Worth taking the asus strix 970 gtx now?

Is it worth taking the 970 gtx now after a year since launch and with 3.5 or 3.6 gb of fast vram.

980gtx is like 170$ more and out of stock and budget.
980ti is more then double of 970 gtx in price.

So the doubts are.

1. 970 gtx with vram stutter issue is fixed with driver or still there?
2. Dx12 issues will be solved anytime soon, as nvidia claims?

I found it really the sweetest point in performance and price ratio comparing it to the 960 and 980 .

I was also thinking of r9 390x but it's like 100$ more.

 

I wouldn't pick the Strix when you can find the MSI Gaming Series version for about the same price. Out of all the high end variations of the GTX 970 the Strix has the lowest allowed power draw and limitations in the BIOS. At least that's how it was when I built this rig at this start of this year.

Anyway to answer your questions:
1 - The 970 never had much of a stutter issue, it's overblown and can only have issues in specific games at high enough resolutions that can push it to over 3.5GB usage. I returned my original GTX 970 because of this and bought an R9 290X only to run into a brick wall of problems and eventually ended back on a 970.

2 - This generation of hardware doesn't fully support DX 12, don't expect magic through software. Apparently these cards don't support hardware level context switching features. But DX 12 games are a world away, by the time DX 12 becomes the norm who knows what's going on and what amount of hardware power will be necessary, most likely we'll need new video cards to run DX 12 games at 60fps anyway. The only thing that's a fact right now is that as it stands AMD cards gain more from DX 12 than nVidia cards.

 

So you suggest the msi over asus?

I once had a msi 890fx motherboard, which died out of over clocking.
It runs without cpu in it...but doesn't spin when the cpu is in the socket. Lasted 5 years.

That's why I am avoiding msi.

Asus mobo lasted over decades without OC.

But in gpu it could be a different story.

BTW , how is your 970 running?

 

Can it still max out games?

I don't want to OC , that's how I killed my 480 gtx too. :-(

 

Overclocking doesn't kill motherboards, save for very unusual cases, or if you did something weird such as raise the voltage on parts you shouldn't have touched. As for video cards, if an overclock killed one, it's due to heat, which you should be monitoring anyway.

I can't speak for MSI's current product lineup overall but you can't compare any other line of items they have available to their video card lineup. Their current video cards from the Gaming xG series (4G in the case of the 970) have the best heatsink/fan combo in my opinion, even despite the fact that it lacks a backplate. That's from experience, I had one. When I bought a 970 again I bought the Gigabyte G1 Gamer version assuming it would be superior (and it was by far the highest priced 970 available). It gets a higher overclock, but the heatsink/fan combo (which has a backplate) isn't as good as the MSI series. It's much louder to maintain the same temperatures at the same settings.

As for maxing out games, it depends on the resolution and what you definition of max out is. My monitor is 2560x1440, so no I don't max out new games, but with some reasonable setting adjustments I can get 60fps. But that is with a massive overclock, don't ever expect to hit 1.6GHz, expect more towards 1.5.

 

You can kill motherboards with CPU overclocking, especially on AMD boards.
http://www.overclock.net/t/946407/amd-motherboards-vrm-info-database

 

i have a 1.5ghz msi twin frozr v 970 (4G GAMING). great cooling performance, and most 970's can hit 1500mhz, so i recommend overclocking, the card is very quiet aswell even with high fan speed, a shame it doesnt include backplate

 

Yeah , the no back plate is a turn off.

Nvidia 480 gtx reference was the most power hungry and hot single gpu card.

I used to moniter temp, clear dust. Maybe all hardware has a time span.

And about mobo maybe I took the NB too much. Who knows. Could be bad luck because my gpu , my mobo , my Samsung note 3 screen all broke that month of may 2015.

It was indeed a shirty month.

I may push the 970 a bit.

But I so like the asus but it has limited OC capability.

And about the processor, I was thinking of a i5 6600 and a b150.

Which after next 5 years I'll upgrade.

I don't mind maxing out or not. But I didn't want the 3.5gb stutter to be an issue.

 

Saw the sheet mentioned above.

I had the msi 890fx gd70 which has 4+1, vrm and was not recommended for amd phenom II x6 processor which I had.

 

I've never heard of a modern Intel board frying except for when someone touched motherboard component voltages which they shouldn't have. Raising the core/cache voltage of an Intel CPU isn't going to kill a motherboard. Or have you actually heard of that happening?

The overall design and cooling is more important. There are plenty of cards with a backplate which run hotter than the MSI Gaming cards, I mean right on the back with the plate. If I had the option I'd gladly take an MSI version if I could trade my G1 for one. The backplate isn't enough to make this the better choice.

 

Surprising you had that experience with regards to cooling. I can't get mine to go over 66C even benching at 1580. I highly doubt the MSI cooler could do better than that.

 

I don't hesitate to set my cards to automatically go up to 100% fan speed, and with those settings the card's temps were somewhat apart. IIRC the hottest I've gotten on this is 65C with it usually sitting around 60C when extremely stressed. The MSI card on the other hand (again IIRC) was typically 5C lower when under max stress.

Talking about was the actual back, even while stressed to 60C, to the touch the MSI card wasn't too hot on the back on any component. Meanwhile the Gigabyte G1 can become extremely hot even with the backplate. Though these results shouldn't be surprising, I'm quite sure the G1 draws a notable amount more power which explains the temperature differences. But I just don't like how loud it is in comparison.

As a side note, I'm certain the power draw has something to do with its higher coil whine as well. Just by increasing its allowed power I hear an instant increase in whine. It may not account for all of the excess sound but the higher allowed power draw of the G1 no doubt contributes to it.

That's the price we pay for the higher overclock, some more noise, I just wish its actual fans were more quiet.

 

I bought one 2.5 months ago and am dead happy and the only stutter issues were in gta5 and tw3 but they are driver related and have improved with drivers.

I had an MSI oc model before and they hadn't upped the voltage, so games crashed and I had to do it manually. I hope they now have upped voltages accordingly on their cards? Anyone knows?

 

, i will see how the msi cooler does with +87mv , and for good measure, what fan speed were you using?

 

HAve a 970 Phantom. Goes over 1500MHZ, 4000mem without even touching the voltage. Got my bios modded for 125% Power limit oso no throttling anymore. Quiet. Never noticed any stuttering, even 1440P. In GTA V in 1440Pmemory usage is up to 4 GIG but no stuttering. Great performance everywhere. I am happy. That vram issue is overhyped.

HAd a 290 PCS+ before, annoying loud, hot and slower.

 

I must be the only person who runs his MSI 970 at stock lol

I have overclocked it but only to epeen on 3dmark

 

msi cooler, with stock fan curve, never above 69c but mostly at around 67-68c when overclocked. wit custom curve cards currently sitting at unigine stressing overclock at 62c, i expect it to rise soon though

 

What card do you have now? I mean if you have something now that's getting by then I would wait for all the dx12 kinks to get worked out , and then buy something from Nvidia's next generation.

 

got an MSI 4g gtx970 around a month ago. couldn't be happier. OC's like a beast, clocks in specs. don't miss the backplate at all as even what people say is bad VRAM, elpida, does a 1000mhz overclock from stock. cool and silent, can't be heard at all over my case fans at all, even in heavy gaming.

And 0 fan usage in idle. even when im playing gzdoom at 4x DSR+ 8x MSAA, the card doesn't use the fan at all.

Played mad max at 2x DSR constant 60 FPS, batman AK fully maxed, most older games easily 4kDSR+ some AA on top, modern warfare 3 and black ops 2 constant 60 fps at 4K. Far Cry 4 also played maxxed out.

For smaller monitors it's a great card.

the 3.5 gb is not an issue in games. i've used more than 3.5gb and had no slowdowns. you will run out of GPU power before VRAM negatively affects your FPS. the controversy was over the specs, not the actual in game performance.

 

yeah the only time that i can hit 3.5gb is with settings that would cause horrible framerate anyway. as for overclocking, some cards wont do aswell as others, my card is a terrible overclocker for the memory, i cant seem to do more than +200mhz mem.