Should I keep a GTX 970 or a GTX 1060 3gb?

[votemarvel]

So I've been using a GTX 970 since it was released, it's proven to be a great card.

However in another example of why I should not drink and use the internet, I find that I've got a GTX 1060 3gb on the way.
I probably wanted to buy a 6b version but I expect a confused me didn't read the description properly.

So I was wondering which card should I keep? On paper they seem pretty much the same performance wise. Sure the 1060 is a newer architecture and more power efficient but the 970 has an extra 1gb of GDDR5 vRAM (even if half that amount isn't very good.)

 

[DeliveryGodNoah_v1legacy]

Looks to be about a 5-10 FPS increase in most games. The 3GB version, depending on the game, is even less than that.

Is that worth it to you?

Personally, I would say AT LEAST a jump in 30FPS would make the purchase of a new card worth it.

I'd return the card for your money and hold onto it for a better upgrade. The 970 is still pretty great, especially at 1080p on high settings. Max on some titles.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Yeah, keep the 970, return the 1060. Any performance difference will be negligible and not worth the extra money you're spending. Save your money and wait until the next gen of cards, then it'll probably be worth it to upgrade.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Another vote for the 970. The 1060 3GB is not enough of an improvement to justify the expense. Save the money and put it towards a meatier upgrade. As Dirty Hipsters said, you might want to wait for the next gen of cards.

Although that might take a while. A few days at Computex, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang answered a question about the next GeForce GPUs by saying that ?it's a long time from now.? No word on how long "long" is. My guess: not this year anymore.

 

[votemarvel]

Thanks for all the input and you helped me make the choice to keep my 970.

However in a piece of good fortune I managed to avoid returning the 1060 because a friend wanted me to build him a mid range gaming PC and was happy to take the 1060 for pretty much the price I paid for it...then I encountered Windows 10.

Windows 10 made everything painful. Windows Update refused to install anything, just gave error upon error. Manual updates from the Windows catalog site would work after several attempts. The graphics drivers also kicked up errors from 7zip unpacking to just failing without informing me why.

So in frustration I installed Windows 8.1 and surprisingly everything works perfectly. Windows Update runs as it should, graphics drivers gave no errors. I know people hate Windows 8 but at least the damn thing works.

I'll go back soon and have a look at what is going wrong with Windows 10 as at some point having to use it is inevitable.

 

[sanquin]

The price for new cards is still borked because of crypto currency mining anyway. The 970 is still fine, and it's better to wait for the prices to stabilize before getting a new card.