Im currently using a radeon hd 7970 in my pc and a gtx 970M in my laptop
Wondering if the cost justifies the increase in performance going to a gtx 980 ?
Below is a picture that shows PassMark G3D BenchMark scores
According to the picture, should I be getting almost twice as much fps with a 980 compared to 7970?
I mentioned my 970m in my laptop because its confusing, the score is alot lower than the 7970 but yet I get higher fps in different projects in ue4 on my laptop card than the 7970
So im not sure just how much of an increase I would get, my 7970 is kind of old though like 3 years
I’m just tired of seeing such low fps in the engine though I’ve been wondering why lighting on plain terrain is such a high impact on fps and well Its probably because to have non-baked dynamic lighting and everything realtime, thats next gen and next gen requires next gen hardware
Since my project probably wont be finished for 1-2 years maybe is an investment I should make since most people will have 980 power by then?
And also I hear that ue4 does not support SLI (I was planning to do 970x2 instead) so another reason for the 980
If you buy the 980 you will have a constant 120 fps all-time propably. Yes, it’s a good idea. Maybe they won’t have 980’s but they will have very powerful cards. I’ve got a 780ti and I’m usually between 60-120 fps. Also, with a nvidia you get earlier access to some gamewroks stuff being implemented into the engine by nvidia, as at the moment they implement it only for nvidia gpu’s (will change in some time so it is cross-platform). So yea, I recommend it.
Also, btw. gtx 970M is a very powerful card, don’t know why it is so low on the benchmark. But remember that laptops aren’t good dev machines. They are jsut less powerful and overheat faster.
To finish up with, if you’ve got the money, I do recommend a 980 because you will be set up for a couple of years with it.
Yeah SLI isn’t supported at time so it would be better to get a 980 (you can always get another one if SLI is added! hehe)
I have to say I am extremely impressed with the 980, it rarely goes below 120fps in my dev work so far (only exception being the Landscape Demo as mentioned previously). I upgraded from a GTX 660 ti, not a bad card by any means, but I had planned to upgrade anyways to complete my new PC. The difference while playing games is huge, being able to max out any game out there is awesome! But the main reason I got it was to complete my dev system so I wouldn’t need to upgrade anything for at least a couple of years if not longer.
I got the ASUS STRIX GTX 980 and absolutely love it, would recommend it to anyone planning to upgrade.
If you get a GTX 980 you have only a 20% boost over a 970 and you are paying $200 more for that 20%
If you get two GTX 970s you have much more performance than a single 980. (you are also saving $200 dollars per card).
Make your choice.
$400 for a score difference of 2172.
I personally think you would not be able to push two 970s to their limits for years if you don’t demand a 4k resolution.
Thanks for the answers, How long do you guys think it will be until ue4 gets SLI support? I read the way it reads frames its like not even designed for it or something,
I would get 2 970’s but I dont really play any games (theres nothing ever good out imo) I get bored after watching an hour of someone play on twitch/youtube, save a few screen shots and move on
So I would only need the upgrade strictly for ue4
I would recommended that you waiting one year. Prices of 980 will drop, and nvidia will release 980 GTI and new titan cards. You can survive one more year with your current card, which means you get much better deal for same money just before next Xmas (or in february 2016).
And forget SLI, unless you have motherboard that is made for it (and no 2 pcix slots do not automatically make motherboard sli friendly). I tried SLI 2 times, both times it failed due to heat from nvidia cards. Good nvidia cards are 2 slots thick (or even 3), and most motherboards have exactly 2 slots space between (1 free in middle), so your 2 cars will be packed back to back, which means you get no free space between them for airflow. So unless you have motherboard that has full speed pcix connectors further than 2 slots apart SLI is not worth the trouble. Another option for SLI is ripping off fans and replacing them with liquid cooling system, but you lose guarantee and cooling system makes whole fun pointless from price pov.
Also SLI and XFIRE had that nasty habit of rendering 2 framers together every 30fps instead on every 60fps. So you kind of got 60fps but really you did not, it was 2 frames back to back every 1/30s second. And many games still misbehave with SLI. So it is cheap alternative only on paper, really you get almost nothing with some issues that are hard to fix.
SLI is good only for one thing: you forget SLI and dedicate second card to physics.
Well I’m making some pretty intense environments, world machine terrains, tons of custom foliage, if you have used the unigine valley benchmark, stuff like that
I suppose $550 for 1 years worth of use is not a bad investment, since I read yesterday the 980 ti / next titan is delayed until 2016 like you said
Its actually the other way around, your VRAM is the same as using a single card (both cards load in the same memory data) but then you have 2 cards processing that data, working together to process the frames as quickly as possible. So you get a higher speed, but don’t gain any VRAM.
My processor & ram usage isnt even 50% in both the pc & laptop while running the editor / standalone game projects & im using an SSD, the 7970 is alot older than the 970m its like 3-4 years old, using a regular diamond radeon hd 7970 not oc’d or anything though
Hmm guess I’ll have to check if somethings malfunctioning,
My 7970 is at 99% usage though when I use more intense projects like the landscape & cave examples and in other tasks like rendering in maya my processor cores do shoot up to like 100% so I’m not sure if there actually is a bottleneck
hehe)
