's something to be considered, especially since OP is going to be doing resolutions above 1080p and is considering SLI. There's also the issue of 3.5 GB (+ a very slow 500 MB if you want to get technical) not being very future proof.

Windows 8 has been shown to offer performance increases in some games, as well as being a more more modern OS with more features then Windows 7. It's not a 'worthless upgrade'. Please do not spread misinformation. OP should definitely get Windows 8 and so should the vast majority of people if given the choice between the two.

 

Windows 8 is a worthless upgrade. Nothing misinformation about that. What are these features worth having? Who enjoys having 10-15% on their CPU gobbled up for no good reason.

 

The only problem I had with Windows 8.1 was the interface, everything else was fine for me and

When does Windows 8.1 use 10-15% CPU, during idle?

 

Odd.. my windows 8.1 sits around 4-8% when I'm running 4 monitors with multiple browsers open, windows explorer, and multiple IM clients. I honestly don't see why windows 8 gets all the hate it does, yes you have to install start is back, but after that it performs nearly identical to windows 7 in every way I use it, except its faster.

 

Not at idle. At the top end. If you do some physics benchmarks and compare them to each other it's very evident. 3dmark11 is a perfect example.

 

According to this test it doesn't look like 10%. Lets see some proof/tests/charts please.

http://us.hardware.info/reviews/3549/2/windows-8-vs-windows-7-cpu-performance-results

http://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-8-vs-windows-7-benchmarked/2/

 

970 only made sense if you bought it close to launch, so at least you got some utility out of it before this gimped 3.5GB sorry excuse of a GPU became obsolete within the year. No point getting the 970 now, unless you have very specific space/heat constraints.

 

Well from the first of your links it's pretty clear that W8 has a negative impact compared to W7 in CPU based tasks.
Your second link is measuring boot times which is hardly a measure of CPU performance.
I'll try and dig up mine or Mr Fox's comparisons when I have time. But honestly, if you haven't discovered it for yourself already I have to ask 'do you really care?'

 

Don't compare Win7 and 8 boot times. Win8 boots to desktop faster, but half the services aren't loaded, so Win8 "cheats" basically.

 

But there's only 1 item on the list that is 10% and let me be honest... I don't use AMD. I'll be honest, my CPU rarely goes over 70% usage. It never did with Windows 7 or Windows 8, it your allegations probably wouldn't effect me anyways. But lets see some actual proof please.

 

I dug up some of my older 3d Mark 11 benchmarks. Have a look at the Physics score and you can do the maths. Both runs were at 4.5Ghz on the exact same system.

Windows 7 - Physics 11,548



Windows 8 - Physics 10,083



Ignore the overall score and the GPU. Different GPU's were used. Physics is what we're looking at here.
Have a read through the m18 benchmark threads. It's littered with examples of W7 spanking W8 in CPU performance.

 

Synthetic benchmarks tend to favor Windows 7, but in real-world gaming, Windows 8 comes out on top (one of the games that Windows 7 performed better in the tests I linked was Battlefield 4, but most other sources say that Windows 8 actually performs 3-6% better in that game as well).