Gadgetory

hey welcome back to harbor unboxed today I'm taking yet another detailed look at a previous generation GPU a few weeks ago I checked in how the fury X is getting on in today's games and then followed that video up with a look at the gtx 980ti since a lot of you thing you enjoy that series I have decided to revisit the GTX 970 which I will then end up comparing in part two to the r9 390 the GTX 970 is a particular interest for a few reasons it's the only GPU that I can think of that was went with so much controversy and drama upon release and yet despite that became one of the biggest hits ever out of the gate it was met with rave reviews for its unbeatable value on launch day in my own review I gave it a stellar score of 95 out of 100 claiming it brings top-notch value and performance and noted that there's even more to see if you plan on overclocking I was less impressed with the GTX 980 suggesting that was a tad too expensive but did note that overall it was still a very impressive GPU right so none of that sounds controversial all that drama infused at all that came shortly after the glowing reviews when it was discovered that roughly 13% of the full gigabyte vram buffer was partitioned off limiting that memory to a much narrower memory bus the card was advertised to have the same 256-bit wide memory bus as the GTX 980 resulting in a bandwidth of 224 gigabytes per second however due to the core configuration is wasn't possible and rather than risk harming the cards marketing potential with a 3.5 gigabyte memory buffer Nvidia awkwardly tacked on another 512 megabytes using a narrower 32-bit wide bus so while the card did technically have a full gigabyte via Ram buffer it wasn't capable of the performance claims rather the GPU was limited to a memory throughput of 196 gigabytes per second when working from the primary partition and just 28 gigabytes per second from the smaller half gigabyte partition the controversy prompted a class-action suit against Nvidia as well as board partner gigabyte Nvidia CEO issued an apology to gamers on the company's blog in an attempt to appease gamers but in the end ultimately had to offer a refund to those who previously bought a GTX 970 this however didn't change the fact that at the time the performance seen in those glowing reviews was the exact same performance gamers were receiving the worry though was that gaming titles would inevitably become more bandwidth hungry and at the GTX 970 would eventually fall into a heap that's a legitimate concern at least to a certain extent many gamers though do grossly seem to overestimate the importance of the vram buffer and think that having more memory somehow always equals more performance overlooking the fact that the GPU itself might not have enough power to actually crunch that much data efficiently we saw this with the r9 390 which went from the r9 290 full gigabyte buffer to a much larger 8 gigabyte buffer with no real upgrade to the GPU itself last time we looked into this by matching both GPUs o'clock 4 o'clock and the playable conditions they both delivered the exact same performance it might be interesting to look at this again now that we have a newer and more demanding games anyway back to the GTX 970 despite the controversies and the negative backlash and all that angry pitchfork stuff this GPU actually strengthened invidious position despite the odds that went on to be one of their best-selling GPUs of all time roughly two and a half years later the GTX 970 is still by far the most popular GPU used by those that game on the massively popular steam platform according to their hardware and software survey last month almost 6% of all gamers that use the service did so with the GTX 970 in their rig just three percent of gamers now run with a GTX 1060 and disappointingly less than one percent used the highly underrated RX 480 with so many GTX 970 graphics cards having been sold it's not surprising to find a huge number of them on the second-hand market it's possible to easily snap one out for under $200 u.s. in fact I had seen some selling Frizzles 150 dollars u.s. and that's a quite a few of my viewers asking me should they consider snapping one up the alternatives at that price ranges these are three gigabyte gtx 1062 the RX 470 or the RX 484 gigabyte model so I've taken my old game with GTX 970 phantom graphics card benchmark getting the out-of-the-box configuration and then again with a custom overclock in the past I have to say the GTX 970 has looked very weak when tested using the in-video reference clock speeds admittedly though this can be a bit misleading as in video were very conservative when it came to clocking their Maxwell based GPUs game would for example shift their GTX 970 with a 10% factory overclock and that has a rather significant impact on performance as you might expect not only that though but I was able to boost the clock by further 10 percent taking the core to twelve hundred sixty-five megahertz which resulted in a boost frequency of just over 1.4 gigahertz what I want to know is though can the GTX 970 still cut the mustard and is it worth purchasing if you can get it for somewhere around the GTX 1052 o or rx for 70 money so let's go find out rise of the Tomb Raider is a very memory intensive video game and here at 1080p the GTX 970 does very well matching the three gigabyte gtx 1060 out of the box through overclocking it does find a further 12 percent performance hitting an average of 104 FPS and consequently overtakes the six gigabyte gtx 1060 which happens to be none other than a factory overclocked for the wind plus model now at 1440p the GTX 970 does start to struggle though the out of the box configuration still manages to keep pace with the RX 470 and matches the minimum frame rate of these three gigabyte gtx 1060 and four gigabyte our X 480 overclocked it is able to sneak ahead of the a key of our X 480 but does fall short of the EVGA 6 gigabyte 1060 keep in mind this is an Nvidia sponsored title so I'm certainly not expecting the GTX 970 to look this good in relation to the RX 480 and all of the games tested Far Cry primal was tested with the HD texture pack installed and enabled out of the box that matched the RX 470 though it's true potential was realized only once overclocked here we see a 20% boost in performance reaching an average of 65 FPS to match the EVGA gtx 1066 gigabyte card overclocking doesn't help the gtx 970 out of 1440p which is interesting that said it's not a complete disastrous performance is still on par with the gtx 1063 gigabyte an RX 488 about graphics cards although in videos Maxwell Hiro looked quite impressive and rise of the Tomb Raider and Fire Cry primal the same can't be said for the division when using the direct x12 API the performance isn't horrible but here the 970 can only match the 470 once overclocked the performance margins are similar at 1440p and here the our X 480 a gigabyte and gtx 1066 gigabyte are out of reach of the previous generation value champ despite sparing at some embarrassment by using dx11 the GTX 970 still doesn't make out particularly well in hitman though to be fair it was at least as fast as a three gigabyte gtx 1060 at 1080p similar margins are seeing at 1440p and again out of the box the game with GTX 970 phantom match to the GTX 760 3 gigabyte now these results are very interesting indeed and dare I say is this evidence of Nvidia neglecting to optimize their previous generation GPUs even when overclocked the GTX 970 is well down on the 3 gigabyte GTX 1060 not something we've seen previously the same is true at 1440p and here the GTX 970 is 14% sold in the 3 gigabyte GTX 1060 still it was able to roughly match the full gigabyte our X 480 the GTX 970 does get back on track for the overwatch test and out of the box they will roughly match the 3 gigabyte GTX 1060 making it faster than the RX 488 gigabyte graphics card overclocked it was also able to catch up to the 6 gigabyte gtx 1060 bumping the resolution up to 1440p we find similar results and again the GTX 970 looks very impressive in this title brace yourself the Doom results are unexpected oddly the GTX 970 is faster than the 60 watt GTX 1060 once overclocked here at roughly matched the RX 470 with a very unexpected 167 fps that's an 11% boost over the factory overclock which did see the game would phantom graphics card trail d6 gigabyte gtx 1060 even at 1440p the margins remained much the same in fact here the GTX 970 is able to slightly pull away from the RX 470 once overclocked again we find some rather unexpected results this time when testing with total war Warhammer here the GTX 970 matched these three gigabyte GTX 10 60o the box and wasn't a great deal slower than the six key of our model so nothing unusual there however once overclocked performance was boosted by 11% as we reach 79 FPS making the game woods graphics card faster than the floor gigabyte our X 480 only slightly sold in the 8 gigabyte model bumping up the resolution didn't change too much again we saw a 10% boost from our customer overclocked Mirror's Edge catalyst throws up performance that's probably more in line with what we would expect to find here the GTX 970 is on par with the RS 470 and therefore not a great deal slower than the 4G but our X 480 meanwhile through overclocking it is able to keep up with the eight gigabyte rx 480 and six gigabyte gtx 1060 graphics cards moving to 40 and 40 P we find similar margins though here the GTX 970 isn't quite as strong but the reduction in performance when compared to its nearest competitors is almost unnoticeable out of the box the cut-down Maxwell GPU is roughly able to match the six gigabyte GTX 1060 and more impressively once overclocked it finds itself sitting between the our X 480 GPUs moving to 1440p the GTX 970 with its factory overclocked for slightly further behind the 6q byte gtx 1060 but again it is able to match the 8 gigabyte our X 480 once overclocked much like what was seen when we tested the division using DirectX 12 it seems Maxwell's inferior low-level API performance is once again a problem this time in Deus Ex mankind divided out of the box the gang wood GTX 970 was slowly our X 470 though overclocked it was able to match these 60 about gtx 1060 we find similar results at 1440p though it is very interesting to note that unlike the three gigabyte gtx 1060 the GTX 970 didn't fall away here that'll feel one puts forth quite the challenge for the GTX 970 though matching our x4 70 out of the box was still very impressive overclocked we reach our X 480 for gigabyte levels of performance but we're still quite a way off the gtx 1066 gigabyte the 1440p margins are much the same and with an average of 63 FPS once overclocked it really is hard to deny that the gtx hasn't gone the distance for those who purchased that over two years ago the GTX 970 even does reasonably well in mafia 3 at least in relation to GPU such as the 4:17 our X 480 it does require clocking to match the our X 480 a gigabyte graphics card and this meant that it's still quite a bit slower than the gtx 1066 gigabyte now 1440p we see an 11% performance boost from our overclock though this only netted us an extra 3 FPS on average having seen weaker than expected performance in the division and Deus Ex mankind divider when using DirectX 12 the Gears of War performance is surprisingly strong out of the box the GTX 970 delivered a strong minimum frame rate and once overclocked to match the gtx 1066 gigabyte and our x4 88 gigabyte the GTX 970 did follow a slightly at 1440p nothing extreme but it was certainly more impressive about 1080p the Maxwell GPU doesn't look particularly impressive out of the box when testing with titanfall 2 at least when compared to the RX 470 for example that said it does still manage to maintain over 60 FPS with the very high quality settings and effect overclocking boosted performance by a massive 14% margin and I suspect the memory overclock was particularly useful here overclock the game wood card was able to match the gtx 1066 gear but moving to 1440p the GTX 970 now looks much better with the factory overclocked one compared to the GTX 1060 s regular once we apply the manual overclock it is again able to match the gtx 1066 gigabyte once again we see strong performance gains from the GTX 970 once overclocked and here it was able to match the rx 470 rx 480 and GTX 1063 gigabyte graphics cards in Civilization six now at 14:40 Peters able to match the GTX 1063 gigabyte and rx 470 once overclocked the Call of Duty infinite warfare performance is fairly typical of what we've been seeing out of the box the game wood GTX 970 matches the RX 470 and once overclocked is able to catch up to the gtx 1066 gigabyte the GTX 970 is slightly weaker at 1440p and although still very playable it does fall further behind the RX 470 in its out-of-the-box configuration the watchdogs true performance is very similar to what we just saw when testing with infinite warfare at 1080p the GTX 970 is faster than the rx 470 but slower than the rx 484 gigabyte then once overclocked it roughly matches the GTX 10 six gigabyte once again cranking the resolution up to 1440p does slow the GTX 970 down slightly but of course the results are highly disastrous I have updated my benchmark results to include Resident Evil 7 biohazard as many of you know this game is a massive vram pig this can already be seen at 1080p here the 3 gigabyte gtx 1060 does suffer quite a lot and so too does the GTX 970 in relation to the RX 470 that's at overclocking liqueur and memory really does help out the Maxwell GPU and now it's able to match the RX 470 of course this is hardly something 970 owners would brag about but it does help save face much the same as seen at 1440p though out of the box the GTX 970 appears very weak again no overclocking is able to regain quite a bit of ground all right so we're almost the finish line last up we have for honor here the GTX 970 wasn't a great deal slower than the full gear by our X 480 out of the box overclocked it was able to close in on the GTX 1066 Q button our X 48 gigabyte graphics cards this time at 1440p the GTX 970 remains very strong with the margins going almost unchanged when it comes to power consumption Maxwell was very efficient for its time and even today it's still very impressive the factory overclocked game wood model only consumes slightly more pals and MSI's our X 480 gaming x8 g/mol meanwhile our overclock only increased system consumption by 9% which is very good of course that is almost a 50% jump in total system power consumption when compared to the EVGA gtx 1066 gigabyte card and for the most part the 970 was slower right so now that we've looked at how the GTX 970 performs in 20 modern games let's tally up the results and take a look at the averages as we often found the game with GTX 970 phantom delivered similar performance for the RX 470 out of the box once overclocked we saw a performance boost of 12% on average and this allowed the GTX 970 to match the RX 484 gigabyte while falling slightly short of the GTX 1066 gigabyte those GPUs were of course only factory overclocked and do have a bit more headroom left when custom overclocking them further take the RX 470 for example although not overclocked here in the past we have been able to extract somewhere between ten and fifteen percent more performance out of this graphics card this then would place the RX 470 on par with the overclocked GTX 970 results that you see here that being the case you can safely say that the GTX 970 now performs similar to that of the RX 470 a graphics card that sells around 170 us or 270 ozzie today therefore second-hand shoppers will really want to be paying no more than 150 dollars u.s. or say 250 dollars Aussie for a secondhand GTX 970 graphics card even at that price though you have to wonder if you're not just better off buying new and investing in a GPU that's proven to deliver better DirectX 12 performance one thing I will say for those of you who purchased the GTX 970 back in 2014 or even 2015 for the $330 US MSRP you have certainly gotten your money's worth if you do indeed agree that it's on par with the RX 470 then the card is only depreciated by $75 a year or 47% of its initial retail value that's pretty good and the fact that it's still such a capable 1080p gamer and really for the most part can handle 1440p without much trouble it means that will continue to deliver for some time yet anyway in summary is the GTX 970 worth buying well obviously it comes down to the price and based on all the testing we've just done the results we've found I believe that price to be no more than 150 u.s. or 250 ozzie so if you can get one for that price or less then yes it is worth buying so if you guys enjoyed this video please hit that like button really really appreciate that support is great and I am still working on the r9 390 benchmark results and I hope to have them up soon it takes a huge amount of time to do all this testing testing the card and it's out of a box form and overclocked but I will definitely get that done because I'm very keen to see how the 390 compares to the 970 in the games you've just seen tested anyway that's all for this one I'm your host Steve I hope to catch you again very soon