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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Daniel Egger - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
I love this card and am really excited. BUT if this cannot run on a single PCIe connector despite being 145W only that is a real deal breaker as I'm definitely not going to replace my excellent PSU just because some moron decided to plan in some additional headroom...Razorbak86 - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
"single PCIe connector... excellent PSU"Good one. LOL
wetwareinterface - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link
if your psu doesn't have 2 6 pin pci-e connectors it can't be that excellent. the lepa 500 watt is $36 and will run the 970 no problem and is a decent supply. i shudder to think what you have if it can't handle this card.Daniel Egger - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link
An efficient quiet low power PSU from "be quiet!" for my HTPC which would be perfectly capable of dealing with the GTX 970. There're actually many PSUs which only have 1 PCIe connector because that's the norm not the execption that you'll need at most one. So I take it that all of you "shuddering" all day thinking of what horrible PSUs others might have, have their high end gaming rigs and don't give a crap about silence and/or efficiency -- good for you but maybe schedule a reality check sometime.maximumGPU - Sunday, September 28, 2014 - link
Yeah, but that "moron" who planned additional headroom is catering to the needs of the biggest market for these cards, who are gamers likely to overclock at some point. Not the niche need of using it in an htpc case with a low power single pcie psu.D. Lister - Monday, September 29, 2014 - link
You could use an adapter to get an extra 6-pin connector, which should work fine considering the low power draw of the 970. That is, if your excellent PSU has an HDD power dongle to spare.</snark>pixelstuff - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Looking at the 970 cards on Newegg, any idea why all brands have the 2x DVI, 1x DisplayPort configuration? While nVidia.com lists the 970 specs as having 3x DisplayPort, 1 DVI port.I was hoping to get a 970 with 3 display ports, so I'm wondering what is going on.
yefi - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
The overclock on this is pretty weak. I get 1314Mhz core with a max boost of 1554Mhz with the MSI Frozr 970. I see reviewers hitting ~1500Mhz also.mr.techguru - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link
It seems the ACX Cooler similar to the EVGA 760 ACX has a design/manufacturing flew even the 2.0 version has the pipelines vs GPU position flew ; after throughly reading the reviews & users feedback ( EVGA GeForce GTX 970 ACX has misaligned GPU vs heatpipes) : http://www.overclock.net/t/1514624/eteknix-possibl... and http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/evga-geforce-gtx-... and http://forums.evga.com/m/tm.aspx?m=2221919&p=1 and http://www.eteknix.com/evga-gtx-970-feature-manufa... Therefore I would rather go with another brand Like the Asus Strix Series ; MSI Gaming Series or the Gegabyte G1 Gaming Series .. Less Risk Especially the warranty is RMA. As soon they are available at Stock update asap to order one .. Meanwhile Reason why they did not show the PCB of the ACX 2.0 and they showed us the FTW. I was interested to purchase the ACX version but now In a dilemma since the issue has not been mentioned in a tech site they I usually always trust!bsim500 - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link
Good review. Is there going to be a GTX 960 to fill the rather large gap between the GTX 970 and 750Ti?