How long is gtx 970 gonna last?

How long is gtx 970 gonna last?

same question for 980 Ti lol Anyone with GPU experience here to voice his/her opinion?

@GiveMeSomething: @agent94: Highly individually... I really expect both parts to work 5 years from now. But I doubt they will allow you to play games at settings you guys think are acceptable or better with frames per second you want. Personally I hope my 980Ti will last me 3 years.

Holy christ, i spent 680 to last me 3 years? xD damn, didnt know PC gaming was this expensive

@GiveMeSomething: it'll last you around that long if you want to play bleeding edge games on the highest settings with a high FPS. In order to just play games at a quality that exceeds consoles I'd imagine it'll last you a good 5-7 years.

5 years seems more reasonable lol

It's all personal preference.

If I didn't game across 3 monitors at 5760x1080 for some of my games, I would have stuck with my dual 570s for another year or two. As it was, I used them for 4 years.

I moved up to a 980Ti just a bit ago and based on past experiences, and only gaming on 1920x1080 or 5760x1080, I don't see any reason to upgrade soon. Unless something drastic happens, I'd venture I'll use my 980Ti for 4-5 years.

PC hardware moves fast :p

What resolution you play at? If 1080, quite awhile. If higher like 1440, like me :P then you'll probably have to upgrade in about 3 or 4 years (just a guess). I plan to maybe grab another 970, so I'll be set for awhile if I do.

Guess it'll last until the next generation of consoles, 1080p/60fps.

how about my processor? I bought the 6700k. Im thinking of upgrading my video card when its time (4-5 years) but keep the processor. Is that uhm.. possible/reasonable/accurate? Will I get bottlenecked?

@GiveMeSomething:

Your i7 6700 is a good processor, it depends where pc gaming goes in the next couple of years. On the one hand we have seen a stagnation of cpu performance since 2011 no more leaps and bounds, AMD hasn't been competitive to push Intel. These consoles are using slow processors which will be the base line with multiplats meaning any 4 or more cored cpu made in the last 5 years is in good shape. Then we have DX12 which is suppose to lower cpu overheads and making full use of the cpu to feed these high end gpus, prolonging older/slower cpu's.

So unless games start requiring more than the quad core i7's you will be fine for awhile

The processor will last longer than a higher GPU would. 10nm CPU based on the same architecture of skylake got delayed to 2017/2018 now and will probably be another less than 10% IPC increase.

GPU on the other hand is a whole other story. Next year's GPU will be so much better than our current high end GPU this year. The next gen of GPU will be such a large increase in both performance and energy efficiency.

It already slowed down a lot. I think I had yearly upgrades during 02-05ish span. I survived off a gtx 570 for 4 years. Realistically I think the best route is to buy the 2nd or 3rd flagship card like 970 or 290 which typically has the most bang for buck and then hold out for 3 years.

So to OP I think it'll be good for 2-3 years and even then I bet you can sell it for $50-100 down the road to spend towards the next upgrade.

@GiveMeSomething, @agent94: If you are asking about how long the hardware part can last, depending on the build quality and how you will use it, it might last a lot of years. (currently I got an MSI GTX275 Twin Frozr in my other PC and still rocks after 6 years...)

If you are talking about how long till it will not be able to play games with eye candy and decent FPS, then it will last long till new generations of consoles will appear.

The reason? Both consoles of these generation are weak compared to what is available at the moment they were released (GK104 and Tahiti have almost double performance than PS4's chip).

While PS3 at the moment of its release it had a flagship chip on it (G70). That means PS4 has half the performance that was available while PS3 had almost full performance of what was available.

So you will not have any problem running games with a GTX970 or GTX980ti for a looong time (these graphics cards are completely destroying console chips, especially the GTX980ti) as long as you don't want to maximize settings or playing in Ultra.

There is one more thing that I don't know how devs will respond.

There is a new generation coming in six months from both sides (Nvidia and AMD) that will offer a big performance jump. (New architecture from both, double die shrink 28nm->16nm, HBM2.0 for both, possibly GDDR5X too, probably Full DX12 support from both, etc etc)

Both Nvidia and AMD will use new chips in all price tiers.

So how devs will respond? Will they take the new performance and release games with better eye candy or they will just ignore it and making console ports with some AA?

We will see.

TLDR: Most high-end GPUs can play games with nice eyecandy for about 4 years (or changing GPU once every two architectures) after their release, GTX970 and GTX980ti should not be an exception and we will see in 6-7 months how new GPUs will perform and we will judge then better.

Not very long if you fry an egg on it.

I do play at 3440*1440... Much more demanding than 1080...

A blessing and a curse.

970 is a good card that has already been on the market for over a year. For 1080p/60fps, it should be good for another 2 years on High/Ultra settings. After that it will still be decent (and much better than the consoles), but you will not be maxing all games and sustaining 1080p/60fps. For 1440p/60fps, it is already humbled by games like The Witcher 3. For 4K... just forget about it. lol

I've got a GTX 280 from BFG that's still going strong after 6+ years as well. I used it for about 3 years and then grabbed a 570. After I got done with the 280, I gave it to my younger brother and he's still using it today. To make things even more impressive about the 280 he's using, it's actually a flashed 285.

Long story short about the flashed 285: the 280 fan failed, it went back under a RMA to BFG. They sent back a 285 as replacement since the 280 was discontinued. Then BFG closed doors (literally days after they shipped my replacement card back). The 285 was faulty. I increased the voltage, dropped clock speeds, tried many different drivers, but the card would constantly crash. I now had a $300+ paperweight. I had a good working 280 still (was running 2 in SLI). I didn't find anyone on the net that had tried to flash a 280 BIOS on a 285, considering the cards have a different PCB, chip and voltage. I copied the BIOS on my good 280, made a copy of the BIOS from the 285. I flashed the 280 to the 285 and it worked. I ran the 280 and the flashed 285 in SLI for another year before I got my 570s.

In the end, as long as you keep the GPU clean and are willing to replace the thermal paste on it after about 3-4 years and keep it running as cool as possible, the cards can last a very long time.

@neatfeatguy: Lol, flashed a GTX285 to 280? xD

I grabbed a GTX570 too.

Aaaaand the GTX275 is still running without changing any thermal paste, with temps during gaming around 65-70C...

:D

i think it should be fine for 2-3 years. My 680 was playing stuff nicely but I decided to upgrade it in december 2014 with a 970 because it wasnt that much money and was a decent upgrade. Assuming ur doing 1080p. If your doing above that, i'd say it wont last long at all.

Probably around 2 years if you want to play games at decent settings (assuming you're playing @ 1080P).

PC gaming is expensive, I bought a overclocked 780Ti last year and had I not gotten another one I would have only been able to play Witcher 3 at 30fps Maxed 1080P.

That depends entirely on your resolution and fps.. It also depends entirely on what type of games you plan on playing.. Many genre types are not very demanding graphically..

Remind me in 5 years to let you know.