need help choosing between 980 ti, fury x, or 970 sli...

[orlfman]

i've been using a evga 470 paired with a intel 980x since 2010... kinda figured its a good time to upgrade after waiting for the next gpu "around the corner" for five years lol. 

 

i already ordered a benq 144hz 1080p monitor, intel i7 6700K, 16gb ddr4 2666mhz gskill ram, and a asus maximus viii hero motherboard.

 

right now i'm still debating what video card to get.

 

I'm currently looking at these:

Sapphire Radeon R9 FURY X 4GB

EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Hybrid

GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 970 x2 in sli

GIGABYTE 980 Ti G1 GAMING

EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Classified

 

 

from what i've gathered the 970 sli would be the fastest of the three cards, being 980 ti, 970 sli, and fury x. two in sli would produce very little heat and draw little power. only downside is multi-gpu but it seems like nvidia has been on their game with sli support. i couldn't really find any titles that didn't offer sli support or nvidia adding sli support. outside of that its the 3.5gb vram controversy. i remember reading when it came out how assassins creed unity would slow down once it start to approach, and surpass the 3.5gb vram limit at 1080p, and the same with gta 5 at 1080p. i don't know if thats been "fixed" with work arounds by nvidia by offloading stuff or what. i did think about 980 sli but my budget is $750 max.

 

the fury x and evga 980 ti hybird i really like a lot since they come with a "hybird" AIO cooler. those AIO coolers seem to do a fantastic job at keeping them cool from the reviews i've seen they have been able to push the 980ti hybrid to 1.4ghz.

 

looking at reviews it seems like the fury x overclocked by ~100mhz can easily tie a stock 980 ti but the 980 ti can easily be overclocked by an extra ~200mhz - ~300mhz over stock. from what it appears most can hit at least 1.3ghz with the stock voltage stably. 

 

i herd amd currently has the best vanilla dx12 support while nvidia has the best dx12.1 support. seeing how .1 releases rarely go used i kinda feel like amd's dx12 support is better, but really don't know much about it. its async or whatever?

 

But.... Would nvidia really allow game devs to use a lot of async? I can see them making sure async is ignored.

 

With the latest fables dx10 benchmark the 980 ti is faster than the fury x, but not by much. Amd overall performed better, such as the 390 series, but they're space heaters and I already have one, a 470 lol. And async was used in that bench iirc.

 

While ashes showed a 290x faster or as fast as a 980 ti. But people say that game doesn't count?

 

thanks for the help!

[bp9801]

I've always been a fan of the single card setups, so I would go for the single fastest card you can afford. If you go with overclocking, the 980 Ti is your winner, imo. The stock cooled 980 Ti reviewed here hit 1.4GHz on the core, with the MSI Lightning version hitting nearly 1.5GHz.

[Waco]

I wish I could make a case for the Fury X...but I can't.

 

If you can deal with the headaches and you're not shooting for 4K resolution any time soon, 970 SLI is by far the fastest in a game that plays nicely with SLI. Otherwise, the 980Ti has more legs.