560ti 1gig to 970 GTX or 980 Ti? worth it?

[Craig Keating]

Hi all,

I'm assuming the leap from my quite old 560 ti to either a 970 gtx 4 gig or 980 ti 6 gig would be noticeable.

Anyone done a similar upgrade, and how does it enhance your enjoyment of xplane?

Also use dcs world and might consider prepar3d.

Thanks for any feedback.

[Tim Krajcar]

It would definitely make a difference!

The GTX 970 has gotten a pretty bad rap for being underpowered; I just rebuilt onto a Skylake machine and was planning to upgrade to a 970 (coming from a 770), but after looking into it, I think it's a better idea to hold off and wait for a price drop or sale on the 980 Ti. Your mileage may vary

[stevekirks]

My GT640 is a Kepler chip and can handle much more than I expect. I mention that because I live at the edge of a performance gap--where changes to the sim's eye candy makes very obvious performance changes. Because of the testing I've done, when I upgrade from this baby card to something bigger, I'm going for VRAM first.

I need to do some research, but won't we be seeing a new Nvidia chipset generation soon?

[ridikamus]

I've had a 970 since before the 980 Ti was released, and I love the card. If you can afford the $800 for a 980 Ti, it's hands down the better performer, but for $300 the 970 works for me. I run HD payware aircraft fine, with a moderate-to-excessive amount of sim eye candy. I have an i5-4690 paired with the 970 with no overclocking in the system. My system is not powerful enough to "just turn everything on", but with some judicious tweaking it works great.

I get 35-40 fps in X-Plane 10 at 1440p with HDR enabled, tons of freeware Socal scenery and my own set of ZL17 ortho tiles, in the high-res version of the Airfoil Cessna 172 v1.51, 3200 ft above KSNA looking toward LAX. I get 30-35 in P3d v3.2 at 1440p with ASN, REX4 clouds, EZdok, all of the FTX goodies, and LatinVFR's frame-hungry KSNA scenery in the Realair Lancair Legacy v2, again at 3200 ft over KSNA looking toward LAX.

PS - If you think you're getting a killer deal on a 980 Ti for $500, it's probably the older 980 and not a Ti model.

[Pieces]

PS - If you think you're getting a killer deal on a 980 Ti for $500, it's probably the older 980 and not a Ti model.

Not $500, but I just purchased a 980 TI for $629.99. They are definitely not $800.

[rtataryn]

Yeah, it shouldn't be $800. I paid about $600 and change for my 980Ti about a year ago. It made a drastic improvement from my previous card and renders very nice frame rates running three screens 5760 X 1080.

[501Aviator]

Just throwing my two-sense out there. I have a GTX950 non SSC version. It is a 2GB card. I average around 35fps with the FF767 and Rotate MD80 in Burbank sitting under the deep cloud layer. WIth HDR on and everything else set to medium to medium high. Also I run DCS everything maxed out 1920x1080 and still average 60 fps. Same with battlefield 4, GTA5, Far Cry 3,4 And I only paid 180 dollars for the card from Best buy.

[n122vu]

I have a GTX 970 OC and have absolutely no complaints, it's a great card despite the widely-published limitations. [Shameless plug]You can visit my twitch channel and look at some highlights/past broadcasts to see the FPS performance first-hand - I don't always get a chance to stream each week. My full hardware setup is also listed.[/Shameless plug]

I don't have everything turned up to the max, but fairly high and have never had stutters or long loads in the sim (any stuttering you may see on the Twitch vids is OBS or Twitch itself, not X-Plane).

If anyone is interested in my X-Plane settings I can provide a screenshot as well.

[wmburns]

One thing missing from this thread is information about the system this new GPU is going into. Let me explain. If putting a high end card into a low end system will not give the full benefits of the $$'s paid for the new GPU.

One should be factoring in what (if any) the future plans are. IE will you be upgrading the MB at some point in the future? Are you looking to run multiple monitors?

But since you asked for an opinion. Here's mine.

For the most part my GTX750ti did the job. However after upgrading to a GTX970, I now have more headroom than before. The frame rate is almost always above 45 FPS. At times 70+. So I don't think I would see that much of an improvement going from a GTX970 to a GTX980. This goes double if the large price difference is factored in.

Nvidia is on the verge of releasing a new line of GPU's. I think that you spend the LEAST amount of $$ that will meet your needs today. Use the GPU and enjoy it today.

The good news is that when you decide it's time for the next upgrade, rest assured that you will get much more GPU for the $$'s spent.

OBTW, I think you will see a HUGE difference going from a 560ti to a GTX970.