Which is better for 4k gaming. one 980ti or two 980. Guys based on your suggestions I have to make my pick. Advance thanks for your inputs.
Depends on what games you play, dual 970s could be enough. Look at the main website's benchmarks and make your decision accordingly.
4K eats a lot of video ram. While a 980ti isn't enough to do 4K on its own, I doubt the 4 Gigs of video ram on the standard 980's will be enough in the long run. There are already games that use more than that at sub 4K resolutions. Personally, I would do what BarryJ suggested and get a 980ti and SLI it later.
Most of the time there's quite a bit of vram allocation. A 980 with 4gb will run exactly the same as a functional 980 with 8gb. The first could be using 4gb the second could be using 5gb+ at the same exact settings, resolution and clock speeds. Seen this first hand with 4gb 680s. The ran exactly the same as the 2gb cards 99% of the time.
I had 2 770's, 2 gig versions, back when 2 gigs was still a thing, and I was constantly maxing out the vram and having to turn down settings to stop games from stuttering. It's what prompted me to get 6 gig 780's instead of 3 gig ones. If I were buying a card now (I did, just this week, actually) I wouldn't buy anything under 6 gigs. It really sucks having a lot of GPU power but having to turn things down because it doesn't fit in memory. With SLI 980's, you'll hit that vram ceiling long before you max out the power of the cards. Maybe not right now, but soon.
4k doesn't really eat a lot more vram than 1440p. What it eats a lot more into is gpu grunt. More grunt is more important.
970 SLI for 4K gaming? Umm, not really. Well, at least not for me. I'd want 60fps all the time which I won't get at 4K. But if someone is OK with console fps (~30) then sure, no problem.
I can't remember specifically, but as soon as I got the second card I started pushing past 1080p and that's when I started running into issues. The cards still had lots of power left but vram was full and games were stuttering. It wasn't long after that I sold them and got the two 780's. No more stuttering at all.
Grunt is important, yes. In my case, I had the grunt. At the time, 2 770's were pretty kick-ass performance wise. All that power didn't help when I started maxing settings and resolutions, though. There was a lot of unused power simply because I had to turn things down to stop filling up the ram.
I think big picture if DX12 brings Vram Pooling then SLI 980's will be more than capable at 4K, it was one of the main reasons I picked up a 980, while 980ti is an absolute beast the price was just too steep for me, if money is not a concern I'd say go with 980ti however if you want a bargain now's a great time to pick up a 980.
You would most likely see better frames with 2 980's. Memory shouldn't be an issue as I myself am running the Acer XB280HK. I have yet to see games exceed the 4GB buffer. Even if MSI AB is reporting 4GB usage, most of the time the game is just allocating and not actually using that much memory as the frames are still high. If I was running out of memory usage would be high, but the frames would low (single digits, etc). Geforce GTX 980 Ti - 4k Performance: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/nvidia_geforce_gtx_980_ti_review,25.html http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/nvidia_geforce_gtx_980_ti_review,26.html Geforce GTX 980 SLI - 4k Performance: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_980_sli_review,22.html http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_980_sli_review,23.html *Take into account that newer drivers have been released since these reviews/tests were performed so the performance could show some increases/decreases.
And as always, lack of minimum fps, an FCAT comparison would have been better. But the benchmark also suggest that 2 x 980Ti would be needed to hover close around 60fps@4K at all times with the newest AAA titles, since the average fps already is below 60 with these old game and 980 2x SLI.
Well I went from 3x GTX 970 4GB to 3x GTX 980Ti in one rig and from GTX 970 SLi to GTX 980 SLi in another. And all I can say for sure every single one of the combinations handled my 4K gaming perfectly and smooth with a consistent 60 FPS. So what to do ? Well I only see two options to that question. 1) If you buy a new card go for one GTX 980Ti. Then you can run SLi later. 2) If you are looking for used and cheap cards then defintely go for either GTX 970 or GTX 980 SLi both solutions handle 4K great and not to forget both chips are superb overclockers. I bought my 2x GTX 980 used for the same price as a new 980Ti, but these two cards running with my current OC settings do run circles around a single 980Ti even if OC'ed 25% on the core