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For the review today we are using Nvidia Forceware 347.09 and AMD Catalyst 14.12 drivers. All of the AMD and Nvidia hardware in our reviews today used these drivers. We are using a test rig supplied by DINOPC and built to our specifications.
If you want to read more about this, or are interested in buying the same Kitguru Test Rig, check out our article with links on this page. We are using an Asus PB287Q 4k and Apple 30 inch Cinema HD monitor for this review today.
Comparison cards:
Asus GTX980 ROG Platinum (1,241mhz core / 1,753mhz memory)
Gigabyte GTX980 G1 Gaming (1228mhz core / 1,753mhz memory)
Inno3D GTX980 ‘iChill Herculez X4 Air Boss Ultra (1266 mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
MSI GTX980 Gaming 4G (1216mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
Asus GTX980 Strix (1178mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
Asus GTX780 Ti Direct CU II OC (954mhz core / 1750 mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX980 Reference (1126 mhz core / 1753mhz memory)
Galax GTX970 OC Silent ‘Infinity Black Edition’ (1178mhz core / 1753mhz memory)
Palit GTX970 Jetstream OC (1152mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
MSI GTX970 Gaming 4G (1140 mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
Palit GTX780 6GB (902 mhz core / 1502mhz memory)
Asus GTX970 StriX OC (1114 mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
Asus R9 290 Direct CU II OC (1000 mhz core / 1260 mhz memory)
OCUK GTX970 ‘Nvidia 970 Cooler Edition’ (1051 mhz core / 1753 mhz memory)
Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
Games:
Grid AutoSport
Tomb Raider
Metro Last Light Redux
Thief 2014
All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.
Game descriptions edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.
I’ll always be an Nvidia fan at heart, but goddamn, this is a nice card. Good clocks, Decently low heat, and that memory makes it a top contender for 4k. Definitely impressed with how far they’ve pushed a nearly 2 year old design.
hey.. it’s there a GTX780 on top of GTX970??….
hahahhaha 8GB lost to 3.5 GB.
No Eyefinity/Surround benchmark? Shame on you kitguru. Its one of the main purposes of such a card, and you are completely missing that point. I expected much better from a site like this.
Shame on you!
The low overclocked last gen R9 290X destroyed the extremely overclocked next gen GTX 970.
Definitely pointed towards refunds from GTX 970 disgruntled users. Its obvious the 970 is lacking in 4K and what is not visible in this benchmark is the stuttering after the 3.5gb vram threshold is exceeded.
For people building 4K gaming rigs for Star Citizen and other demanding games its quite an excellent choice if purchased in pairs. Until the R9 380X release of course.
Hahahaha nvidia could only be compared to a gen from 2 years ago.
Also this card does its job by far better than the 970. Try a 4k setup and you will notice the difference with demanding games.
Hmmm, no backplate? Got one with my 270X Trix. Seems like a pretty bad party foul.
do you have a 4K setup?
yup, you?
edit:
tested both cards with same games aswell (borrowed the 970 from a friend, can’t afford both of them :P)
I tested GTX 780, GTX 970, R9 290X crossfire, GTX 770, R9 280X Crossfire. Upto 1440p damn good Nvidia beating AMD smoothly above that on 4k little struggle with GTX 970 but 780ti and 980 are faster still on 4k. Still no single GPU is able to play games with max settings on 4K above 40 fps fluently.
Bought this card before Christmas.. Biggest waste of money…
The driver software is the biggest let down with this card.. Catalyst crashes the computer and the Tri-X software is faulty. Always kept rebooting the computer.
At first I thought it was my PSU but I bought a corsair 750 and it still kept happening. Changed to the Nvidia GTX 970. installed the hardware and drivers not one single problem. I was really disappointed as I have used AMD quite a bit in the past.
Catalyst omega fixed that problem in december. IF there is problem with omega installed then you have faulty HW. 970 has issues with memory that cause stuttering in certain games and will be problem for more future games and it is not fixable by driver update as reboot problem was!