I have upgraded graphic cars so many times now that it has become completely routine for me. I am always wanting more! I'm an addict... I'm a power hungry, rig building, graphics junkie addict... And I am proud of it. I started out small... very small. It all began 2 years ago when I went back to school. I am 37, so going back to school was a big deal to me. I am going for a masters in graphic design so needless to say I needed a good computer. I bought a pre-built factory rig at Best Buy. At first it was all I needed, but eventually I needed to upgrade so I could successfully run Photoshop and other graphic munching programs. I decided to build me a rig. After all... Everybody in most of my classes built their rigs, so why couldn't I. The first rig I slapped together was nothing special, but being my first built rig I loved it. Since I was now able to play games with decent frame rates, I switched from being a console gamer to a hardcore pc gamer. After I made the change I was constantly wanting to upgrade and build new rigs. Each time I would slightly increase the budget. I started off with a 200 series GTX and worked my way up from there, switching back and forth with AMD to Nvidia. Each time I went up, I would buy the respectable counterpart of each brand. If I bought a 600 series GTX I would buy an AMD card equally as powerfull. It wasn't just the GPU I would upgrade either... I would change everything. When I couldn't upgrade anything else I would get a new chassis.Now I am using this GTX 970 switching from an R9 290x. The GTX 970 is working great, but I want more! Problem is I do not want to spend $600-$800 on a new card only to be buying a new one in another 4 months. So... I bought this GTX 970 so I can pair it with my current GTX 970 and go SLI! Judging by the specs and the research that I have done... SLI GTX 970's will out perform a TitanX. Not only out perform it but REALLY out perform it!!! Everything that I have read about SLI GTX 970's says that I will be playing games with unheard of frame rates! My rig is totally ready for it too! I have more than enough ram (32gigs Kingston HyperX Fury Beast ram), the perfect MOBO, CPU and a super fast SSD to help push my rig to ludicrous speed (well for me anyway)! By itself, the EVGA GeForce GTX 970 ACX 2.0 SSC works wonders. Depending on what you are coming from, all of your games will be brought to life. Be ready for better frame rates, brighter colors and a better all around gaming experence! But if you are anything like me (and most of us rig builders are) you will be craving for more and wanting to get ready for all of the awesome new "Next Gen" games that are set to roll out this coming holiday season. If so, I suggest buying two of them rather than spending $1000+ on a TitanX! For almost half that you will get twice the performance! My 2nd card hasn't arrived yet, but I can not wait! Oh... I don't know about you but I picked Assassins Creed: Syndicate! For me it is a no-brainer. The new R6 game looks watered down and cheesy. More of an "arcade" type fps rather than an in depth regular Tom Clancy title. Either way, you are still gonna get a good game... Because the game that "you" pick is gonna be the game that "you" like and "you" are the only one that matters when buying a game... Am I right or am I right?
Well my 2nd card arrived about 2 1/2 weeks ago. As I was saying in the above paragraph... I am ALWAYS craving more! Since I am a rig building, power hungry, wirenut junky I decided to go ahead and change up everything. New chassis, new MOBO, new DDR4 ram, new PSU, new and bigger ssds and a new sound card. Like I said... I'm a POWER hungry, wirenut junky! This time I decided to go Intel. I had no choice really. My FX-9590 Vishera is as big as I can go with AMD until their new chip hits the market sometime late next year. Although I am an avid AMD fan I can not wait til late next year to go big. I want to go big RIGHT NOW! I am not a prejudice rig builder. I might lean a little more toward the AMD side of things but that doesn't mean I hate Intel, As a matter of fact I love Intel. They are a good company whos processors deliver a crazy punch. They just happen to be a little on the expensive side. Because of that I had to work extra hard to be able to afford this build. All of the extra hard work that I put into this rig caused me to be more cautious than usual. When you are spending a crazy amount of money on a build, you make sure that you are getting exactly what you want and nothing less. I'm not gonna into detail about the specs of my latest build. This review isn't about my gaming rig as a whole, it's about the 970 GTXssc Gaming ACX 2.0 graphics card.
Let me tell ya... By itself this card is a bad ass! Especially if you pair it with a decent processor and a fair amount of ram! Every game I through at the card would run near perfect frame rates on ultra settings. The only time that I ran into trouble is when I decided to go to 4K or UHD res. When making the 4K jump there was a significant difference in what I was able to set my games at. Running games at 4k res on ultra settings was out of the question. Usually I was able to go half and half (half of the settings on ultra and the other half on either high or medium). This was a heart breaker for me and its what literally kicked me in the butt and set me in motion by a 2nd 970 and eventually to upgrade my whole set-up. On my old AMD FX-9590 set-up, the extra 970 exceeded my expectations! I immediately was able to tell a difference! Usually when playing Witcher 3 on 4Kres the game automatically sets itself to run with over half of the graphics settings on medium, 2-3 on high and 1 or 2 of them on ultra... With my rig running SLI GTX 970s The Witcher 3 automatically set itself to run with EVERYTHING on ultra settings... AT 4K RES!!! I'll say it again... EVERYTHING on ultra!!! And when I actually played The Withcer 3 at 4Kres on "all ultra" settings... Complete gaming nirvana!!! The game and every other game after that played wonderfully. Every one of them saw 50-60fps with zero stuttering, screen tears or glitches. So why did I decide to totally build a new rig if my games were running at 4Kres, 60fps and zero errors? Because I want to be ready for the future. Keep in mind that I was running an almost outdated AMD FX-9590 CPU, and although DDR3 ram is affordable and sufficient enough to power even the best gaming rigs... DDR4 is eventually gonna be the set standard.
When it comes to gaming rigs, technology always seems to be one, two and sometimes three steps ahead. With my new rig I know that I am future proofed for at least the next 4 years. The "Next Gen" games that are being developed are ridiculous and I know that they are gonna require "Next Gen" rigs to run them. I didn't get into PC gaming so that I could play games at the half way mark. I got into PC gaming so that I could experience games at their best! Anything less would defeat the purpose of owning a gaming rig. It's like buying a sports car. You don't buy a sports car to drive to church. You buy a sports car to experience the thrill of going fast! If I wanted to play video games at the half way mark I would buy a console. (Although I have to admit that consoles are beginning to look pretty damn good).
In conclusion I would like to say that the EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB SSC GAMING ACX 2.0+, Whisper Silent Cooling Graphics Card does everything that it says it will, but if you want to experience it for what it is worth, you better have a rig to match! If you really want to kick it up a notch and experience PC gaming at its best... Buy 2 of these bad boys and get ready for one helluva gaming experience!!! Do the research and you will see that 2 of these cards respectfully outperform a TitanX Black! That is a BIG DEAL considering the price gap between two 970s and one TitanX Black! Seriously... I highly recommend getting two of these vs. one. If you wanna stick with a single GPU I suggest that you maybe look at the 980. It cost a little more, but with games constantly getting better, having a 980 will set you up for future "Next Gen" titles and allow to experience 4K res without any hick-ups. If you aren't worried about 4K res then by all means go with the 970. My 970 would successfully run all of my games on ultra settings at 1080i, 60fps with ease!
| Max Screen Resolution | 4096 x 2160 |
|---|---|
| RAM | 4096 MB |
| Memory Speed | 7010 MHz |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Nvidia GeForce |
| Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Card Description | GeForce GTX 970 |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 4 GB |
