Given a $30 rebate, that blower cooler that limits it to to nothing more than a reference 970, all which is trounced by a $200 RX480 4Gb it's actually not. Would I rather wait for a RX 480 4Gb AIB custom that offers better performance, while not waiting on a rebate or do this now? The 970 are not worth investing if your looking to be great with upcoming Dx12 and Vulken API future games...
$175 for a GTX 970 is a great deal for anyone who wants one right now. I do 1080p gaming and this will be perfect. By the time I'm ready for 4k gaming there probably will be a next-gen of GPUs coming out anyways.
Sure, there is AMD RX 480 but it's $200+, not $175. RX 480s also come with same crappy reference cooler design (probably $50 more for AIB) and sold out everywhere right now.
I personally do not like AMD cards, the ones I bought always failed on me. Maybe it was just a bad luck on my part but I'm sure there are others who feel the same way.
$175 for a GTX 970 is a great deal for anyone who wants one right now.
That could be true though there was the 7/15 Shell Shocker PowerColor PCS+ R9 380X 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 for $150 -AR$20 w/FS, That's still great 1080p while holding a really low entry. While I think either offer similar BfB quotient, my issue with that Asus Turbo is that's the same cooler they use on a 960. Now while more than adequate for stock 970 clocks or this middling OC of 1228 Mhz (4%), there's not much left in it and if there where the fan is just going to be noisy. Great if all you want to do is plug-n-play. but there's still a good head room (1126MHz) that 380X to make it get up in this 970's territory.
I am not bias but from my experience even with buying an RX480 8gb model.
Its great but driver support is retarded already. and no Windows 8 support...
RX480 is like in 15th place or so on passmark which is very good.
but GTX 970 is 7-10th place based on what you consider a graphics card.
(some Quadros don't count for some of us lol)
So a GTX 970 New in Box with the Epic Blower Large Cooler (they are VERY nice in person, with white led i think)
Its a spanking good deal for under $190!
Meanwhile GTX 1070 are like $350-480 (with taxes/based which model you buy)
Thanks #2. I read somewhere that S Korean monitors - I have an X-Star - really need the full 4GB to function at 2560x1440. If this is true I will wait a little while to update my GTX 770. I was intending to buy a second 770 (SLI) but with VR round the corner will wait for the prices of the 10 series to settle down.
Weird use of "Epic"... I've not ever consider using such terminology for that low-end solution, the only thing epic is the noise it would make if you hope to OC it. Read the reviews on Egg.
I'm not saying the reference RX 480 4Gb (even if you could get one) is the right model to grab up, it's not. That said this out-of-pocket cost of $205 and waiting on a $30 rebate for this 970 is not any great deal at this point. It's coming in on what's now the norm of the bang-for-buck curve, something most better 970 aren't yet at, so in that sense I understand.
15th place or so on passmark which is very good.
No one for the last 10 years has consider Passmark as a good evaluation for ranking Gaming Graphic card performance.
^ I don't so much consider myself a "gamer" but I do play games... just don't WANT Win10. Maybe some year after all the dust settles I'll be forced to upgrade, then having to abandon all hardware that I can currently continue to use by not upgrading.
I find it a lot more economical to just wait a few years after a game is released to play it, when the price has dropped as well as the price of the video card needed to handle it at high resolution. By then the video drivers have game related bugs worked out, games have bugs worked out, there are ample walkthroughs for difficult games, etc.
Besides, I think you might be forgetting the privacy concerns and strong potential for MS moving to a yearly subscription service for some OS features. There's a reason they're giving it away for free.
I guess games just aren't important enough to me to make any concessions besides buying a video card instead of integrated video, at least today... in the past integrated video was just too slow for demanding non-gaming purposes but not anymore, except running multi-monitors or 4K@60Hz support.
having to abandon all hardware that I can currently continue to use by not upgrading.
I'm not sure what hardware can not carry over from Win7/8.1, driver support over the last year for Win10 has not had much of any issue. I've held out till now, but with 4 machines the economics, and my boys gaming has a lot of merit in my house.
privacy concerns and strong potential for MS moving to a yearly subscription service for some OS features. There's a reason they're giving it away for free.
Not sure if the privacy concerns are all that different than would be on Win7/8.1 in the eyes of MS? Almost worse for those who hang on as the larger old base of Win7/8.1 makes it a tempting for the unscrupulous. While yes the subscription base issue looms large, I think for Home users by the time they enact some of that it would be almost necessary for the hold outs will be dropped (EoS). It will be like anybody holding on Xp today, so you start being charged like everyone anyway.
^ Lots of drivers won't install at all if they don't recognize the OS. If you mean doing an in-place upgrade, I don't want to have to rely on that kludge to get from a blank SSD to a working system. People said the same thing about moving to Vista, then Win7, and yet I had to abandon perfectly good hardware then too, or rather I should state that what was reasonable to keep, I have on a box still running XP, but at the moment I haven't even powered that system on in months so it's probably time to get rid of it.
Privacy concerns are certainly increased with Win10. Are you aware they're even tracking your app use?
I'm sure I'll be fine. I didn't upgrade to Vista when everyone said it's important to do that and I have no regrets there. I'd install a newer DX if they allowed that but it's nowhere near important enough to me to switch OS to get it.
Comments & Reviews (10)
Now this is what I call a bargain!
Sure, there is AMD RX 480 but it's $200+, not $175. RX 480s also come with same crappy reference cooler design (probably $50 more for AIB) and sold out everywhere right now.
I personally do not like AMD cards, the ones I bought always failed on me. Maybe it was just a bad luck on my part but I'm sure there are others who feel the same way.
Anyways, I bought one and I'm happy.
That could be true though there was the 7/15 Shell Shocker PowerColor PCS+ R9 380X 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 for $150 -AR$20 w/FS, That's still great 1080p while holding a really low entry. While I think either offer similar BfB quotient, my issue with that Asus Turbo is that's the same cooler they use on a 960. Now while more than adequate for stock 970 clocks or this middling OC of 1228 Mhz (4%), there's not much left in it and if there where the fan is just going to be noisy. Great if all you want to do is plug-n-play. but there's still a good head room (1126MHz) that 380X to make it get up in this 970's territory.
Its great but driver support is retarded already. and no Windows 8 support...
RX480 is like in 15th place or so on passmark which is very good.
but GTX 970 is 7-10th place based on what you consider a graphics card.
(some Quadros don't count for some of us lol)
So a GTX 970 New in Box with the Epic Blower Large Cooler (they are VERY nice in person, with white led i think)
Its a spanking good deal for under $190!
Meanwhile GTX 1070 are like $350-480 (with taxes/based which model you buy)
First WHY is any Gamer still not taken advantage of a the Free Update to Windows 10 (ends a the end of the month). While your wrong there is support for Win 8.1, for those who judge it's better to hold out and only play DX11 and below for sometime. Then smarter to finally pay ~$100 for Win10 and using the Dx12 that it allows?
http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/Radeon-Software-Crimson-Edition-Beta-for-Radeon-RX-480-Windows-8.1-Release-Notes.aspx
Weird use of "Epic"... I've not ever consider using such terminology for that low-end solution, the only thing epic is the noise it would make if you hope to OC it. Read the reviews on Egg.
I'm not saying the reference RX 480 4Gb (even if you could get one) is the right model to grab up, it's not. That said this out-of-pocket cost of $205 and waiting on a $30 rebate for this 970 is not any great deal at this point. It's coming in on what's now the norm of the bang-for-buck curve, something most better 970 aren't yet at, so in that sense I understand.
No one for the last 10 years has consider Passmark as a good evaluation for ranking Gaming Graphic card performance.
I find it a lot more economical to just wait a few years after a game is released to play it, when the price has dropped as well as the price of the video card needed to handle it at high resolution. By then the video drivers have game related bugs worked out, games have bugs worked out, there are ample walkthroughs for difficult games, etc.
Besides, I think you might be forgetting the privacy concerns and strong potential for MS moving to a yearly subscription service for some OS features. There's a reason they're giving it away for free.
I guess games just aren't important enough to me to make any concessions besides buying a video card instead of integrated video, at least today... in the past integrated video was just too slow for demanding non-gaming purposes but not anymore, except running multi-monitors or 4K@60Hz support.
I'm not sure what hardware can not carry over from Win7/8.1, driver support over the last year for Win10 has not had much of any issue. I've held out till now, but with 4 machines the economics, and my boys gaming has a lot of merit in my house.
Not sure if the privacy concerns are all that different than would be on Win7/8.1 in the eyes of MS? Almost worse for those who hang on as the larger old base of Win7/8.1 makes it a tempting for the unscrupulous. While yes the subscription base issue looms large, I think for Home users by the time they enact some of that it would be almost necessary for the hold outs will be dropped (EoS). It will be like anybody holding on Xp today, so you start being charged like everyone anyway.
Privacy concerns are certainly increased with Win10. Are you aware they're even tracking your app use?
I'm sure I'll be fine. I didn't upgrade to Vista when everyone said it's important to do that and I have no regrets there. I'd install a newer DX if they allowed that but it's nowhere near important enough to me to switch OS to get it.
Thank you!