The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 Review: Featuring EVGA
by Ryan Smith on September 26, 2014 10:00 AM ESTMetro: Last Light
As always, kicking off our look at performance is 4A Games’ latest entry in their Metro series of subterranean shooters, Metro: Last Light. The original Metro: 2033 was a graphically punishing game for its time and Metro: Last Light is in its own right too. On the other hand it scales well with resolution and quality settings, so it’s still playable on lower end hardware.
It seems fitting that we start with a game where the GTX 970 and R9 290XU start out tied. Even at the R9 290XU’s strongest hand – 4K – the GTX 970 is at parity and that remains for 1440p as well. Only at 1080p does the GTX 970 even begin to trail the R9 290XU.
This game ends up being a very good summary of what we’re going to see. The GTX 970 and R9 290XU trade blows from game-to-game, but in the end the two are a tie, just as we see here. Which for NVIDIA is a great outcome, as it means they’re tying a card that's nearly 50% more expensive.
Meanwhile if we push on the gas pedal a bit harder with the GTX 970 FTW, we see the EVGA card pull ahead of the R9 290XU and stock GTX 970 by 8%. This is a bit above average overall for the GTX 970 FTW, but it does conveniently highlight the fact that even if AMD officially pushed the clock speeds of R9 290XU a bit more, they’d still end up with GTX 970 right next to them.
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wetwareinterface - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link
they did it because they have customers with at most one dp monitor and if using multiple monitors most have dvi still. also they have all these connectors they bought up laying around so....Gigaplex - Monday, September 29, 2014 - link
It's trivial to convert from DP to DVI but not the other way around.Mr Perfect - Monday, September 29, 2014 - link
Hmm, it has a blower too. It looks like their own design though, I wonder if it matches the 980's blower in noise and cooling.ggathagan - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Gigabyte's version has the same I/O setup as the 980Mr Perfect - Monday, September 29, 2014 - link
Good find. That one's an option then.HanzNFranzen - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Well, it was quite a run for me and AMD. I was a GeForce user back in the day with the Geforce 2 and then the Ti 4600. In 2002 I switched up to AMD when they released the 9700 Pro and never looked back. I have been waiting and waiting for the R9 cards to drop in price to go into my new X99 build. I waited for these 900 cards thinking the response would be somewhat quick as far as an announcement for a competing Radeon or at least a price drop for the 290X. But it never came. (Except that the 390 may be factory water cooled.... which was an "uh oh.." in my mind as far as heat and power is concerned). So 12 years later, I am now back to NVidia as I just ordered my GTX 980 yesterday. I think that NVidia finally released a card at a price and power consumption that just cannot be ignored. A truly impressive feat they have pulled off with the Maxwell line, and I have chosen to reward that effort with my business. Who knows, MaxWELL in a HasWELL-e build... perhaps fate was involved? It is to be named my Wellness system =P Will be quite an upgrade from a i7 920 and 6950. I can't wait to get it assembled!! And by the way, thanks for the 2 great reviews Ryan!wetwareinterface - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link
i'm curious why you'd spend all that money on a cpu ram motherboard config and then get a gaming card. you could have saved a ton of money and bought 4790, msi gaming series board ddr3 ram and bought 2 980's if gaming is your focus youd have the faster gaming cpu and graphics card setup that way.HanzNFranzen - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link
I would agree if I were a 'tick tock' cadence upgrader, and if gaming were my only focus. I weighed going 4790 for a few months. But coming off of a X58 build that I've owned for 6 years it may be possible that this build stays with me just as long, and I believe a 6 core will be the better option than a 4 core in the long run. As far as a gaming card, this is a desktop build not a workstation.asgallant - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Color me intrigued by the 970. I'm considering a pair of these in SLI for 4k gaming (as other reviews indicate they scale quite well), but I'm running a Sandy-Bridge era rig, with x8/x8 PCIe 2 as the only SLI option, and would like to know if I'd run into a PCIe bandwidth bottleneck on these cards. Any chance of a quick scaling test making it into the (assumed to be coming) SLI review?boozed - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Improvements in performance and efficiency have finally progressed to the point that it makes sense to upgrade that four year old system. Wow.