Evga,asus or gigabyte 970

Im having some trouble deciding on which 970 too get.

Some advice would be greatly appreciated.

I'd say to go with the EVGA card, EVGA by far has the best customer support and warranty services of any hardware vendor. Second choice would be Asus, their products are usually built pretty well and even though they have hit or miss customer service their products are generally robust enough you shouldn't have to deal their warranty returns. Plus Asus usually has the best software (best looking, most featured, and a lot of the time:easiest to use). IMPO, avoid Gigabyte at all costs, from what I have seen and what I've personally experienced, they have the most hit or miss quality when it comes to their products (both design quality and actual product quality), so I would stay away from Gigabyte unless you find one of their cards for a ridiculously low price

Ok, thank you. Ive been reading people have been experiencing some trouble with the evga 970. something about heat pipes not touching and fans buzzing. something like that. I'll probably go with the asus then. I didn't know gigabyte was such bad quality.

Gigabyte G1 Gaming - I got 2 of them. They are binned GPUS (the only 970s that are binned - make sure you get the G1 Gaming version with the back plate, not the other one), and have great power phase...and huge room for overclocking. The Strix is ok, but has lower power phase, and personally I'm not a fan of the 0db thing...I'd rather my card run at least low fan speed, the Strix idles around 45c. I originally bought 2 EVGA FTW's from Newegg, I got them and was hugely disappointed. The shroud is plastic and really cheap, I could almost push it off the heat sink it was so loose. The fans are also very loud past 40% and sound like a jet taking off. The biggest thing that's bad about the EVGA ACX 2.0 cards is that only 2 of the 3 heat pipes makes contact with the GPU, so the temps are very high on that card - both of my cards were close to 85c. It's faulty by design. You can look this up on the net, it's everywhere. Gigabyte by far is the best...I haven't dealt with they're customer service, but I can tell you they're 970 is the best out there. I have tried the FTW- which I sold here right after I got it, the Gigabyte G1's - which I have 2 and kept them, and my girlfriend chose the Strix for her computer...she loves quiet and is a owl addict O_O. Her card is very nice too, but mine has much more overclocking headroom. Hope this helps in some way!. Just look at Youtube for the Gigabyte G1 - There's not 1 bad review. I also think the Zotac cards are pretty good, I would personally go with the AMP or AMP Extreme if you go that route.

Thanks. The only thing keeping me from going with the strix right away was the lower power. I feel the same way about the 0db but that could just be me being paranoid over everything hahaha. The amount of cooling on the gigabyte and the oc overhead ive seen makes that card even more enticing.

I watched jayztwocents video on the gigabyte 970 and he said its awesome.

I'll just keep looking around too se if the reviews are still good then i'll probably get the gigabyte if the reviews stay good and consistent

MSI is also beast, forgot to mention that. BTW, these cards are very hard to buy now, they go in and out of stock in minutes...but right now Newegg has the MSI, Strix, Zotac AMP Omega, and Zotac AMP Extreme. I hope you can grab one before they go out of stock! If you don't want to wait for the Gigabyte...I would go with MSI or Zotac AMP Extreme. The clock speeds on the Extreme are insane!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500363

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121899

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127832

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500364

Your welcome man!. Ya, the Strix only has 1 8 pin, I think it definitely has the power to run without an overclock ( I doubt Asus would release a junk card), and has some room for overclocking, but probably not as much as the others. I got 1550mhz on both my G1's ( one would go 1625mhz but I wasn't comfortable with that). I got 1400mhz out of the Strix which isn't too bad still. Ya I know what you mean about the 0db thing, I get a little worried it could overheat because its got no fan moving. Yes I was very surprised how quiet the Gigabyte cards are even with 3 fans, even with my overclocks with the stock fan curve they are extremely quiet. Bryan from TechYesCity is a friend of mine and he did the review on G1 too and he was very impressed. Ya, I'm not the biggest fan of Jay but he does tell the truth and he's very good at what he does and honest. Sure man, do your research :). I hope you can get one and go beast mode!

 

I have to wait till January to order that and the rest of the computer so hopefully it will die down in like 3 months...

Ahhh, shit ya man! By January they should be MUCH easier to get a hold of..also by then there should be even more 970s to make your choice even harder!! haha :)

 

Just out of curiosity what wattage psu do you use. And what would you recommend for a single gigabtyte 970 and a i5 4690k

I use the RM1000 for the 2x 970s, works great. You could go probably 500w, but maybe something like an RM650 or something like that. Anything at least bronze rated and over 500w should be fine for the single 970.

The ASUS GTX Strix 970 works great and a cards work area is around the 50-70°C.. So the fans are just ok as they are, but if you still feel uncomfortable you can set the fan curve really easily in GPU tweak so that they start spinning at 30°C if you want.. I have mine set at 55°C..

Also I have no coil whine or whatsoever =)

 

 

I roll a corsair CS650M, with the i5-4690K and the ASUS Strix 970.. and I run my card on G(aming) mode which consumes more power and I still have around 200W overhead space =)

 

Get a 500-650 Gold rated and you're great =)

Thanks for the input. The more I see the strix the more I want to go for that but the 3rd fan on  the gigabyte 970 still looks good too me i've also been looking at the msi 970.

The Gigabyte card has what is probably the best air-cooled system that has been installed on a graphics card in terms of thermal dissipation in TDP/Watts, it has very good coverage of all the important parts having direct contact with the cooling assembly or the backplate! They are also well binned, keeping in mind the windforce 970 (NON-G1) is a completely different and vastly inferrior card!

The MSI Gamings is also very good but lacks a backplate. The others have inferior cooling solutions and power-delivery. People are getting very good overclocks on that MSI and Gigabyte card. I would pretty much expect a Gigabyte G1 970 to reach 1.6ish-1.5Ghz.

 

Hahaha once again im stuck between which card to get. The only water cooling ill ever do in the near future is maybe on the cpu. as this is my first build and want to stay under $1000 im just going to stick with air cooling that's why the gigabyte 970 looks so great too me. Thanks for the info I didn't realize how big of a difference was between the g1. Im going to be using a 600w psu so im not going to push any card too hard from the start.

The MSI GTX970 Gaming 4G and the Gigabyte GTX 970 Windforce Gaming G1 are the only two cards in a comparison of 11 GTX 970s I read, that were able to maintain their full clock speeds under load over time. Plus, the MSI came out on top as the quietest card.

 

Basicly they are all fine.

If im right the Gigabyte G1 gaming cards seem to be higher clocked. i also saw some impressive Zotac ones.

To clear up some things here:

EVGA's ACX 1.0 is the one with the 2/3 heatpipe contact.  EVGA has stated that the cooler was created with a lot more cooling headroom, and should cool adequately.

EVGA's ACX 2.0 is a very different design, with all the heatpipes running to an aluminum baseplate.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8568/the-geforce-gtx-970-review-feat-evga/2

JayzTwoCents also posted a picture of his EVGA ACX 2.0 cooler, and it looked the same as in the anandtech article.  It is, however, still made of thick plastic.

 

The Gigabyte card is also, in my opinion, the best looking card out right now - especially if you get the one with the backplate.  I personally like the 0 DB mode that MSI, EVGA, and ASUS all have.  45c idle doesn't do any damage to the card, and having no fan noise makes your PC much quieter when idle.  However, I wonder how Gigabyte cards would perform if you set up a custom fan curve for your own "0 DB Mode".

600w?  If that's a good quality power supply, then you could go overclock a GTX 970 as much as you want.  You'd have so much overclocking headroom, even with something like an i7-4790k.