If you have the opportunity to choose from a gtx980ti and 1070

980ti. Price.

They can be bought for around £300. They're also faster if you overclock them.

An overclocked 1070 should be on par with an overclocked 980ti and the 1070 is going to improve with drivers, the 980ti won't anymore. In terms of pricing they are fairly equal, so i'd get the 1070 due to lower power consumption. 980ti is the better option if he can get one used for cheap.
 
980ti. Price.

They can be bought for around £300. They're also faster if you overclock them.

I wish I could agree. But it comes down to where you live. In Norway, the 980Ti is still priced the same as a 1080. You are right on OC though. 980Ti do overclock better.

So for me I would go 1070.
 
Hi,

My choice was between a £360 GTX 980Ti with a moderate factory OC, or a £395 GTX 1070 with a fairly generous factory OC.

I chose the GTX 1070 because I feel it has greater potential in the long run. I suspect Maxwell has gotten all the driver-related performance enhancements it's going to now, and most of the driver optimisation love is going to be for Pascal going forward. I was also impressed by the lower-power nature of the 1070 for the performance it gives, means my PSU has some comfortable headroom and SLI would be easily within its capabilities at some point in the future.

Linked to the lower power, the temperatures the 1070 runs at impresses me. For the first time in years, I'm thinking I'll leave this GPU on air, no WC required.

For clarity, my recent upgrades were to my second PC, not the one in my sig, and are to tide me over until my "big" upgrade later in the year. I was going to do it sooner, but it's summer and I use my PC far less.

For the record, I popped the 1070 into the following build:

2600k @ 4.4ghz
32gb DDR3 1600
2x Samsung 850 EVO SSDs in RAID0 (new)
Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 Motherboard
Windows 10 64 Pro

This machine, with a pair of 120gb Kingston SSD's and a GTX 680 had been the machine I took to friends for LAN gaming. Rather than strip out the water loop on my signature PC, I thought it easier to upgrade this.

So, for me, the £395 GTX 1070 was better value than the £360 GTX 980Ti - though, general performance-wise, they are largely on-par. Though, as I mentioned, I fully expect Pascal to get further performance enhancements via drivers & support in games, as we've always seen the months after a new GPU release.

Scoob.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cnaMoEPgps

980ti OC vs a stock 1080.

How many 1070s can do that then? that would be none, because Nvidia made sure it couldn't happen.

The 980ti is faster than the 1070. At stock the 1070 may have a lead, but as soon as you start to crank on the TI the 1070 can not keep up. There's a reason for that too, the 980ti core is far more complex and powerful than the 1070 core, which is just small Maxwell on speed.

As for the drivers? see also - small Maxwell on speed. The cores work pretty much identically apart from a few new VR features Nvidia have added. So I can't see how they can derp Maxwell like they derped Kepler that time and not cause any issues for Pascal.

Remember, Pascal did not exist until a few months before Nvidia launched it. On their original roadmap we were going straight from Maxwell - Volta. Then all of a sudden they finally make the drop to tiny dies and now Pascal exists.

But no 1070, not even overclocked until it throttles is as fast as a well OC 980ti.
 
Interesting video, AlienALX, thanks for sharing.

When debating between a 980Ti and 1070/1080 myself I watched/read lots of reviews and most appeared to show the 1070 trading blows with factory OC 980Ti's and with both cards manually over clocked the same story was true, with the odd title by title variation. This is the only video I've seen with a OC'd 980Ti on par with a 1080 though...maybe I've just not watched enough lol.

Regardless, I'm still happy with my 1070 Purchase at £35 over the cheapest 980Ti available new online at the time. The only "issue" as much as it is one (it's not really for me) is that on my particular 1070, the vCore is not yet unlocked, doubtless a BIOS tweak will sort that, as it has for other GPU's over the years.

While I cannot change vCore, yet, popping the "Power" Slider to 114% (as high as it'll let me currently) and the "Core" to +100 sees GPU Boost 3.0 take the card to 1,900mhz or so. Oh, ram is at 9ghz equivalent, up from 8ghz so far.

My ultimate aim is to see what the 1080Ti brings to the table later in the year, and I'd likely do my new build around that. For now, my 2600k + 1070 are a good combination - the two 680's on my 2500k WC'd build just couldn't cut it a lot of the time sadly, though anything that used SLI worked well still, though vRam (just 2gb) could be an issue.

Just to be clear, I do feel the 980Ti is an excellent buy at the moment - at least in the Uk @ £360 (Scan) - but the 1070 was the choice for me.

Scoob.
 
Seeing as vega will be out in a few months "we can only hope" all I see from forum users is "dont buy this buy that" WHAT ABOUT WAIT ???????
 
I'm not saying it was a bad choice I mean there are other positives (like extra VRAM etc) but the fact is the 980ti is a faster card so long as you are prepared to put the spade work in to overclock it.

One thing that will never ever happen though is you will never get your 1070 as fast as a 1080 in any shape or form. That was a mistake Nvidia made with the 970-980 and 670-680, both could be overclocked to catch their bigger brother making the more expensive card completely pointless. That's something Nvidia have made absolutely sure will not be repeated with the 1070 at all.

The 1080ti or Titan P* will be super fast. It will also be super expensive. I would imagine they will do the Titan P first at £1200 or so and then do us all a favour by releasing the 1080ti at some point later. How much later? that depends on what AMD have up their sleeve.

However, I am guessing here but I don't think AMD will trouble them too much so no doubt they will drag it out for as long as possible.

Edit. As for waiting? it will be a long wait. When AMD don't compete with Nvidia Nvidia can basically sit back and just wait until they're absolutely sure that they are going to sell no more 1080s before releasing their next card. And trust me, that is exactly what they will do.

That works in two ways IMO. Firstly your card stays top of the heap for longer which is nice. Sadly you pay for it, as they can charge whatever they like.
 
Last edited:
Hey guy's why would we upgrade for 10-15% performance you really need to ask yourself that question. I'm not being a tosser about it but I would want significant performance ina a Gpu to sway me to buy it
 
Hey guy's why would we upgrade for 10-15% performance you really need to ask yourself that question. I'm not being a tosser about it but I would want significant performance ina a Gpu to sway me to buy it

Exactly. Buying a 1080 if you had a 980ti or Titan X was always going to be rather silly.
 
I had a pair of over clocked GTX 680's, which were still very capable as a pair IF the game didn't want to exceed 2gb, and IF SLI scaled well.

For me, Fallout 4 played pretty well at mostly medium settings and SLI was a huge help. I did test 1x 680 vs. 2x 680 and, in the same scene / area I'd see one GPU doing 35-40fps and, once the second was enabled, both sitting at a vSync-limited 60fps quite happily at my settings. An example of good scaling.

However, in certain other titles without SLI support, namely ARK Survival Evolved and X Rebirth, the former was basically unplayable (for me) at any settings, and the latter needed things turned right down for smooth gameplay.

With the 1070 I've cranked ALL settings to max in FO4, plus I have texture/mesh mods and an ENB and the game plays flawlessly at 60fps - bar certain known problem areas. ARK, still woefully unoptimised in my view, runs at a comfortable 50-60fps for the most part, with the odd dip into the 40's - a MASSIVE improvement plus I'd not realised quite how pretty this game could be lol. X Rebirth is now smooth and looks far prettier too, as are various other titles I've tried....didn''t help much in Minecraft...odd that ;)

Re: 1070 vs 1080 - I never personally expected the 1070 to come close to a 1080 - a 20% core cut is too much, meaning the 1070 would need to be (in rough terms) running at a 25% higher clock that the 1080 it's matched against to equal it....more realistically likely more than 25% when ram speed is factored in.

At the end of the day, I made my jump and am enjoying this hardware now. My fps is better now, my visual fidelity is better now....you get my meaning. If I'd gotten a 980Ti I'd likely feel exactly the same.

Scoob.
 
Buying the next gen equivalent or lower end card is always silly. You either go up the foodchain or you sit out for one generation.

I agree. Multi-GPU users can often see their hardware remain capable for longer, enabling them to skip a gen or two like I have, while still enjoying a decent experience. Equally however, those same people are more likely to upgrade regularly, just cos they're enthusiasts :)

When I built my full-loop with the 680's a while ago, it sorta locked me in longer than even I imagined, largely because a full upgrade is a mission and a half! Though it's only fairly recently, and only in specific titles, that I've felt under-powered. My compromise was my recent mini-upgrade - thanks to my second system - preserving my WC rig for the time being.

Scoob.
 
Hey guy's why would we upgrade for 10-15% performance you really need to ask yourself that question. I'm not being a tosser about it but I would want significant performance ina a Gpu to sway me to buy it

Agree. But the OP doesnt state what he already has unless I missed it.
 
Back
Top