i got this card for building my new rig in february. it was intended to be a system to run witcher 3, and does that quite handily. we'll get to that.
i wont get in to detailing the rest of the rig unless needed for comparison, but if you're serious about this card im sure you're proficient enough to look in to compatibility. i have not done anything physical to affect its performance like watercooling it, but my case does have sufficient air flow and the cpu is watercooled so its not dumping its heat inside the case. be aware there ARE available watercooling blocks for this card, they run around $130 last time i checked.
physically the card is massive. its a custom pcb, with a custom cooler on it as you can see in the product images. i dont know if its the longest 970, but im sure it's up there. many cases, including my phantom 530, will require the removal or rearrangement of drive cages to make room for it. it was just a few millimeters too long, but you really cant just wedge it in there. it has a very nice shroud with very quiet fans. on top of this, the card actually has a backplate. i often see this talked about on cards a protection against drooping under its own weight. im unsure if this actually helps, but it does look good. on top of the card, so likely facing out if you have a windowed side panel and a standard layout, is the "windforce" logo that DOES glow. you can change this in the geforce experience app that comes with the drivers and all that. you can disable it, change its brightness, or set the brightness to breathe or flash, reflect gpu usage, or pulse with sound the system is playing.
now performance. at stock its benchmarking at the 93rd percentile in firestrike. thats pretty good. this is a 1080p card. 4k is going to become an issue due to the lower 3.5gigs of vram. however, i have had no problem running things on this card. most everything runs at a steady 60 fps, or very close. one complaint i've seen is shadow of mordor's hd textures causing an issue. i have even seen videos showing the stutter that is caused when the vram caps. however, in my 30 or more hours i've played it, i have NEVER had that issue. im uncertain if the game has ever dropped below 50 fps in gameplay. thats with everything on the highest settings, and hd textures on.
the most demanding thing i've run so far is witcher 3 of course. with everything on ultra, all post processing turned on, and hairworks off, i average 50-60 fps. with hair physics completely on, i average 45-55fps, and dip in to the 30s when really zoomed to my characters hair, or surrounded by the wolves that have all their fur rendered by it. the hairworks is very demanding. the game however still needs some optimization. to be clear though, it is 100% playable at almost all times. the only time it dips is with hairworks on and it being used a lot on screen. but even then, console runs at 30fps, so you've got it beat no matter what.
temperature wise it idles in my case about 2 degrees C above ambient, and sits in the 40s to 50s in most games, but with witcher it likes to sit around 60. it is under much more load after all. this windforce card runs extremely cool. it does have a giant heat sync with 3 nice fans on it. when i was researching for my build, it seemed to be the best on the 970s in cooling.
in comparison to other 970's, again i found it to show the best clocks in tests, but lets be honest, with all of them being withing a few mhz of eachother, its negligible.
overclocking has been a learning experience for me. not that its difficult, i just have never done it before so im learning as i go. i've gotten it to 1550 boost clock, but crashed the driver after a day or two. 1500 seems a lot more stable to me, but i still need to learn a lot to tweak properly, and most people reach around 1500. the point being this card overclocks very well if that matters for you.
i intend to pick up another one of these soon for sli. comparing two 970s, a 980ti, and a titan x in performance has all 3 setups within just a few fps of eachother. since i already have a 970, the second one is my cheaper option. jaystwocents on youtube has a good video comparing the three setups. he also has a specific review for this card, and another video on the 3.5gigs of vram issue, which is where i saw shadow of mordor stuttering, but again that was something with him, as i have not had any such issue.
if this is the range of your budged for a build, or an upgrade, you will not be disappointed by this card. if you have more, ofcourse go with the best card you can afford, but in the 350 dollar range, this card is spectacular.
| Max Screen Resolution | 4096 x 2160 |
|---|---|
| Processor | 1178 GHz |
| Memory Speed | 1329 MHz |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Nvidia GeForce |
| Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Card Description | Integrated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 4 GB |
