The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 Review: Featuring EVGA
by Ryan Smith on September 26, 2014 10:00 AM ESTCompany of Heroes 2
Our second benchmark in our benchmark suite is Relic Games’ Company of Heroes 2, the developer’s World War II Eastern Front themed RTS. For Company of Heroes 2 Relic was kind enough to put together a very strenuous built-in benchmark that was captured from one of the most demanding, snow-bound maps in the game, giving us a great look at CoH2’s performance at its worst. Consequently if a card can do well here then it should have no trouble throughout the rest of the game.
Company of Heroes 2 was one of the only games that the GTX 980 didn’t take a significant lead in, and consequently it’s one of the few games that GTX 970 will lose by a significant margin. With the exception of 1080p the stock GTX 970 can’t keep pace with the R9 290, let alone the R9 290XU. Overall NVIDIA’s second-tier card will trail the AMD flagship by 12%, which in the grand scheme of things is still going to be much narrower than the price difference.
In this case Company of Heroes 2 seems especially fond of shader performance. So the GTX 970 drops off by a bit more than in most other games, coming in at just 85% of the performance of GTX 980.
With AMD already doing well on minimum framerates against the GTX 980, against the GTX 970 NVIDIA ends up further behind. When push comes to shove in this game’s hardest scenes, the GTX 970 buckles a bit more than the competition.
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dibbademevos - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
hidibbademevos - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
hi
SkyBill40 - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
Having always been an MSI guy, I've not really considered going with another vendor... until now. This looks like a nice card which also happens to conveniently match my color scheme whereas the red coloring of the MSI Gaming line sadly does not. Still, the overclocks are pretty much a wash and the only real differences seem to be in the cooling solution. The ACX 2.0 seems to be on par with the MSI, so I suppose I could go either way.Oxford Guy - Saturday, October 4, 2014 - link
Is it the case that the ACX card uses only 4 power phases which is why overclocking it beyond the factory setting isn't going to work very well? There is no mention of power phases in your article.Kanuj5678 - Sunday, October 5, 2014 - link
GTX 970 beats the shit out of everything and that too in style with lowest TDPCheers
Kanuj
ambientblue - Wednesday, April 29, 2015 - link
Enthusiasts dont care about TDP that much. The 290x is held back by HSF cooling (Uber mode is actually stock advertised speeds) while the GTX 970 is not. Water-cool the 290x and OC it to 1200mhz and it will match a 980, surpassing it at 4K resolution easily.igyb - Tuesday, October 7, 2014 - link
Is the gtx 970 just an underclocked 980? i might just get that because i cant really afford a 980.Kimtastic - Tuesday, October 21, 2014 - link
Dear Ryan,I had a MSI GTX 970 and found that under heavy load the core clock was fluctuating and causing FPS drops. After having read this article, I now understand that its due to the TDP limit. Is this something that will/can be fixed or something permanent?
I would be grateful for your advice. Many thanks.
hoohoo - Thursday, October 23, 2014 - link
Thank you for including an HD7970 in the test!Shoiti2 - Monday, November 3, 2014 - link
Those price are damn cheap. I would say, buying a gtx980 in the U.S wouldnt even buy a gtx 970 in Brazil. I'm living in Brazil right now and ordered an evga gtx 970 sc. Ok, how much did i pay for the gtx 970!! Nothing less than $750USD.the Gtx 970 at $750USD still very cheap for us Brazilian, the world's most expensive country.
The evga gtx 980 is costing around $1100USD, not kidding, check for yourself.