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[KePoW]

My EVGA 970 just arrived from Amazon today

Do I need to uninstall my Nvidia drivers first? I already did a full Clean Install recently of the new version for Dragon Age

I heard nowdays you can just shutdown, install the new card, power up and your current Nvidia driver will just find your new card?

 

[Kccitystar]

My EVGA 970 just arrived from Amazon today

Do I need to uninstall my Nvidia drivers first? I already did a full Clean Install recently of the new version for Dragon Age

I heard nowdays you can just shutdown, install the new card, power up and your current Nvidia driver will just find your new card?

If you already had an nvidia card with the latest drivers, you're good to go with just swapping it out with your new 970.

 

[Kezen]

My EVGA 970 just arrived from Amazon today

Do I need to uninstall my Nvidia drivers first? I already did a full Clean Install recently of the new version for Dragon Age

I heard nowdays you can just shutdown, install the new card, power up and your current Nvidia driver will just find your new card?

Yes it's safer to uninstall your current drivers first.
I use this guide to do it :
http://www.overclock.net/t/1150443/how-to-remove-your-nvidia-gpu-drivers

Or you can use DDU.

 

[KePoW]

If you already had an nvidia card with the latest drivers, you're good to go with just swapping it out with your new 970.

thx for the info!

Yeah I currently have a 680 with 344.75 already

 

[Dictator93]

Yes, I suffer from upgraditis. :/
The worst is that I know the 970 is more a sidegrade from my 780 but I can't help.

I don't like ASUS cards usually (I had a DOA gtx 670 from them) but it's not a bad deal and the Strix is a slick card.

It will still blow you away performance-wise

edit: also go on steam more often you nub

 

[jackdoe]

thx for the info!

Yeah I currently have a 680 with 344.75 already

For me personally, when I swapped my 680 for a 980, I had to uninstall the drivers and re-install it to find the new card.

 

[Saganator]

Just got this bad boy today. Really pleased with the upgrade over my 660ti. Supposedly the MSI overclocks real well, so it will only get better. I'm really impressed by how quiet it runs. Played a DAI for a good 3 or 4 hours and I could never tell if the GPU fans turned on, I'm sure they did but I never heard them over my CPU fan.

I was able to just swap out my 660 for the 970 with out reinstalling drivers. I updated to 344.75 right before making the swap.

 

[KePoW]

Hey all,

I just got my EVGA 970 from Amazon, and when I opened the plastic case with the card inside, I saw this little piece completely off and loose in the box:

Looks like it's from the back PCB of the card. I don't know anything about electronics, but I know plenty of GAF posters do. Should I go through the hassle of immediately returning it to EVGA, or is this one little piece redundant and not a big deal??

 

[badb0y]

Hey all,

I just got my EVGA 970 from Amazon, and when I opened the plastic case with the card inside, I saw this little piece completely off and loose in the box:

Looks like it's from the back PCB of the card. I don't know anything about electronics, but I know plenty of GAF posters do. Should I go through the hassle of immediately returning it to EVGA, or is this one little piece redundant and not a big deal??

RMA it now even if it functions because it may cause problems down the line and Amazon is a lot better to deal with than some of these OEMs' RMA departments.

 

[dark_chris]

So I got the Gigabyte GTX 970 for m-itx.

I find it funny this card is completely and utterly gigantic and basically bigger than my motherboard. It swallows it up. I actually had doubts that my card would fit, but it was all gravy in 2 mins.
The result is beautiful, and my games came out fantastic.

 

[KePoW]

RMA it now even if it functions because it may cause problems down the line and Amazon is a lot better to deal with than some of these OEMs' RMA departments.

thanks for the feedback

I'm hoping some electrical engineers on GAF can tell me it's not a big deal and just a small redundancy piece, because my case sucks ass and is a serious pain for me to disconnect everything and open it up again

 

[Stuggernaut]

Am I looking at a big jump in performance ovet a 670ti? May add this to my Xmas wishlist

 

[dark_chris]

Am I looking at a big jump in performance ovet a 670ti? May add this to my Xmas wishlist

I upgraded from a 650ti (might be some difference between the two) so I did see a big performance difference.

 

[blado]

I just got my 980 installed and have started overclocking. Should I prioritize the temp limit or power limit. I've never been sure in the past which is the best choice.

 

[CND]

I just got my 980 installed and have started overclocking. Should I prioritize the temp limit or power limit. I've never been sure in the past which is the best choice.

What do you mean by "prioritize?"
My version of Afterburner doesn't even allow me to adjust the temperature limit, so I really don't know what you are asking.

With that being said, always monitor your temps when you bump the power limit to max and start bumping up the voltage. A custom fan profile is very useful to keep temps where you feel comfortable (at the expense of your ambient noise levels)

 

[blado]

What do you mean by "prioritize?"
My version of Afterburner doesn't even allow me to adjust the temperature limit, so I really don't know what you are asking.

With that being said, always monitor your temps when you bump the power limit to max and start bumping up the voltage. A custom fan profile is very useful to keep temps where you feel comfortable (at the expense of your ambient noise levels)

Within MSI Afterburning there is an arrow you can click to point towards Power Limit or Temperature Limit, choosing which one is prioritized. That's what I was referring to.

 

[Rrang129]

Having some trouble diagnosing why I'm getting some sub-60 fps drops, as well as a 30 fps lock while playing WoW and watching a Twitch stream:

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k230/Srge88/perf_zps0b2d4de7.jpg

(This above link is a shot of playing WoW in the garrison while a Twitch video was streaming)

My CPU is a i7-930 OC'd to ~3.1 GHz with 6 GB of RAM. Both of these were first bought in July of 2010, which I've since replaced my old ATI HD 5850 with the EVGA GTX 970.

WoW was running ~50 fps in the screen-cap, but sometimes I've noticed it hard capping at 30fps randomly, then suddenly it will shift to 60 fps. Really strange. Maybe the hard drive is starting to wear down?? Or am I just being overly picky for the performance I am getting with what I am doing?

 

[Alo81]

thanks for the feedback

I'm hoping some electrical engineers on GAF can tell me it's not a big deal and just a small redundancy piece, because my case sucks ass and is a serious pain for me to disconnect everything and open it up again

Seriously, I'd RMA that immediately. Even if there were a ton of electrical engineers on Gaf, I wouldn't trust the peanut galleries thoughts on $350~ purchase. That's a serious issue and if you want to make the most of your money spent, I'd return that immediately.

 

[paskowitz]

Just in case anyone was curious, a single GTX980 is not powerful enough to run an Oculus Rift at 1080p stable 74fps at ultra (or even high settings in some games), with AA in any modern (VR compatible) game.

I just went through Alien Isolation, pCARS, Assetto Corsa and iRacing and the results were pretty surprising. Only AC and iRacing managed >70fps average in 30 minutes of gameplay. Obviously this was nothing scientific, but as a layman, I am socked at the performance hit in VR.

If the CV1 Oculus Rift is going to have an even higher grade panel (as rumored and as arguably needed) (~1440p/90hz+), then I cannot see anything less than Maxwell SLI or even Pascal being needed (for max settings).

I do not think the broader PC gaming audience is going to be willing to take a visual fidelity hit for the effect of VR. Second, I have no idea how consoles (especially current gen) are going to run VR, unless the hardware is built for it from the ground up. Nor are they going to pony up $800+ for a GPU just to run VR.

Has anyone heard about the status of VR Direct from Nvidia or any rumblings of g-sync in VR?

 

[Waikis]

Just in case anyone was curious, a single GTX980 is not powerful enough to run an Oculus Rift at 1080p stable 74fps at ultra (or even high settings in some games), with AA in any modern (VR compatible) game.

I just went through Alien Isolation, pCARS, Assetto Corsa and iRacing and the results were pretty surprising. Only AC and iRacing managed >70fps average in 30 minutes of gameplay. Obviously this was nothing scientific, but as a layman, I am socked at the performance hit in VR.

If the CV1 Oculus Rift is going to have an even higher grade panel (as rumored and as arguably needed) (~1440p/90hz+), then I cannot see anything less than Maxwell SLI or even Pascal being needed (for max settings).

I do not think the broader PC gaming audience is going to be willing to take a visual fidelity hit for the effect of VR. Second, I have no idea how consoles (especially current gen) are going to run VR, unless the hardware is built for it from the ground up. Nor are they going to pony up $800+ for a GPU just to run VR.

Has anyone heard about the status of VR Direct from Nvidia or any rumblings of g-sync in VR?

Not sure with the other games, but benchmarks for Alien Isolation and gtx 980 usually average around ~110fps. Are we sure that the terrible performance is not caused by unofficial and thus unoptimized VR implementation?

 

[ClearData]

Does any other retailer offer a step up program like EVGA? I'd like to grab a 970 with the option to grab a 980 later but I wondered if it's only EVGA that allows that.

 

[KePoW]

Seriously, I'd RMA that immediately. Even if there were a ton of electrical engineers on Gaf, I wouldn't trust the peanut galleries thoughts on $350~ purchase. That's a serious issue and if you want to make the most of your money spent, I'd return that immediately.

haha alright

 

[golem]

Woop I can almost get 60fps in Unity now lol

 

[Redhood]

Hey guys thinking of buying a Zotac 970 GTX. Is the manufacturer trusted?

Also they have 3 variants for the card. Omega, Extreme and Normal. What is the difference?

 

[lordfuzzybutt]

Hey guys thinking of buying a Zotac 970 GTX. Is the manufacturer trusted?

Also they have 3 variants for the card. Omega, Extreme and Normal. What is the difference?

They are one of the less well know brands, but I reckon they are still good to buy from as many have done.

The difference is the core and mem speed, get the extreme one for highest factory OC.

 

[pestul]

Hey guys thinking of buying a Zotac 970 GTX. Is the manufacturer trusted?

Also they have 3 variants for the card. Omega, Extreme and Normal. What is the difference?

I'm happy with my vanilla zotac gtx 970. Running Far Cry @1440p on almost all ultra. Overclocked to 1500/3800 quite nicely.

 

[Addnan]

Woop I can almost get 60fps in Unity now lol

How hot do they get? I thought my one has little room to breathe.

 

[AndyBNV]

Woop I can almost get 60fps in Unity now lol

If there's a detachable portion of the backplate like the reference cards you should definitely remove it as those two are pretty close together.

 

[Darkstorne]

Hey guys thinking of buying a Zotac 970 GTX. Is the manufacturer trusted?

Also they have 3 variants for the card. Omega, Extreme and Normal. What is the difference?

I'm really impressed with my Zotac 970. No problems at all, and the card runs beautifully. As far as I'm aware ASUS was the only problematic manufacturer this time around (think it was ASUS anyway - problems with the cooling system).

 

[One-Shot]

Getting a 980, is there any specific brand I should be looking at?

 

[Saroyan]

Hey all,

I just got my EVGA 970 from Amazon, and when I opened the plastic case with the card inside, I saw this little piece completely off and loose in the box:

Looks like it's from the back PCB of the card. I don't know anything about electronics, but I know plenty of GAF posters do. Should I go through the hassle of immediately returning it to EVGA, or is this one little piece redundant and not a big deal??

That looks like a surface mount capacitor, I'd send that back right away

 

[TonberrysKnife]

I may pick up a 970 soon to upgrade my 660ti.

 

[daninthemix]

Woot! Ordered my MSI FROZR 970.

Here's to 60fps Ultra across the board!

(actually, looks like I'll be locking at 30fps Ultra on recent titles, as I can't abide screen tearing

 

[| Praxis |]

I may pick up a 970 soon to upgrade my 660ti.

I upgraded from a 580 to the MSI 970. "Holy" and "Shit" were the words uttered when I saw the difference. You wont regret it.

 

[TonberrysKnife]

I upgraded from a 580 to the MSI 970. "Holy" and "Shit" were the words uttered when I saw the difference. You wont regret it.

I haven't checked the inventory on some of the retailers lately but last time I checked, they weren't in stock anywhere.

 

[OnionPowder]

I'm upgrading from a 560 ti to a 970 and I can't wait. Just yesterday my brother in law got his 970 and he's saying that just playing Far Cry 4 for a couple of minutes he was already at 80° and idle his temp was at 50°. Is that normal? he bought a factory OC card so should he lower his clock speeds a bit?

 

[One-Shot]

I upgraded from a 580 to the MSI 970. "Holy" and "Shit" were the words uttered when I saw the difference. You wont regret it.

Can't wait. I am upgrading from a 580 as well to a 980.

 

[TonberrysKnife]

So I'm currently looking at the MSI GTX 970 and MSI GTX 970 Golden Edition. Does anyone have the Golden Edition?

 

[| Praxis |]

I'm upgrading from a 560 ti to a 970 and I can't wait. Just yesterday my brother in law got his 970 and he's saying that just playing Far Cry 4 for a couple of minutes he was already at 80° and idle his temp was at 50°. Is that normal? he bought a factory OC card so should he lower his clock speeds a bit?

That does sound a bit much, mine idles around 30 and gets to around 60 under load (MSI 970 in a Haf X case).

 

[Honey Bunny]

I'm upgrading from a 560 ti to a 970 and I can't wait. Just yesterday my brother in law got his 970 and he's saying that just playing Far Cry 4 for a couple of minutes he was already at 80° and idle his temp was at 50°. Is that normal? he bought a factory OC card so should he lower his clock speeds a bit?

That idle temp is almost 20 degrees C above my 970 at stock. He might want to dial back that OC

 

[Allnamestakenlol]

I'm upgrading from a 560 ti to a 970 and I can't wait. Just yesterday my brother in law got his 970 and he's saying that just playing Far Cry 4 for a couple of minutes he was already at 80° and idle his temp was at 50°. Is that normal? he bought a factory OC card so should he lower his clock speeds a bit?

Yikes - I'd make sure his card's fans are spinning and he has good airflow in his case. My cards (gigabyte g1's) are in sli and OC'd a fair bit and neither of them get that warm. (30* idle and 67* @ 100% load)

 

[paskowitz]

Getting a 980, is there any specific brand I should be looking at?

I would go with Gigabyte or MSI (I have an MSI and it is great. stable 1524 boost clock and 8000 memory clock. even with that it barely makes any noise and stays well below 70 degrees Celsius). If you want you can drop the extra dough on an EVGA Classified 980.

 

[One-Shot]

I would go with Gigabyte or MSI (I have an MSI and it is great. stable 1524 boost clock and 8000 memory clock. even with that it barely makes any noise and stays well below 70 degrees Celsius). If you want you can drop the extra dough on an EVGA Classified 980.

Would you suggest those over the regular SC evga?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487079&FM=1

 

[CyanideFuse]

I would go with Gigabyte or MSI (I have an MSI and it is great. stable 1524 boost clock and 8000 memory clock. even with that it barely makes any noise and stays well below 70 degrees Celsius). If you want you can drop the extra dough on an EVGA Classified 980.

What games have you played with those overclock settings?

I can get to pretty much these numbers (MSI 970) but BF4 crashes out every now-and-again. I don't know if it is the card or the game (going by its past performance issues).

 

[McHuj]

That looks like a surface mount capacitor, I'd send that back right away

Yup, and whether it's critical or not depends on where it fell off. It's there (or was) for a reason so send it back.

 

[One-Shot]

Actually how about this one? $568.50 after discounts and rebate.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125682

 

[Kezen]

I'm upgrading from a 560 ti to a 970 and I can't wait. Just yesterday my brother in law got his 970 and he's saying that just playing Far Cry 4 for a couple of minutes he was already at 80° and idle his temp was at 50°. Is that normal? he bought a factory OC card so should he lower his clock speeds a bit?

That's a bit high. What model was it ?
I know some 970 which don't spin in low load situations idle at 40°C.

 

[KePoW]

That looks like a surface mount capacitor, I'd send that back right away

thanks for the detail, appreciate it

 

[paskowitz]

Would you suggest those over the regular SC evga?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487079&FM=1

I cannot speak from personal experience but from what I have read the EVGA is a little bit louder.

What games have you played with those overclock settings?

I can get to pretty much these numbers (MSI 970) but BF4 crashes out every now-and-again. I don't know if it is the card or the game (going by its past performance issues).

Clock is only part of what makes a video card go.

Actually how about this one? $568.50 after discounts and rebate.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125682

Do it. Just make sure it fits in your case.

 

[wowzors]

just ordered a Gigabyte 970 G1 from newegg, will be replacing a MSI 770 4gb. So not really much of a performance boost (10%?). But still excited!