New PC Graphics Card

[Rezelius]

Hi all,

I'm looking at doing an upgrade to my Graphics card and would appreciate any help/suggestions I can get.
My current setup is as follows:

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770K CPU @ 3.50GHz (8 CPUs)
Memory: 16GB 1600MHz
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670
Power Supply: 850W

Is going to the GTX 970 worth the $400? I know there appears to be issue with it only being able to use 3.5 of the 4GB, but I'm not sure that would be an issue. Currently playing: SWTOR, EVE, Star Citizen, StarCraft2, Sins of a Solar Empire and a bunch of steam games if that help at all.

Would the 980 be worth the extra coin (around $700)?

I'm also thinking of getting a bigger hard drive for storage of all my games, movies, music etc. and was looking at this guy Here.
Thoughts?

Thanks for any help!

 

[Muessig]

Personally I would go for the 970 - it seems to be in the sweet spot for performance right now and will have enough power and memory to keep you going for a while.

 

[Angry_Mushroom]

Go for the 970. The entire 3.5 gig thing has been vastly overblown. If you are using more than 75% of your memory, chances are your frame rates aren't going to be brilliant regardless. At this point, if you want a full out upgrade, I'd look to the 980ti. It should last you longer, and will probably do your current specs more justice.

Not sure about the HDD to be completely honest. While a 6TB might hold all your stuff, have you considered any data redundancy? While Western Digital drives are pretty excellent, even they can fail. If you do go this route for a single drive in system, I'd strongly recommend going out and buying an external to backup at least your music/video files.

 

[Rezelius]

Thanks for the tips guys. Right now I can't really justify the cost on something like the 980ti so I will probably stick with the 970.

Any recommendations on Manufacturer? My 670 is an EVGA and I haven't had any issues with it, but there are so many out there.
EVGA, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSi....

For the Hard Drive, I had planned on having an external drive for doing backups (as well as some cloud backup for the important stuff).
Can you recommend anything for running a RAID setup? I have never done anything with RAID so I'm not really familiar with it.

Thanks again!

 

[Muessig]

For graphics card manufacturer I'm using ASUS. My friend swore by EVGA for a while but his card gave up the ghost after a couple of years, so he's on Asus now too.

 

[jizwizard]

What res are you running and what type of games?

 

[Muessig]

I've got 3 screens. One at 2560x1440, one at 1680x1050 and one at 1920x1080px. I use the 1440p display for gaming. I run FPS's, RPG's and all sorts.

 

[Rezelius]

I'm running 1920 x 1080 on my screen and games are SWTOR, EVE, Star Citizen, StarCraft2, Diablo3, Sins of a Solar Empire and others.

 

[cygnus11]

I have an Asus 970 card and my son has an EVGA 970 card. Both are excellent.

ASUS GeForce GTX 970 STRIX-GTX970-DC2OC-4GD5 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 HDCP Ready SLI Support G-SYNC Support Video Card - Newegg.com
EVGA 04G-P4-3975-KR GeForce GTX 970 SSC ACX 2.0+ 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 SLI Support Graphics Card - Newegg.com

If you don't have a lot of room in your case, the EVGA is almost a full inch smaller.