GTX970 on 2560 x 1440p

TheF34RChannel

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Was wondering how this looks in games like gta5 and tw3? It'll only be until Pascal gets here and I can afford one though. I should say that I am a fan of max settings in games while realising that I probably cannot until I get a flagship Pascal on that resolution. Hopefully some of you lads have al such a setup and can tell me a little about it.
 
That review of the Zotac probably is tested with GTA in normal conditions. There are many areas of the map, as you might know, that really stresses the GPU. In other words, if you're hitting 70 FPS in normal conditions, you'll be hitting 50 FPS in grassy sections, for instance. You can get around this by turning Grass down. Don't go any lower than High, though. Normal is not very demanding for a reason.
 
TBH I would get a R9 390 over a GTX 970, 8GB of VRAM vs 3.5GB.
I personally wouldn't see a benefit to that. If you want to maintain at least 60 FPS in GTA V, for instance, both a 970 and a 390 will need to have a few settings turned down at 1440p. When you do that, your VRAM usage goes down. I'm running an R9 Fury at 1440p with around 50-80 FPS. I use about 3.4GB of VRAM. I've hit my GPU limit before my VRAM limit.
 
You can get around this by turning Grass down.

I'm sorry what? There is a grass setting below Ultra?

TBH I would get a R9 390 over a GTX 970, 8GB of VRAM vs 3.5GB.

I would also get a 390 over a 970. They are bigger, use more power and in general just far less nooby. BUT if you can use more than 3.5GB vram with a single card and still get good fps... then I guess your playing modded skyrim.

Lets talk GTA V and 1440p, probably two of my favorite things! Unless you have two 6GB cards you won't hit absolute maximum settings. But it will still be beautiful. 3GB is definitely enough, definitely definitely for one card. And one card is with certainty enough to run the game well. In my main rig (the only one I play GTA on) I run 780's. For the first two days playing the game I didn't actually notice I had SLI disabled. :D So straight off I think you'll have a great time with a 970/390 because they are nearly as good as 780's, sadly they are hard to get hold of now. (don't tell me Kepler isn't the finest generation of GPU's in the world). Now I have 3 cards I have maxed out just about everything besides AA which unfortunately vram won't allow and it runs at around 110fps. With two cards it's probably the perfect balance between performance and vram, staying consistently above 50fps with everything enabled. So 3.5GB on one card is definitely enough for 1440p GTA V and still enough for two cards IMO. 8GB would start to be useful with 3 cards.

Are you contemplating a new monitor or new card. Definitely go 1440p if you haven't already, 25" is legit too.

JR
 
I personally wouldn't see a benefit to that. If you want to maintain at least 60 FPS in GTA V, for instance, both a 970 and a 390 will need to have a few settings turned down at 1440p. When you do that, your VRAM usage goes down. I'm running an R9 Fury at 1440p with around 50-80 FPS. I use about 3.4GB of VRAM. I've hit my GPU limit before my VRAM limit.

R9 390 tends to be faster than a 970. The 8GB of vram is just a bonus in most cases but for the games that do suck of vram for some reason it's nice to know you won't run out. Even then at 1440p, both the 970 and 390 can achieve 60fps at very high settings.
 
I'm sorry what? There is a grass setting below Ultra?
It's there within the game files. You have to do some major hacking, but you can turn the Grass from Ultra to... dare I say... Very High. :shocked1:

Hehe! :D


I would also get a 390 over a 970. They are bigger, use more power and in general just far less nooby. BUT if you can use more than 3.5GB vram with a single card and still get good fps... then I guess your playing modded skyrim.

Lets talk GTA V and 1440p, probably two of my favorite things! Unless you have two 6GB cards you won't hit absolute maximum settings. But it will still be beautiful. 3GB is definitely enough, definitely definitely for one card. And one card is with certainty enough to run the game well. In my main rig (the only one I play GTA on) I run 780's. For the first two days playing the game I didn't actually notice I had SLI disabled. :D So straight off I think you'll have a great time with a 970/390 because they are nearly as good as 780's, sadly they are hard to get hold of now. (don't tell me Kepler isn't the finest generation of GPU's in the world). Now I have 3 cards I have maxed out just about everything besides AA which unfortunately vram won't allow and it runs at around 110fps. With two cards it's probably the perfect balance between performance and vram, staying consistently above 50fps with everything enabled. So 3.5GB on one card is definitely enough for 1440p GTA V and still enough for two cards IMO. 8GB would start to be useful with 3 cards.

Are you contemplating a new monitor or new card. Definitely go 1440p if you haven't already, 25" is legit too.

JR
I agree with this. 3GB is fine for high settings in GTA V at 1080p. 4GB is more ideal for very high settings and MSAA. The 970 is perfectly adequate for that job. Unless you're running SLI/Crossfire, 4GB is enough for 1440p with high settings and FXAA. A 980 or Fury are ideal for 1440p gaming on a 'budget'.

The 8GB present on the 390/390X cards seem more like a gimmick to me than a necessary addition. You can tell this by how well the 290X keeps up with the 390/390X despite having half the amount of VRAM. Having more VRAM can help with minimum frame rates and micro-stuttering that occurs when RAM swapping to system memory/pagefile, but it's not commonly that big of a deal. I only see a benefit to 8GB of VRAM when running two GPU's at higher resolutions and higher settings. The new 390X2 dual GPU card will be a beast for 1440p gaming because you'll actually have the horsepower to crank the settings.
 
I agree with this. 3GB is fine for high settings in GTA V at 1080p. 4GB is more ideal for very high settings and MSAA. The 970 is perfectly adequate for that job. Unless you're running SLI/Crossfire, 4GB is enough for 1440p with high settings and FXAA. A 980 or Fury are ideal for 1440p gaming on a 'budget'.

3GB is solid for Ultra, you just don't get to enable all the final little settings that don't do much but are needed to say you reached maximum. Like x8 AA and the extended distance scaling thing. For that you will need two of the hottest 6GB cards you can find.

Four cards with GTA on the other hand is a massive no-go. I spent 3 days trying to get Quad Titan X's to cooperate for some 4k GTA V. I even enlisted the help of 8-pack but in the end two cards was the optimal solution. I feel like with enough fiddling three would be good as my Tri-780 setup loves GTA.

JR
 
3GB is solid for Ultra, you just don't get to enable all the final little settings that don't do much but are needed to say you reached maximum. Like x8 AA and the extended distance scaling thing. For that you will need two of the hottest 6GB cards you can find.

Four cards with GTA on the other hand is a massive no-go. I spent 3 days trying to get Quad Titan X's to cooperate for some 4k GTA V. I even enlisted the help of 8-pack but in the end two cards was the optimal solution. I feel like with enough fiddling three would be good as my Tri-780 setup loves GTA.

JR
I meant that 3GB is fine for single card setups. You'd hit your GPU limit before your VRAM limit most of the time. With SLI/Crossfire, for you it works fine so it should work fine for others too.

I think we've become obsessed with VRAM when before no one really cared that much about it. Which is weird because we're still benchmarking older games like Crysis 3 and Tomb Raider that are fine with 2GB of VRAM.

I remember when the 970 was first released, there were so many threads of 770 SLI vs 970. Many were suggesting the SLI 770's. The threads are still there to find. Now everyone would be like, "770 SLI iz only 2GB of VRAM!! Ur computer will toats blow up. Get Titan X."
 
Thanks for all the replies!

I already own the 970, and will upgrade the monitor come December. The 970 is to hold me over until Pascal. I made this thread to make sure I can play nicely on the 970 at 1440p until then.

The gta5 replies are a bit varied, makes sense, from very high to ultra. Guess I'll have to find my own sweet spot, which also makes sense - I'm just happy to know I can play the more demanding games, gta5 and tw3, with this with only tuning the settings a bit down; as long as it looks good I'm dead happy!
 
Thanks for all the replies!

I already own the 970, and will upgrade the monitor come December. The 970 is to hold me over until Pascal. I made this thread to make sure I can play nicely on the 970 at 1440p until then.

The gta5 replies are a bit varied, makes sense, from very high to ultra. Guess I'll have to find my own sweet spot, which also makes sense - I'm just happy to know I can play the more demanding games, gta5 and tw3, with this with only tuning the settings a bit down; as long as it looks good I'm dead happy!
I highly suggest you do not use Ultra settings at 1440p, which would include the advanced menu options, MSAA, PCSS Shadows, etc. A 980ti struggles with that. Grass on Ultra in particular is incredibly demanding. Obviously in the city it makes very little difference, but when you're escaping the cops by climbing a mountain, prepare to see massive, massive drops.
 
Cheers mate! How about tw3?

With Ultra, hairworks off and no AA you'd probably be in the high 30 low 40 range. Hairworks on and performance will drop by a large amount.

Just did a quick google search.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-amd-radeon-r9-390-8gb-review
Its a 390 review but has the 970 in it as well for TW3. Didn't see GTA V anywhere. But as you can see the 390 and 970 are basically even in performance at 1440p. Still for both being on the cheaper side they both perform excellently at 1440
 
I've got hairworks off now as well so that's fine. I have hairworks AA on, whatever that is lol. Would be a shame to have no AA at all but if that's what it takes :) I could always keep the dlc for when Pascal arrives but I doubt I can wait that long he he...

So what I take from all this is that it's very doable, yet not ideal. Of course these are two of the more demanding games so I expect higher FPS in other titles. I'd say I'll be fine until the GPU upgrade.
 
I've got hairworks off now as well so that's fine. I have hairworks AA on, whatever that is lol. Would be a shame to have no AA at all but if that's what it takes :) I could always keep the dlc for when Pascal arrives but I doubt I can wait that long he he...

So what I take from all this is that it's very doable, yet not ideal. Of course these are two of the more demanding games so I expect higher FPS in other titles. I'd say I'll be fine until the GPU upgrade.

I'm more excited for Arctic Islands tbh, I feel AMD have more to gain in a node jump then Nvidia do. I still expect both to provide massive performance gains over previous generations on 28nm.
 
I'm more excited for Arctic Islands tbh, I feel AMD have more to gain in a node jump then Nvidia do. I still expect both to provide massive performance gains over previous generations on 28nm.
Me too. Also, G-Sync just doesn't offer enough benefits for the massive price premium.
 
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