LinkBack URL
About LinkBacksAgreed, the 960 will burn the 750ti... The 750ti is like 2 year tech now! I would spend the bit extra, get the 960 and then there is no need to upgrade down the road!Originally Posted by kalniel
Agreed, the 960 will burn the 750ti... The 750ti is like 2 year tech now! I would spend the bit extra, get the 960 and then there is no need to upgrade down the road!
I would keep an eye out for an R7 265. You miss out on a few features but it's really an R9 class card and offers a lot more grunt. If you up the budget then an R9 285 or 380 would be the way to go.
An R7 265 is an R7 370 with the core clocked at 900Mhz (boost 925Mhz) instead of 975Mhz.
yeah buy last series nvidia or ati... gtx950 not is bad for play game, but 960 is perfect
I'm pleasantly surprised how well my 750ti is dealing with 1080p - I was planning to upgrade, but since it can deal with JC3 on med-high settings without any noticeable stutter (to me, at least) I'm happy to wait for the next big thing instead. Anything heavily discounted in a steam sale it'll take in its stride, of course
I was running a GTX 460 which roughly would have been in the same category and it's surprisingly tough. Ran majority of games at 1360*768 with easy at max or high if it was VRAM intensive. I'd imagine a 750ti would be good even at 1080p if you knock a few settings down even for future games. Check out some benchmarks for the games you're playing is a good idea though if you're worried
The 750ti is decent enough. It uses the Maxwell core so is up to date in terms of architecture. Just built a PC for my sister with one and she plays csgo with it well enough. For the price it's decent but it will struggle at higher settings with newer games.
The problem was a communication's snarlup at nVidia that meant several of the bits of information initially released about the GTX 970 were wrong.
The fact that 1/8th of the 970's memory runs at a different speed isn't a problem and is unlikely to even be a limitation given how many developers are now aware of it.
Although as far as I know all of the memory on the 950 runs at the same speed (and of course it does on the 960/980 as they're the full chip).
I wouldn't go as far as to say it plain isn't a problem as it provably can pose an issue, and it's not just a communication thing as it's an issue regardless of whether they bothered to tell people about it. Also the fact game developers and Nvidia's driver devs are aware of it and working around it now, doesn't mean that will always be the case if e.g. the next gen gets released and they stop caring about explicitly validating on that card in future games. And you only have to look at the performance of some newer games on Kepler to see how they seem to get much less attention now vs Maxwell (e.g. 960 outperforming 780 which is crazy).
So, it's a real thing and at least worth bearing in mind, especially if you plan on keeping the card beyond Pascal's release. I know I'd be uncomfortable owning one. But yeah as far as I'm aware it is only present on the 970.
I have a 1080p monitor will a 4gb 960 be worth it or is 2gb enough for full settings on switcher 3 and battlefront
That is how the card was designed by nVidia's hardware engineers, it is fully intended to function like that. It isn't any sort of bug or oversight or manufacturing fault.
Do you have a recent link for that? I can't say I've ever seen any tests with the GTX 970 falls behind the GTX 960.
Depends on how long you plan to keep it, but I'd go for the 4GB version unless you're planning to swap it within a year or two.
Something can be a deliberate design decision and still be a problem. That fact that software can be written that demonstrates the very low bandwidth of the last 512MB indicates that the potential is there for it to be a problem, and nvidia have confirmed that that last 512MB of RAM does operate differently to the main 3.5GB. So a badly written or optimised piece of software (and how many badly optimised console ports have PC gamers had to put up with over the years?) may come to rely on all 4GB of RAM on the 970, and see significant performance issues. Just because you don't see it in normal gameplay in current games doesn't mean you should ignore it.
More to the point, because nvidia kept shtum about it until someone demonstrated the behaviour in the wild, then said that the behaviour was deliberate, it looks like they have something to hide. And whether they do or not, appearing to be deceitful is a public relations disaster.
Now, it may well be incredibly unlikely that the memory design of the GTX 970 will cause performance issues in the future; it certainly doesn't seem to cause an issue with current games, or at least not as tested by reputable internet review sites. But the memory design means that in certain circumstances it can cause performance issues. If you choose a 970, you're choosing that risk. People need to understand that. To say there absolutely is no problem at all is plain incorrect.
Without meaning to repeat scaryjim, it being intentional doesn't mean it's not a problem.
As I said it's generally not an issue now, but it has affected games until it was discovered (in fact it was discovered precisely because it was causing problems, otherwise we still might not have known about the weird design choice) and explicitly worked around by developers - the fact it was causing problems beforehand means that, without developers paying attention to it in future, the potential is there for it to re-occur, hence my concern. The problem has not been 'fixed' as it's a permanent hardware feature, it's just being avoided for now.
So do a dozen other design decisions, I can think of at least two that are more likely to have a noticeable impact on future performance than this aspect of the memory design.
Are they problems too? What about the corresponding ones on AMD cards? Should people be buying graphics cards at if all the options have half a dozen problems with them?
The point is that this issue has caused problems as I said, and issues noticeable enough for people to notice, forcing Nvidia to disclose why it happened. It's not just an academic curiosity that could theoretically cause problems, the potential for problems has been proved if the 'feature' isn't taken into consideration when developing for the GPU.
I'm not for one minute suggesting no-one should buy it (or even that it's *the* most significant issue worth considering for that matter), just that the blanket statement of it not being a problem isn't so easy to call. And that people should be aware of it in order to decide for themselves.
Edit: It's also worth noting that it's not performance degradation that's the issue with the 970 memory configuration, it's the more distracting things like stuttering/freezing which were reported that I'm mostly concerned with (again, the issues which were apparent enough for people to notice).
Last edited by watercooled; 20-01-2016 at 08:10 PM.
Potentially, yes. Care to share them (with appropriate referencing and sources, of course)?
People discuss the NVidia design because it was widely publicised, and had an "in the wild" demonstration of the decision negatively affecting performance, albeit under very specific circumstances.
The potential problems associated with Fiji's technical limitation to 4GB was fairly widely discussed, as I recall, however no-one's managed to come up with a test yet that clearly demonstrates a significant performance penalty associated with Fiji having "only" 4GB of VRAM.
As to whether people should be buying graphics cards; well, that's entirely up to them. Every purchase you make is going to have associated risks, and you have to weigh those up and decide which risks you're happy to live with. The GTX 970 one has been clearly demonstrated, which for me gives it significant weight when making that decision. I can't think of any similar issues with other recent graphics cards - from either stable - that have such a clearly demonstrated negative effect on performance. I am always happy to get new information, though...
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote