Is now a good time to upgrade GPU's

I almost jumped to the GTX 9 series last year but everyone said to wait till the new cards came out... So instead I bought another 670 to run in SLI.. Summer is around the corner and my room is already becoming unbearable to work in due to the heat... Not to mention the top card is getting hot - about 70c (with a single card it would get to 55-60 max) in winter.. That temp will probably exceed 80c in summer. Maybe not that bad but the combination of my room getting hot and the power consumption I am anxious to get back to a single card. Not to mention these cards are struggling to run 60 frames at 1080p on max settings now..

My questions are -

1. I'm looking at either getting a single GTX 970 or 980. I'm trying to save some money so should I wait a little longer for those cards to drop in price (maybe get them used) or are they going to stay pretty consistent for the next year?

2. Is there much of an advantage to paying an extra $200+ for the 980 over the 970? I found the 970 for about $300 shipped - the 980 is about $550..

3. Will there be much of a difference in performance between the SLI 670's and a single 970 (I only run 1080)?

4. What do you guys think is a fair price to sell my 2 gigabyte GTX 670 for?

Thanks!

I would hang onto your 670's in SLI going to a 970/980 isnt much of a performance upgrade besides vram. However once DX12 comes out you wont be limited by your 2gb since its suppose to stack.

@04dcarraher: DX12 sli vram stacks?

@dcno07: I have a 980 and love it. I also game at 1080p, but in the future I'm going to get a 1440p monitor. So since you only game at 1080p if I was you I would sell them and sli 2 970's, won't be much more than 1 980 and it would give you better fps than a single 980.

@Jr14:

As far as we have been told that these new modern api's coming out will allow both gpu's to use their memory pools combined 2+ 2=4gb instead of them operating like a mirrored raid 2+2=2gb

But this ability wont start until devs code for dx12 or the other new api's coming out

@04dcarraher: I knew dx12 will allow you to actually use more of your CPU for gaming, but didn't know it was going to stack vram. Do you know if dx12 will be released with Windows 10? Because that's not that far away.

@Jr14: That's what I was thinking. I found a good deal on a new 970.. Hopefully when that one starts to struggle down the road I can find a second used 970 for cheap.

You do realise that DX12 is pointless until 2016...

There wont be ANY DX12 games when W10 is released.

@GTR12: Microsoft said to expect the first DX12 games to be made available around “holiday 2015″

@Jr14:

Do Microsoft make any PC games and/or do they develop PC games? Nope, so they dont know a thing.

Also, they mean XBone DX12 games, like Halo fo example.

Exactly what I was thinking, Microsoft don't build or release your games anymore - so unless you want to listen to some sales man telling you buy our stuff it'll be suported right away on launch day, I wouldn't buy Windows 10 right away.

Two 670's should hold you off until new cards come out.
If you want a single card setup then get a 980 or wait till R9 390X comes out.

Keep your two 670s.

Wait until 2016 when Nvidia releases their Pascal GPUs which will be a lot better than what is offered currently.

And this is coming from a person with 2 970s.

Actually no its not pointless, MSI not too long ago stated that The new batman game and the Witcher 3 will be patched to DX12 after Win 10 releases. So while there isnt conformation about that, Win 10 being released in july most likely, still gives you 5 months of time for things to start using DX12. Now for us to to see a native DX12 game released wont be be until 2016. But seeing DX12 helping in games looks like we will see it this year. Here is that quote from MSI,

"The most exciting part of Windows 10 for gamers is the introduction of DirectX 12. You are likely to start seeing the benefits of the new graphics technology already in The Witcher 3, Batman: Arkham Knight and more games released later this year."

24Gb VRAM for me then :D

Perfect for those 12k nude texture mods in Skyrim.

@insane_metalist: I keep seeing people saying 2 670s should be more powerful than a 970 and about equal to a 980 but my computer had been struggling to run max settings 1080 at 60 fps lately. Haven't played many games lately but MKX runs at 60 fps max settings but dips hard on the rain level, shadow of mordor I could run one setting bellow ultra (very high i think) with no aa at about 60 fps.. Seems like a 980 or 970 would max out those games no problem.. Is that just poor sli support or poor optimization for the pc ports?

My setup -2x GIGABYTE GV-N670OC-2GD GeForce GTX 670 2GB
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
i5-3570K @ 3.4GHz
250GB Samsung SSD
1TB HDD

You have to understand that not every game is created equally. Some have great multi-gpu support and others have mediocre or poor support. So then its up to Nvidia to create and update the SLI profiles to work with the games. Again the quality of the support from the dev's influences how well a game scales on multiple gpus. Now another factor is that your i5 3570k has to feed two gpu's data, this is why without overclocking your 670's are not reaching the performance getting close to the 970/980. Once DX12 comes out and games start using multithreading gpu communication, that i5 will be able to use all its cores to feed both 670's increasing the gpus abilities. So I would wait it out until end of this year or sometime next year, DX12 will breath life into your setup.

@04dcarraher: thanks I appreciate the input.

@dcno07: I don't think you should get a 980gtx, the huge extra cost isn't worth it. Basically you may get 10-15fps more on some games, but you can overclock the 970 to match that.

The 970 does only have 3.5gb of full speed memory, the last 512mb is basically junk that will not be in sync fast enough with the other 3.5gb to be of any use... but i think by the time you ever need beyond 3.5gb the 970 and 980 would be outdated enough to upgrade to a new gen anyways.

That was my reasoning for not going to a 980 since the next gen is always so near, blowing 200-300 dollars more for 5-10% speed difference makes no sense.

I dont believe MSI stating that, if Rocksteady or CD Projekt has/had said that, its more credible, but a GPU manufacturer saying that is just marketing or maybe they'll have some sort of bundle with their GPU's.

Like the TC, I'm planning to get a new GPU that will last me for at least 2 years by the end of summer(along with an SSD and win 10) and was looking into GTX 970 but I get from you guys that maybe it'll be best to wait for the next batch of GPUs and DX12 utilization. Unfortunately, I don't think I can wait as I'm currently using an HD 7770 which is kind of a low-level card in next-gen standards.

Overclocking your CPU would help out a bit. It'd be a pretty good deal for you to get a GTX 980 if you sold your 670's and paid the rest.
It could be poor SLI support, I wouldn't know since I haven't had an SLI setup for the past 9 months.

For DX12 games to "stack" video RAM on multiple GPU, the developers have to allow their games to run with Split Frame Rendering.

It is unknown if the currently announced DX12 games allows SFR but DX12 is not the only requirement. The only game currently that uses SFR is Civ: Beyond Earth on Mantle API.