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Nvidia Launches GTX 980 And GTX 970 "Maxwell" Graphics Cards ($549 & $329)

What are your full specs? What card did you replace? What process did you go through when installing the card? Actually, this may be best addressed in the I need a new PC thread as well.

i7 2600k 4.5Ghz, 16GB Ram, Asus Sabertooth P67. Before installing the 970 I had a 680, I did a clean install of Windows for many reasons and installed both cards (yes even the 680 as a Physx card). Installed latest drivers etc then I decided it was stupid to keep the 680. I removed the 680 and that's it didn't do anything with the drivers.
 
Welp thanks to this thread and upcoming dragon age, I've caved and picked up a MSI 970
http://www.microcenter.com/product/439029/GeForce_GTX_970_Gaming_4GB_GDDR5_Video_Card
$339.99+tax ain't bad

Too bad microcenter was out of stock near me so I had to get my brother in Atlanta to go pick it up at his store. Now comes the wait til Thanksgiving for him to fly in and give me my card
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Really hope I don't get a card with coil whine, returns maybe a bit difficult...

Does anyone know if coil whine is covered by manufacturer warranty?
 
i7 2600k 4.5Ghz, 16GB Ram, Asus Sabertooth P67. Before installing the 970 I had a 680, I did a clean install of Windows for many reasons and installed both cards (yes even the 680 as a Physx card). Installed latest drivers etc then I decided it was stupid to keep the 680. I removed the 680 and that's it didn't do anything with the drivers.

Clean install of windows was a good start. Hmmmm... I guess I'd consider uninstalling the driver completely and reinstalling it since you've removed the 680. You could also try running the benchmark again and see what happens, if you haven't already. I've seen crazy results happen randomly for some people.
 
Is this a normal score?
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I saw someone reaching 11k with the 970 :(

My MSI 970 started displaying artifacts during AC Unity and then the Fire Strike demo scene, and was scoring about what you're getting yesterday. I'm returning mine to Newegg and I have the 970 Gold Edition on the way as a replacement.

Which 970 do you have?
 
My MSI 970 started displaying artifacts during AC Unity and then the Fire Strike demo scene, and was scoring about what you're getting yesterday. I'm returning mine to Newegg and I have the 970 Gold Edition on the way as a replacement.

Which 970 do you have?

Gigabyte G1. Mine was also displaying artifacts but because I pushed the OC too high. It was ok after keeping it stock.

@Felix I'll try that right away.
 
Well, I've done a lot more testing/gaming and neither of my G1's are producing coil whine. Other than the whoosh of the fans, which are much quieter than my old gtx670 blowers, they're pretty darn silent. Thank God. Lol
 
Nevermind then, the site I found is banned here.

Said that the GTX 980Ti is coming Feb 2015 - if that's true, that's really lame for people that jumped the gun already.
 
I just ordered the MSI GTX 970 Twin Frozr V to replace my dead 580. It's going to be paired with an I7 2600k, I assume I shouldn't be bottlenecked by this cpu?

Can't wait to see the difference after nearly four years with the 580.
 
Does coil whine get worst? Havent been using my pc and when I recently tried a game the coil sounds was worst than before, it was very loud and squeeky, before all I had was a buzz sound. The only change I did was connect both windforce cards direct to the psu, before I only had one connected directly to the psu and the other using the connectors the gpu brought. I"m thinking maybe my psu or mb is the problem because after like 20 mins of gaming all buzzing or whine sounds stop and the pc stays silent through out the entire time until I restart the pc.
 
Well, my EVGA Superclocked GTX970Ti is in and set up and working great, and I feel like I should play the lottery because I can't detect any coil whine at all. If I put my ear as close as I can get to the card while running a few different games at over 200fps I can hear a slight whine but honestly my case fans make more noise. So I got lucky I suppose.

By the way, this card is a graphics beast. Wow.
 
Well, my EVGA Superclocked GTX970Ti is in and set up and working great, and I feel like I should play the lottery because I can't detect any coil whine at all. If I put my ear as close as I can get to the card while running a few different games at over 200fps I can hear a slight whine but honestly my case fans make more noise.

Lucky you
 

I can't hear any coil whine in that video, just loud noise that sounds like fan/wind and then there's another type of noise in the second half of the video but it doesn't sound like coil whine to me. I'm starting to think that my ears can't pick up certain frequencies associated with coil whine. But then again I'm familar with GPU coil whine and I did hear it during benchmarks on the MSI I had (but not during gameplay).

Assuming they even bother moving maxwell to 16nm that really depends on how amd is doing/pricing things at around that time and how ready pascal is. I wouldn't expect any 16nm gpus till 2016 if they just think they can start volume production in July. It took 6+ months of "volume" production of 28nm before we were getting video cards. It will probably be a refresh similar to 700 series vs 600 series with no die shrink. Mind you the 780 was a cut down titan while the 770 was a 680 basically, so it's very possible the 1080(or whatever it is) will be significantly more expensive and better than a 980 while the actual difference between 900/1000 series is negligible. I doubt very much that they bump up pascal launch to 15...

There is always something better coming less than a year away ;/ just upgrade when the prices are okay for you for the performance change... which should be just about anytime the wind blows with an HD2000.

Oh yeah absolutely, I wasn't trying to justify waiting for the next wave of cards, just curious about what to expect. I don't remember seeing such good price/performance for a high end card (of the 970) in ages, and I suspect we might not see it repeated for a while.
 
Little bit of an update on the Gigabyte G1.

ASIC quality is 66% compared to 85% of the ASUS Strix I had. 66% is super low for "GPU Gauntlet™ Sorting".

It gets coil whine on another build with a different power supply. I also let the card run Alien Isolation at 4xDSR with Ultra settings for almost 4 hours. I didn't have time to check the card afterwards. I'll end up checking the card out when I get home from work. Good chance this is a return after I finish up Shadow of Mordor this weekend.
 
Is this a normal score?
J50B5ek.png


I saw someone reaching 11k with the 970 :(

Do you have vsync forced on in then nVidia control panel?

It might affect the score (?) e.g. it cannot go above 60fps for example so the score is lowered.

Edit: Just saw you fixed it.


The jump to the 900 series was a small jump in terms of how much it moved the high end game on. But how big a leap the 970 was for you depends on what specific card you had before. From a 670, the 970 was about 50% more powerful for me. I don't know what you came from, but unless it was like a 770, 780, 7970 or something, I imagine you're seeing bigger gains than you realize.

And of course it depends on what games you play. I played Ryse recently and my 970 was put to *really* good use there. Pretty much max settings plus supersampling to really make it look super clean all at 60fps. That was a stunning experience. We're gonna see more and more demanding games and options for you to exercise the 970's capability in. I'm quite happy to feel prepared for The Witcher 3, for instance. Of course, if you're doing nothing but playing Diablo 3 or last-gen games, then yea, your 970 probably isn't proving to be any huge upgrade.

I had a 2GB 670 but it wasn't really struggling all that much; I dropped settings down a touch but it wasn't anything massively noticeable. I am pleased with the general performance of the 970 and the overclock I have applied to it; I just don't have any games that are stretching it at this time hence the feeling I jumped a bit soon.
 
Little bit of an update on the Gigabyte G1.

ASIC quality is 66% compared to 85% of the ASUS Strix I had. 66% is super low for "GPU Gauntlet™ Sorting".

It gets coil whine on another build with a different power supply. I also let the card run Alien Isolation at 4xDSR with Ultra settings for almost 4 hours. I didn't have time to check the card afterwards. I'll end up checking the card out when I get home from work. Good chance this is a return after I finish up Shadow of Mordor this weekend.

My Gigabyte G1 980 is 75% asic quality just to add to the sample size
 
I had a 2GB 670 but it wasn't really struggling all that much; I dropped settings down a touch but it wasn't anything massively noticeable. I am pleased with the general performance of the 970 and the overclock I have applied to it; I just don't have any games that are stretching it at this time hence the feeling I jumped a bit soon.
I gotcha.

Yea, I cant say I was 'struggling' with my 670, but I'd been getting pickier and pickier about aliasing in my games, so I've been downsampling a lot, even at the expense of other graphics settings. And I also knew that there was a lot of next-gen only games coming up that would start to stress my rig more and a 670 would be unlikely to get me 60fps with good settings. Its more powerful than the consoles, but not 'double-the-framerate' more. The 4GB of vRAM is becoming pretty important, too.

I think right now, you might be feeling a bit of buyer's remorse, but I'll bet that you'll be glad you did it pretty quickly. I doubt the 970 is going to get any price cuts anytime soon.
 
I gotcha.

Yea, I cant say I was 'struggling' with my 670, but I'd been getting pickier and pickier about aliasing in my games, so I've been downsampling a lot, even at the expense of other graphics settings. And I also knew that there was a lot of next-gen only games coming up that would start to stress my rig more and a 670 would be unlikely to get me 60fps with good settings. Its more powerful than the consoles, but not 'double-the-framerate' more. The 4GB of vRAM is becoming pretty important, too.

I think right now, you might be feeling a bit of buyer's remorse, but I'll bet that you'll be glad you did it pretty quickly. I doubt the 970 is going to get any price cuts anytime soon.

Yeah the price is already good so a drop seems very far off. Plus I got the nVidia code that I sold to a GAF member so that knocked off another £25; the card effectively cost me £245.

The problem is that I tend to wait for sales so all the testing games won't be getting played for a while. Shadow of Mordor does look a little more sleek at ultra and the frame rate stays at 60fps in the 2nd area. The 670 was being tested a bit in that place as it would drop into the 50's at times (on high settings).
 
Forget about the ASIC quality crap, it has nothing to do with how good your GPU is. The binning process is much more complicated and whatever number GPU-Z gives you is meaningless unless you know the bins that are done on a batch basis. Also the explanation about ASIC quality on GPU-Z is dead wrong, and w1zzard never fixed it.
 
My MSI 970 Gold Edition will arrive today. I'll uninstall and then fresh install the newest Nvidia drivers. After that, exactly how should I best test its performance? Can you guys detail what programs to use, what settings to apply and what scores youd like me to post here? Thanks!
 
My MSI 970 Gold Edition will arrive today. I'll uninstall and then fresh install the newest Nvidia drivers. After that, exactly how should I best test its performance? Can you guys detail what programs to use, what settings to apply and what scores youd like me to post here? Thanks!

I usually just run 3dmark firestrike to check the score, then play around with my current games and crank everything up and see how it runs.
 
Hey guys, say if the gtx 970 g1 and zotac 780ti ghz editon are the same price, which would be a better purchase? This is at 1440p btw.
 
My MSI 970 Gold Edition will arrive today. I'll uninstall and then fresh install the newest Nvidia drivers. After that, exactly how should I best test its performance? Can you guys detail what programs to use, what settings to apply and what scores youd like me to post here? Thanks!

Play the most performance intensive game you can think of and turn on the highest settings possible

Then gush over how goddamn well it runs everything
 
Play the most performance intensive game you can think of and turn on the highest settings possible

Then gush over how goddamn well it runs everything

No, just no. He shouldn't expect his 970 to run everything at 60fps in conjunction with maximum settings, not even at 1080p.
Not today, not tomorrow.
 
My MSI 970 Gold Edition will arrive today. I'll uninstall and then fresh install the newest Nvidia drivers. After that, exactly how should I best test its performance? Can you guys detail what programs to use, what settings to apply and what scores youd like me to post here? Thanks!

Be a little more conservative with your OC. Don't mess with volts and don't try cranking it up over 1500Mhz without stepping up a little at a time.
 
Guys I'm thinking about upgrading to 970 from my 570ti. Do you think it will last me through this generation? My other specs are: I7-2600k, 8GB of RAM. I'm willing to get more RAM but I don't want to get new CPU and Motherboard.
 
No, just no. He shouldn't expect his 970 to run everything at 60fps in conjunction with maximum settings, not even at 1080p.
Not today, not tomorrow.

Joking. I just know that every game I own runs at 60fps on the highest settings. Then again, the only particularly good looking game I own is BF4.
 
Joking. I just know that every game I own runs at 60fps on the highest settings. Then again, the only particularly good looking game I own is BF4.

I have nothing against jokes but in such a thread it's important not to lie and deceive people, they haven't bought a supercomputer so there will always be games offering options above what a 970/980 can handle at 60fps.

I don't expect The Witcher 3 or Batman AK, The Division to run at 1080p, max settings (even disregarding AA) and 60fps on a single 980. Those games will keep reasonable baselines I think but top end settings will always require (should always) top end hardware.
 
Play the most performance intensive game you can think of and turn on the highest settings possible

Then gush over how goddamn well it runs everything

I tried my regular 970 with Ethan Carter and wasn't like, blown away by the performance :(
 
Is it just the 970s that are prone to coil while or do the 980s get it as well?

Google has lead me to a few posts like this one. So yeah, the 980s can have them too :(

It really sucks because I want to get one, but I have no patience for hardware lottery/RMA nonsense.

Edit: Actually that guy said the coil whine lessened with use. But I feel that if I'm spending that much money on a card, it shouldn't be an issue to begin with.
 
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