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[gunbo13]

Is there any hope for my EVGA 970 ACX 1.0? Everyone keeps talking smack and Im wondering if i should send it back when it comes tomorrow for a blower or a different brand.

I bought straight from EVGA

Exaggerations. Usually targets the cheaper card and people often analyze heavily when comparing against purchases with $30+ premiums.

TIM, fan, etc... issues are anywhere and everywhere. Any brand can disappoint. My opinion is to pocket the premium and check out the card. If it's bad, deal with it, just like every brand out there. You could also get a cherry card from say EVGA, which far outweighs risk of being part of the vocal small RMA %.

Basically, brands of videocards are pretty much like choosing between Cheerios & generic. Slightly different flavor, you may have a long lasting preference, but it's not that different. And coming down to the silicon itself? That's luck.

 

[Sutton Dagger]

Well I was always looking at the 780Ti as it seemed the best GPU on market, and the 970 has less grunt than it by the looks of benches. The 980 seems to be on par with the 780Ti for gaming, and I'm just wondering which one would be best.

The 980 seems to be slighlty less powerful (i think) than the Ti, but the power conusumption makes me think thats the way to go.

The 980 is like 10% more powerful than the 780ti at stock clocks. I'd say you would be able to push the 980 a bit further in terms of OCing which could give it around 15% more powerful overall.

In fact an OC'd 970 is essentially on par with a stock 780ti, which is kind of ridiculous given the price.

 

[besthijacker]

Got my gigabyte 970x2 last night!

They are so awesome, much improvement from my old 660ti.

 

[ashbash159]

Think I might buy a 970?

Which brands are recommended and which places to buy from are recommended? (In the UK.)

 

[wumster3000]

Is there any hope for my EVGA 970 ACX 1.0? Everyone keeps talking smack and Im wondering if i should send it back when it comes tomorrow for a blower or a different brand.

I bought straight from EVGA

I have two EVGA 970 SC cards and I have no sound problems whatsoever. There are others in this thread that don't have sound problems either. EVGA has stated that they intend to release a bios update for these cards to address the sound issues.

I would say get your card, install it without any modifications to your fan curve and voltage. See if the noise bothers you. If it does and I would recommend doing this anyway, download EVGA overclocking software and set the fan curve to quiet.

 

[leng jai]

I can't see how you can go wrong with the MSI version. Well priced, low noise and solid clock speeds.

 

[Trojan X]

Well I was always looking at the 780Ti as it seemed the best GPU on market, and the 970 has less grunt than it by the looks of benches. The 980 seems to be on par with the 780Ti for gaming, and I'm just wondering which one would be best.

The 980 seems to be slighlty less powerful (i think) than the Ti, but the power conusumption makes me think thats the way to go.

The 980 is like 10% more powerful than the 780ti at stock clocks. I'd say you would be able to push the 980 a bit further in terms of OCing which could give it around 15% more powerful overall.

In fact an OC'd 970 is essentially on par with a stock 780ti, which is kind of ridiculous given the price.

There you go. Your answer is to get two 970 for SLI or if you are sensitive about cash then get the 980 for OC. The extra $$ make it completely worth it when you are comparing that price to the Ti. Otherwise, it really is best to go for the 980 as the stock setting on benchmarks has proven to generally be superior when compared to the 780Ti.

I hope that helps your decision.

 

[bodine1231]

I was hoping to get a 970 and a Rog Swift before Shadows of Mordor drops but it looks like thats not gonna happen as both are sold out everywhere. I really hope I can get both before Borderlands!

 

[Inferno313]

When people are talking about the MSI card as one of the best ones, are they talking about the standard one or the "gaming" one?

 

[garath]

When people are talking about the MSI card as one of the best ones, are they talking about the standard one or the "gaming" one?

Almost definitely the gaming one. It's the one that has the silent fans on low heat and the better cooler.

 

[iN1njaCPFC]

There you go. Your answer is to get two 970 for SLI or if you are sensitive about cash then get the 980 for OC. The extra $$ make it completely worth it when you are comparing that price to the Ti. Otherwise, it really is best to go for the 980 as the stock setting on benchmarks has proven to generally be superior when compared to the 780Ti.

I hope that helps your decision.

Thanks gus It really does help. Hopefully the 980Ti comes out by April

 

[leng jai]

When people are talking about the MSI card as one of the best ones, are they talking about the standard one or the "gaming" one?

There's a standard MSI one? I've only ever seen one model.

 

[Inferno313]

There's a standard MSI one? I've only ever seen one model.

Yup, this one. It's only like $10-15 cheaper than the other one though.

 

[BloodMoney]

When people are talking about the MSI card as one of the best ones, are they talking about the standard one or the "gaming" one?

Anything with a Twin Frozr cooler. The 'Gaming' nomenclature is relatively new for their cards... I think what use to be 'Power Edition' is now 'Gaming"... not sure if they are still making the halo 'Lightning' stuff anymore. Would love to see a 980 Lightning.

MSI makes great kit. I switched to them after some bad experiences with XFX.

 

[teiresias]

Thanks gus It really does help. Hopefully the 980Ti comes out by April

There's nothing on the 980 die to unlock to make a Ti version. Maybe a 990 that's a dual GPU single card solution I guess.

 

[garath]

I'm really a fan of what MSI and Gigabyte have done this time around. Going to be hard deciding between the two.

 

[BloodMoney]

....any guesses on what AMD is going to announce tomorrow? Hope it's not Firepro (snooze)

 

[TheNamelessOne]

....any guesses on what AMD is going to announce tomorrow? Hope it's not Firepro (snooze)

Their retirement from the GPU scene.

Spoiler

jk

 

[Rafy]

So what's wrong exactly with the EVGA 970? Here in Italy all the cards are extremely expensive and the EVGA ones is among the cheapest ones on Caseking! Is there a real issue with them? If yes does anyone know whether there will be blocks for the MSI one?

 

[Objectively Bad Opinion]

....any guesses on what AMD is going to announce tomorrow? Hope it's not Firepro (snooze)

Nothing interesting, since the only AMD twitter account that said anything was AMDIndia. No other regional account nor AMDRadeon mentioned anything.

 

[BloodMoney]

Nothing interesting, since the only AMD twitter account that said anything was AMDIndia. No other regional account nor AMDRadeon mentioned anything.

hype deflated

 

[Gumbie]

 

[TC McQueen]

So what's wrong exactly with the EVGA 970? Here in Italy all the cards are extremely expensive and the EVGA ones is among the cheapest ones on Caseking! Is there a real issue with them? If yes does anyone know whether there will be blocks for the MSI one?

Their cooler only has two heat pipes in direct contact with the GPU core, some coil/power whine, and a poor fan curve.

 

[UnrealEck]

There's nothing on the 980 die to unlock to make a Ti version. Maybe a 990 that's a dual GPU single card solution I guess.

That's the card I'd like to see. It'll probably cost a good bit more than two single 980 cards though. I wonder how they would cool it. Probably wouldn't need water cooling as these GPUs seem to stay really cool.

 

[undercoverb0ss]

That's the card I'd like to see. It'll probably cost a good bit more than two single 980 cards though. I wonder how they would cool it. Probably wouldn't need water cooling as these GPUs seem to stay really cool.

That's the card that I'm waiting to replace my GTX690 with

 

[SpotAnime]

I was hoping to get a 970 and a Rog Swift before Shadows of Mordor drops but it looks like thats not gonna happen as both are sold out everywhere. I really hope I can get both before Borderlands!

Keep hope alive. The Gigabyte GTX 970 was sold out at Amazon, but I ordered anyway just yesterday. Just got notification that it will be delivered by September 29th, so it seems like restocks are turning around pretty quickly.

 

[Kezen]

That's the card I'd like to see. It'll probably cost a good bit more than two single 980 cards though. I wonder how they would cool it. Probably wouldn't need water cooling as these GPUs seem to stay really cool.

A GM200 Q1 2015 is plausible IMO. It will fill the 1.000$/€ bracket and the 1000 series will release Q4 2015.

AMD could disturb this of course.

 

[kharma45]

Think I might buy a 970?

Which brands are recommended and which places to buy from are recommended? (In the UK.)

Gigabyte and Galax have good UK rma service. EVGA do too but their cards seem to be worth avoiding in the mean time.

I've dealt with novatech, overclockers.co.uk, dabs, ccl, Amazon, ebuyer.

Apart from Amazon they can be all much of a muchness. I'd place novatech over the rest, ocuk at the bottom.

 

[garath]

Keep hope alive. The Gigabyte GTX 970 was sold out at Amazon, but I ordered anyway just yesterday. Just got notification that it will be delivered by September 29th, so it seems like restocks are turning around pretty quickly.

Since amazon let's you essentially "pre order" their new shipments when it's out of stock, I expect they will be out of stock for quite a long time but the actual turn around will be pretty quick. I'd guess they even get it out before your Setp 29th estimate.

Newegg doesn't allow that so you may get one even quicker if you pay attention. They got new stock in yesterday - both the gigabyte and MSI were back in but were shortly sold out again.

 

[ukpanik]

Think I might buy a 970?

Which brands are recommended and which places to buy from are recommended? (In the UK.)

overclockers.co.uk are good with returns if you have any problems with the card.
They have the MSI available which many are recommending.

 

[BeforeU]

It's in! cable management be damn lol.


So far I can't notice anymore noise from the EVGA compared to my old 6950. My case has some pretty good sound isolation so noise was never a problem for me anyway.

lol that SSD made me laugh.

 

[BeEatNU]

Before the 980

 

[UnrealEck]

Think I might buy a 970?

Which brands are recommended and which places to buy from are recommended? (In the UK.)

I'd go with the Gigabyte G1. It seems those are sporting cherry picked GPUs that will overclock among the best.

I'd buy from Ebuyer, Overclockers, Amazon or SCAN.
Just go with the cheapest. I've always bought from Ebuyer though. I've not been dissapointed with them once.

 

[Azzurri]

It's in! cable management be damn lol.


So far I can't notice anymore noise from the EVGA compared to my old 6950. My case has some pretty good sound isolation so noise was never a problem for me anyway.

I could not live like this!

Even if I don't see it and my PC was sitting on the floor, it would still bug me knowing how bad it looks inside.

 

[KKRT00]

It's in! cable management be damn lol.


So far I can't notice anymore noise from the EVGA compared to my old 6950. My case has some pretty good sound isolation so noise was never a problem for me anyway.

 

[Xyber]

Might as well share a little pic of mine as well. I need to buy some compressed air and clean of the dust on the bottom fans, but this is how "dirty" this case is after not cleaning it a single time since I got it in 2011.

 

[Guerrillas in the Mist]

Which 970 is the best bet if your case is a tad short on space? Is it the Zotac card?

Edit: Didn't see this had been answered on the last page. Zotac is generally considered to be a more reliable brand than Palit, right?

 

[Zafir]

It's in! cable management be damn lol.


So far I can't notice anymore noise from the EVGA compared to my old 6950. My case has some pretty good sound isolation so noise was never a problem for me anyway.

Well, that makes me feel better about the insides of mine! I've got a bit of cable management going on, but not a massive amount. Wish I'd have got a modular power supply really, quite a bit of space is taken up by random wires I'm not using.

 

[opticalmace]

Well, that makes me feel better about the insides of mine! I've got a bit of cable management going on, but not a massive amount. Wish I'd have got a modular power supply really, quite a bit of space is taken up by random wires I'm not using.

This is how I feel. I bought my PSU (Corsair TX750) about 5.5 years ago and it's still running great today. I didn't have the foresight to get a modular one though. It's hard to justify replacing a working PSU for no reason other than cosmetics.

 

[Xyber]

This is how I feel. I bought my PSU (Corsair TX750) about 5.5 years ago and it's still running great today. I didn't have the foresight to get a modular one though. It's hard to justify replacing a working PSU for no reason other than cosmetics.

Well it's not only cosmetics, more cables (if you can't manage to hide them all on the back) will make the airflow worse. And less cables makes any maintenance you might have to do much easier.

 

[chrominance]

It's in! cable management be damn lol.


So far I can't notice anymore noise from the EVGA compared to my old 6950. My case has some pretty good sound isolation so noise was never a problem for me anyway.

So many people up in arms about your cable management. Wonder how y'all would react to my case, I don't think it's much better.

That said: is it just me or is there a case fan at the BOTTOM of your case?

 

[opticalmace]

Well it's not only cosmetics, more cables (if you can't manage to hide them all on the back) will make the airflow worse. And less cables makes any maintenance you might have to do much easier.

Fair enough. The airflow thing isn't a problem for me, though having fewer cables in the way might be nice.

So many people up in arms about your cable management. Wonder how y'all would react to my case, I don't think it's much better.

That said: is it just me or is there a case fan at the BOTTOM of your case?

:lol. Maybe it's holding up the cables.

 

[Guerrillas in the Mist]

So many people up in arms about your cable management. Wonder how y'all would react to my case, I don't think it's much better.

That said: is it just me or is there a case fan at the BOTTOM of your case?

Mine's not too much better, but I went against GAF's advice and bought a cheap case with not much in the way of options for cable management (an Antec 300). It also makes maintenance and moving things about a pain in the butt: when I changed out my PSU recently, I had to open up the fan mounts from the front in order to push in the GPU's power cables, and seating the 24-pin connector properly required me to do some weird, uncomfortable hand contortions.

So whenever people ask me for PC building advice, I tell them not to skimp on the case!

 

[Windom Earle]

I have two EVGA 970 SC cards and I have no sound problems whatsoever. There are others in this thread that don't have sound problems either. EVGA has stated that they intend to release a bios update for these cards to address the sound issues.

I would say get your card, install it without any modifications to your fan curve and voltage. See if the noise bothers you. If it does and I would recommend doing this anyway, download EVGA overclocking software and set the fan curve to quiet.

Yup, same here. Got two 1.0 cards without any issues. Gotta check back in the summer when temperatures are higher but for now it's all good. (~71° in BF4 with my current fan profile) And people should not worry anyway, just RMA that shit in case problems come up.

So many people up in arms about your cable management. Wonder how y'all would react to my case, I don't think it's much better.

That said: is it just me or is there a case fan at the BOTTOM of your case?

Yeah, that's what GAF does. Got crucified here as well. But it actually got me to work on it a bit which was quite fun...

 

[AndyBNV]

Just caught up on this thread. So very happy at people's reactions to the new cards, and when you start experiencing all the new tech and features rolling out over the next year things are going to get even better. As a champion of Downsampling for the longest time, DSR is amazing to have out there, working on all monitors at all refresh rates, on Win 7 and 8.1, and without any technical knowledge required.

For the future, Crescent Bay/CV1 in VR SLI is something I personally cannot wait for, having spent a ton of time playing EVE Valkyrie, and experiencing the new Epic demo on DK2 with 980 SLI.

 

[Dave_6]

I'm switching from an AMD card to the 970. Anything specific I need to do when installing the 970? Like download the latest Nvidia drivers before uninstalling the AMD drivers and removing the old card?

 

[garath]

This is how I feel. I bought my PSU (Corsair TX750) about 5.5 years ago and it's still running great today. I didn't have the foresight to get a modular one though. It's hard to justify replacing a working PSU for no reason other than cosmetics.

I'm in the same boat. My 750W PC Power and Cooling PSU is still running great. The only drawback is it's not modular. I'm not going to replace a working PSU just because. I'd rather spend the money on actual performance improvements.

It's still more than possible to have decent airflow with a non-modular PSU. Just harder.

Mine's not too much better, but I went against GAF's advice and bought a cheap case with not much in the way of options for cable management (an Antec 300). It also makes maintenance and moving things about a pain in the butt: when I changed out my PSU recently, I had to open up the fan mounts from the front in order to push in the GPU's power cables, and seating the 24-pin connector properly required me to do some weird, uncomfortable hand contortions.

So whenever people ask me for PC building advice, I tell them not to skimp on the case!

Great advice. Honestly, a case is likely to outlast any other part of your PC if you get a good one. I've had TWO cases in my 15 years of building and maintaining my own gaming PCs. And I didn't even NEED to swap cases but I was looking for something with a few more features.

Don't skimp on the case

 

[opticalmace]

I'm switching from an AMD card to the 970. Anything specific I need to do when installing the 970? Like download the latest Nvidia drivers before uninstalling the AMD drivers and removing the old card?

If it were me, I would uninstall the AMD drivers, reboot to safe mode, wipe them with Driver Sweeper or whatever that great utility is called (it was from a GPU site, I forget which), then shut it off and make the hardware switch.

Either way you'll be fine. Worst case you can try to purge any residual AMD files afterwards if you don't get them all.

 

[kharma45]

Just caught up on this thread. So very happy at people's reactions to the new cards, and when you start experiencing all the new tech and features rolling out over the next year things are going to get even better. As a champion of Downsampling for the longest time, DSR is amazing to have out there, working on all monitors at all refresh rates, on Win 7 and 8.1, and without any technical knowledge required.

For the future, Crescent Bay/CV1 in VR SLI is something I personally cannot wait for, having spent a ton of time playing EVE Valkyrie, and experiencing the new Epic demo on DK2 with 980 SLI.

I can't imagine you'll be able to say but has nvidia made a conscious effort to compete with AMD on price now? Just wondering with the 970 pretty much blowing them out of the water.

 

[AmyS]

Thanks gus It really does help. Hopefully the 980Ti comes out by April

Highly doubt there will be an 980 Ti. As already pointed out, there is nothing to unlock on the GM204 GPU with the 980.

I wouldn't expect another Ti card from Nvidia until after the GM200 is released in the form of a Titan II and "GTX 1080", if at all.