The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 Review: Featuring EVGA
by Ryan Smith on September 26, 2014 10:00 AM ESTCrysis 3
Still one of our most punishing benchmarks, Crysis 3 needs no introduction. With Crysis 3, Crytek has gone back to trying to kill computers and still holds “most punishing shooter” title in our benchmark suite. Only in a handful of setups can we even run Crysis 3 at its highest (Very High) settings, and that’s still without AA. Crysis 1 was an excellent template for the kind of performance required to drive games for the next few years, and Crysis 3 looks to be much the same for 2014.
Crysis 3 is another game where the outcome between the R9 290XU and GTX 970 depends on the resolution. At 4K Low the GTX 970 trails the R9 290XU by 10%, only for the two to get within a frame of each other at 1440p High. Past that it’s all NVIDIA at 1080p. This once again neatly illustrates that AMD still holds a general resolution scaling advantage over NVIDIA and the Maxwell 2 architecture. Though since we’re looking at a $329 card that’s cheaper than any 4K monitor, that’s not an advantage that’s going to be of much value in the real world.
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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.