The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 Review: Featuring EVGA
by Ryan Smith on September 26, 2014 10:00 AM ESTMetro: Last Light
As always, kicking off our look at performance is 4A Games’ latest entry in their Metro series of subterranean shooters, Metro: Last Light. The original Metro: 2033 was a graphically punishing game for its time and Metro: Last Light is in its own right too. On the other hand it scales well with resolution and quality settings, so it’s still playable on lower end hardware.
It seems fitting that we start with a game where the GTX 970 and R9 290XU start out tied. Even at the R9 290XU’s strongest hand – 4K – the GTX 970 is at parity and that remains for 1440p as well. Only at 1080p does the GTX 970 even begin to trail the R9 290XU.
This game ends up being a very good summary of what we’re going to see. The GTX 970 and R9 290XU trade blows from game-to-game, but in the end the two are a tie, just as we see here. Which for NVIDIA is a great outcome, as it means they’re tying a card that's nearly 50% more expensive.
Meanwhile if we push on the gas pedal a bit harder with the GTX 970 FTW, we see the EVGA card pull ahead of the R9 290XU and stock GTX 970 by 8%. This is a bit above average overall for the GTX 970 FTW, but it does conveniently highlight the fact that even if AMD officially pushed the clock speeds of R9 290XU a bit more, they’d still end up with GTX 970 right next to them.
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Kalessian - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Is it really safe to overclock the memory like that when there aren't any heatsinks on them?Also, 1st?
Ryan Smith - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
As long as you're not giving them additional voltage (which you can't do on this card): yes. GDDR5 does not consume all that much power, even if it is relatively more than DDR3. The airflow off of the fans is plenty for stock voltage.Viewgamer - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Why no Mantle benchmarks for Thief ?winterspan - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
I'm assuming because this is an Nvidia review...eanazag - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
No mantle is likely because it didn't give a great showing last time in the AMD mantle review. If I remember correctly, Thief maybe even had a performance regression with Mantle being used.Ammaross - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
Because Mantle only has benefit in CPU-capped performance. When you run benchmarks on an i7 or better, Mantle has no tangible benefit and sometimes has regressions.Viewgamer - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Or even Mantle benchmarks for BF4 for that matter ?Ryan Smith - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Apologies. The Mantle results have to be added manually since our graphing system can't handle multiple results for the same card automatically. I had actually entered in the data but neglected to regenerate the graphs.SeanJ76 - Monday, February 9, 2015 - link
Sounds like your not using EVGA PrecisonX 4.2.1, you can add as much voltage as you like to the 970 GTX FTW.........idiot.....P39Airacobra - Sunday, November 29, 2015 - link
Ok first of all EVGA Precision or the type of software has nothing to do with that, Also he has a valid concern about the V-Ram temps and the VRM. Also don't call people idiots! That's my Job! IDIOT!