The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 Review: Featuring EVGA
by Ryan Smith on September 26, 2014 10:00 AM ESTGRID 2
The final game in our benchmark suite is also our racing entry, Codemasters’ GRID 2. Codemasters continues to set the bar for graphical fidelity in racing games, and with GRID 2 they’ve gone back to racing on the pavement, bringing to life cities and highways alike. Based on their in-house EGO engine, GRID 2 includes a DirectCompute based advanced lighting system in its highest quality settings, which incurs a significant performance penalty but does a good job of emulating more realistic lighting within the game world.
Our final game once again sees the GTX 970 start out trailing the R9 290XU, only to start pulling ahead once the resolution drops. At 1440p it’s practically a tie, and at 1080p it becomes a clear victory for the GTX 970.
Meanwhile it’s interesting to note that at an average performance gap of 10%, this is the game with the smallest performance difference between the GTX 980 and GTX 970. Compared to ROP throughput and memory bandwidth, shader and texture throughput isn’t being tested here by as much, which helps to negate some of the GTX 970’s innate disadvantage.
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JarredWalton - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
There are plenty of older (but still decent) PSUs that only have 6-pin PEG connectors, and 6-pin to 8-pin adapters are never a good idea IMO.cobalt42 - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
I believe at least one released card does use a single 8-pin connector.jmke - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Asus strix 970 DC2OC uses a single 8-pin connectorHrel - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Remember you guys saying Nvidia is working from the low end up, no longer top down. Well, they should start releasing cards that way. I don't care about your overpriced space heaters, I care about the cards between $100 and $200. Release those first!cobalt42 - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
They did -- the 750 and 750Ti are the first generation Maxwell cards, released earlier this year. They didn't break new ground in price/performance, but they did in price/watt.anandreader106 - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
You mean performance/watt.Houdani - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
I think it's finally time to upgrade my vintage 460 to one of these 970's. I don't plan on upgrading my ancient i7 930 (Nahelem, Bloomfield) just yet.I think I can eek more life out of my rig by bumping the GPU and keeping the rest of the innards the same for another year or two. I'm just surprised that I was able to get 4 good years out of that little 460 (mated with a 1080P monitor).
CaptainSassy - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Exactly the same rig and monitir but i will continue sitting on it :D 329$ is still pricy, i'll wait for true 200$ championwetwareinterface - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link
there won't be a $200 champion. the bang for buck cards are in the $300 and above price tier right now and for the foreseeable future. it was the r9 290 and now it's the 970. the next one i predict will be the 290's replacement it will have the texture compression of the 285 and be their second down part.just4U - Sunday, September 28, 2014 - link
The $200 champion appears to really be the 280 atm for those sitting on older cards.. I'd like to say the 285 but it's higher up in the price bracket. The 960 should be interesting though when it comes out but I doubt it will be a $200 card.. Looking at the 970.. Im guessing it will sit at the $250 price point.