There was a price glitch at our MicroCenter in 2015 and I was able to get a 970 for ~$150 US. That card is still my daily and is about the only thing keeping me sane and not overspending on a GPU to a scalper.
there was a time soon after the launch of the 1000s series that EVGA was selling b-stock 970s for $99. It was by far the best value in gaming at the time.
@@HanduBananu I missed out on that at the time, but my friend acquired a Walmart prebuilt PC on Black Friday from the previous year and obtained the $99.00 GTX 970, so he spent 325.00 for the tower/15 inch monitor/970. He played that for several years and only recently upgraded to a 3070.
Pretty much just recently Upgradeed to 3060Ti so I could game at 100+ on Apex while streaming, but DAMN has my 970 been a clutch king in this age of gaming
I'm still using my GTX 970 after 7 years because of the high gpu prices and I'm impressed what the GTX 970 can run in 2021. I can still play almost every game on lower settings.
Everyone was losing it over the whole 4gb fiasco (I still remember the dumbass memes lmao) while not realizing this was one of the best price to performance cards of all time
Just wanted to say its crazy how time flies. I remember when you were a small channel with not that many subs but had this level of professionalism that usually comes from big channels with subs that you have now. Absolutely amazing and no doubt you will get to 1 million.
Professionalism is only one factor. I guess that people are just tired with restless, pompous youtubers with elevated voices. I come here for smooth, polite monologues with occasional tongue-in-cheek comments. I also appreciate that I am not reminded to subscribe at the very beginning of each video and then every couple of minutes, it is always left for viewer to decide at the end of the material where it should be. Cultural approach is on a different level here.
In time he very well might, but Hardware Unboxed, which I think is the gold standard for performance tests and hardware reviews, isn't even at a million yet, so it might take a while.
Switched mine out for a 3070 back in December (for MSRP fortunately), since I also upgraded to 1440p. Still, the 970 has a special place in my heart, felt like it could handle about anything I threw at it. Actually got a place in my cabinet, can't get myself to sell it. Such a trooper, still working perfectly after 5 years.
Same dude, my 970 has consistently impressed me with every new game released that I could still run at high settings somehow, $350 6 years ago, that is a ridiculous price to performance ratio. Was my first real video card in my first real gaming PC I built, when I finally build a new one this Christmas this whole PC is going to be displayed like a museum piece lol
I gave both my strix 970's for my two kids builds. I still got a Asus gtx 680dcii I keep as a backup. When I can upgrade my kids I will get shot of one 970 and the 680 and keep 970 as a backup.
Just finished building my dream PC right before I had to head home for a holiday and my first PC is still here, G3258 Pentium with a GTX 970 still going as strong as ever, I'm 100% never going to sell this PC way too many memories
I was 21 when I bought the 970, when I finally upgrade next year, I will be 29. It's quite amazing to think that I've been gaming with this card through all my 20s. Lots of great gaming memories.
@@kurruptedsoul9677 same im finally upgrading my intel Pentium j series cpu which ran gta sa max settings for an average of 55 fps. I cant believe i played games older than 2010s for all my teenage years
Still rocking the strix model, got it in May 2015. Still going strong. The card is great as I am going through the backlog of games that I missed throughout the years.
Don't always have money but got a 390X for the 8gb vram. The 970 was cheaper though, can't remember by how much. Times were good then when everyone was getting 970s prices seem amazing compared to now and GPUs were everywhere lol. Was getting 750TIs for next to nothing and 970s were smashing it for not a lot of money. Definitely good times
I am all so still using my 970 strix, VR is getting a bit much for it but its acceptable. defiantly my favourite model of the 970. I bought it for £180 in 2017
I had two strix 970's in sli but have split them up for both my kids. Excellent GPU and the strix version has a metal fan shroud which made it seem a touch more premium than the other OEM 970's. Seriously considered a third for triple sli but when I tested with my mates MSI 970 that ended that thinking. Brilliant GPU for the cash the strix and my kids are over the delighted and have not touched Xbox in nearly 12 month
@@MrRagemanPL Yo bro, very happy for ya! And all of this is kinda funny too, because I also - back in early 2020 - bought a second-hand 1070 for my girlfriend's first PC. Still can't believe I paid less than 190€ for it, with today's prices... Cheers, and good luck to both of ya :3
Yeah, glad to see you still giving all of us a great heads-up on which cards can still play 1080p well enough for the time being. That is where we are today, unfortunately.
Had a couple different 970s maybe 4 years ago. They were really capable cards and I'd recommend getting one if you have no interest in mining and just need a card that isn't heavily scalped.
Yep managed to get one for £100 a few months back with an AIO included, was pretty pleased with the price considering what some other second cards are going for. It's been a hell of an improvement from my HD7850.
@@e.n.l1976 Oh coming from a 7850 I bet it felt like a huge improvement! My first card was an MSI HD 6450 and I moved up to a Strix R7 370 4GB, felt like 30x better!
My 970 died nearly 5 years ago still under warranty. EVGA RMA replaced it with a 1060. The 1060 died 6 months later. EVGA replaced it with a 1070. Still going strong!
@@YellowLAVA Yep haha, the 970 was 2nd hand too. I bought it prebuilt off a local gumtree seller for £300. 2600K, 970, 16GB RAM to replace my at the time FX 8350, r9 280 which I gave to my younger brother. I've now upgraded to a Ryzen 3600 and my bro has the 2600K and an r9 380 which I got for £50 off a friend.
One of my favorite channels. I was JUST looking at getting a GTX 970 or a 980Ti. Always a smart move to change with the landscape and adapt. I love the budget oriented views of the channel already, so it fit even before the techdemic, but videos like this just hit the nail on the head. Great stuff, man, thanks.
I had an EVGA 970 SSC in my gaming PC from 2015 to 2019. Then I got a completely new build rocking an RTX 2080 Super. But the old gaming PC and the 970 live on as I give them to my kid and she still games on it to this day.
I'm so happy I got the 980 a few years ago. Would have wanted to upgrade but in the current market I'm just glad that I can still use this for some time to come.
980s are very solid, and don't have the 3.5gb vram bs the 970 has. I'm a bit better off with my Vega 64 Liquid but I hope we both will be able to get new cards soon!
@@insertnamehere3007 wtf lol no they were not the r9 290 is still great for budget builds today i got one for 60 quid and its performance is relative to a 1060
Found the nVidia fanboy. Have my R9 390 too in the racing sim rig - runs most racing games at fairly high detail. Shame AMD stopped support for latest drivers.
Another great video. Something I think you should talk about more in your videos though is overclocking headroom. Considering that modern overclocking in 99% of cases is 100% safe, it would be great to highlight in your GPU reviews from here on since there's free performance on the table. Some games that aren't playable on a stock card could become playable with a decently-tuned overclock. - With Love, a Random guy on the Internet
Yeah I agree, I don't cover overclocking enough. I think it's usually because I don't do it very often myself, but I should try and do it more because it could be very useful especially for weaker cards than this that might struggle at stock.
still running this gpu mainly for PUBG. still very capable... my system is xeon e1220v3, 16gb ddr3, asus vanguard b85 mobo... solid 60 at 1080 with mix utra, high and low.... regards from the philippines... nice vid as always man...
Still using my 970 and I got no complaints with it. I'm always looking at prices to upgrade but my 970 still handles everything I throw at it extremely well.
Woah! Thanks for making a vid on them! I’ve been using a Windforce 970 since it went on sale, it’s been going strong paired to a Xeon X3450 so I’m more than happy with how long it’s been lasting!
I'd agree with this, my 960 was starting to get clobbered with modern games, cyberpunk needed 80-90% res scale. I think the 4gb 960 is okay if you're okay with 720-900p or scaling in newer games.
A 2GB 960 was pretty much all I could find last year that was good enough without paying scalper prices. I'm waiting til the 4000s before I play RDR2, CB, etc (imo what's the point of playing games like that if I can't crank the gfx up on my 1440p ultrawide), but at least the 960 was a big step up from gaming on a laptop with a 750M I guess
This GPU was serving me from January 2015 to november 2019 so almost 5 years! Best buy ever for my PC, second one was 4770@4,7GHz which i also swapped after 5 years. Now my brother in law is the owner of this GPU, its still running, i just clean it and changed thermal paste so Temp goes down to 65-67c from 75~~@1450Mhz, so its like new one once again!
Lol this is EXACTLY what I have been saying about the 970! I purchased my 3 fan windforce model for $200 :( a few months ago as a temp gpu until newer gpus become affordable again, i can play any game I want at at least 40 fps at 1080p, and get high refresh rate on games older than 5 years.
I still have my windforce model, I’ve ran it OC’ed to hell at 1,500Mhz for idk how long, she’s still going strong with a strong overclock, its those triple fans!
im genuenly curious as to how and where u get these capable 2nd hand cards, I wanted a 2nd hand 1650 super or 1060 for my budget build but after not being able to find either, gave up and had to go for a gt 1030 :(
Hey, just a thought, you can get a Quadro K2200 for under 100 bucks in the US. It's the same performance as a 750ti and has 4gb vram, so you'd be able to get a ~15% performance boost and with better texture settings. You could probably flip the 1030 and profit as well.
Good video. I have a GTX 970 in my closet as my backup GPU. I recently tested it in some newish games, and it was still serviceable. It ran The Division 2 at 1440p medium at 45+ FPS. Not ideal, but definitely playable.
I bought myself a 980 a couple of months ago. Running great even though I bought it as a "faulty" unit. My friend gave it me to test if it works fine and instead of returning it, I gave him 150€
thanks for this video. i been keeping an eye on these cards as i need to build a pc for my younger brother. its amazing to see how well these old cards perform at 1080p even today.
My gtx 670 is still holding up for most basic needs. Mount and blade warband? Crusader kings? Csgo? One or too f2p shooters like warface? No problems. And the few interesting modern games like mount and blade 2 bannerlord need a bit tweaking but run well enough.
I’ve built my sons rig around a zotac AMP! 970, with a Ryzen 3100 and 16gb of ram. Glad this review was on to remind me it’s still capable, the equiv 1070 upgrade is silly money. He can wait a bit longer!
I had this exact same MSI card in my first actual gaming PC I bought back in 2015. It was a superb card and ran everything at pretty much ultra or at least high until I bought my current RTX 2070 Super few years ago. I modified and sold the old PC to a friend and this card is still going strong in that machine. It is definitely one of the best value cards ever! I kinda miss it..
I used a GTX 970 from like late 2016 thru 2018 and I loved it especially for the price to performance on the used market back then, I still recommend whoever is on a budget to get this card if you don’t mind Medium-Low on the newest AAA games
I had a founders 970 at the start of the pandemic, great card for 1080 but some games pushed it to full load the entire game, it took it lime a champ. Running an MSI 1070ti now, with the same cooler as the one in your video, wonderful temps and nearly zero noise. I still would recommend a 970 to anyone currently looking to just get the job done at 1080p
i love my 970!! evga ssc model. bought it on launch. first big purchase i saved up for as a kid! I still use it everyday. very capable and quiet. it was originally paired with an i5 4670k, but i’ve since upgraded to a xeon e3 1275 v3
As soon as I saw the title and thumbnail I figured it was a 970. I've been rocking mine for a few years now, and I'll hold on to it for a while longer, as long as prices stay this crazy. Just finished a playthrough of The Witcher 3 at high 60fps, and am now playing through Control at medium/high, hitting around 40-45fps. Great card considering the age and price!
@@insertnamehere3007 lmao you're right :v but i still miss that era tho, life was easier with a lot of gaming mood and friends and it's so good to go back and see that card running games from its gen like fallout 4 again
I actually go off and use a 980 since 2018, it still running great for 1080p and for older games, 1440p and hits over 60fps no problem at all. It's a nice piece.
A few years ago I gave this card to a friend. Then. Last year I sold my 5700xt and got a 970 for myself. And now I just sent a pc with a 970 to a friend who's studying in another city. This card is like a good friend who's had my back for years.
Somehow got one in the middle of covid when GPUs went wild for £80. Apparently it was broken, but in the pictures, the seller showed the cables were plugged into the motherboard's iGPU slots
I f-uckin love your videos! I use a 280x/7970 and its still goin strong 1080p in well optimized games. Opting for a 1060 for extra VRAM and +40% performance but ~$250 it's just not worth it...
Yes, i can absolutely agree that the 970 fits in to that place, till this day i never had a single problem with it, but i also would say, that the 780 also fulfils that purpose. My cousin recently got his 780 from me to his birthday and it reaches very similar results.
I still use and will continue for some time, a 1060 6GB. I do not play many AAA titles, I play mostly retro games and well as emulation and am still very happy.
I used one till very recently, going to retire it to my second pc, still an amazing card and will keep going for many years, and in my opinion the MSI cooler looks very nice
Wife's got mine after I upgraded to a 2060. Plays all the games she wants to play just fine. For modern triple A titles you're gonna have to drop settings sure, but many new indie games will still play just fine on it at very high ultra settings at 1080p. And of course it will play Triple A games that are a couple of years old just fine. I'm amazed at how much they can still resell for.
I bought this exact model 4 years ago, and was happy with it, handled everything i threw at it with ease.. Nowadays, it still holds up pretty well, even though i don't really play any of the new titles. And it's decent enough to play some VR titles as well.
Gave my old rig to my older brother to play civ and less demanding titles because hes not too much of a pc gamer but man, the 970 really served me well for so many years. it got me into pc gaming and i absolutely loved playing the witcher 3 on that card. happy to be on my 1070 now and can say that if ur on a 970 and can get your hands on a 1070 for a decent price Do it, the performance jump is kinda crazy.
Hi I have 1080 Ti MSI Gaming X edition. Still not built my build with it, how shall it hold in 2021/22 with gaming. I am waiting for exam so I can build new PC with it.
@@devendra.sanghavi I'm running an I-7700k with it and I've never played a game my PC cannot handle at 60fps (Most basic games run perfectly on my 1440 Monitor) I play just about all types of games from Microsoft flight sim (in VR as well) to First Person Shooters and MMORPG's. CPU is water cooled but besides that it is a pretty basic set up that still gets the job done well today. Had this build since late 2017. Best of luck on your build!
Bought this card just few weeks ago, had to say that this is one the most budget card from 2014... capable of running every game you throw at it...its a beast of a card..💥💯🤘
Gtx 970 & i5 10400f are what i run too! Recently picked up a 1440p and 165hz monitor and I can enjoy League with high refresh and most other titles I play with 1080p 60 such as Monster Hunter World and MH Rise next year, actually even with high refresh rate and 1440p. I'm glad i picked up this 970 in 2017.
Just paid still money for a RTX 3070ti. Wasn’t happy with myself until I started replaying Metro Exodus. I booted up the enhanced edition and was blown away by the RT lighting. Now I’m loving it and I’ll just sell one of my kidneys.
The 900/1000 series have aged so well. System requirements have barely increased in the past 5 years, except maybe if you want to go for 1440p 144hz which was way less common back when the cards came out. I was lucky enough to buy my 1060 right before the cryptomining thing happened in 2016/2017 or so when cards increased massively in price, although nowhere near as much as the prices increased in the past couple of years. Funnily enough I could still get almost the same amount that I paid for my 1060 over 5 years ago if I sold it now
I'm still rocking the 970 and it's still a beast. My son built his first budget pc with the 770 SC and that thing is still doing good, although now that support has ended for it and we will have to upgrade it at some point in the near future.
I was using my Radeon HD 6970 (a modified 6950) all the way up until the beginning of 2019 (when I finally built a totally new PC) which was paired with an AMD FX 6300. It was able to play most games at the time at HD Low to Medium-High depending on title. No surprise that a lot of people are still getting use out of their old GTX 970 cards as those were quite powerful when released despite the RAM controversy.
While talking about performance on older cards, it would be cool if you could do a video on a piece of software on Steam called "Lossless Scaling". It now uses amd fsr, and means you can use fsr on any game at all not just on games that have built in support! There is a demo version but I don't think fsr is an option in that, it is just the full version from before the developer added fsr from what I can tell (which can still work surprisingly well, but the new fsr implementation is much better).
@@samsunghandy No it doesn't. Magpie, which was the first 3rd party tool to do this (and completely unrelated) had high input lag because it used a very different way of adding it. Lossless Scaling has very little in almost all games, including those that were unplayable with Magpie. It will never be perfect, especially in all games, that's just the nature of how these tools work. But it is miles ahead of Magpie and the issues it had.
My 760 lasted me nearly 8 years, died the other day, I got a 1650 Super to replace it (which I do love) but there was something special about those cards, they were always capeable of so much more than they should have been able to do.
Had one for the last couple years and it did fine for me. Recently sold and picked up a Radeon 6600. I'm not a big FPS guy and don't have any monitors over 60hz, so the slower playing games with slightly better visuals are more my style these days. 6600 is great for SoTR at 1440.
I've been running a GTX970 Ti Black Edition for a few years now and love it, not in a hurry to replace it either. I upgraded the board and cpu (Ryzen 1500X from 8350FX) a couple years back and it still goes well. I get avg. 60fps on CP77 using mod/patches, but games like Far Cry 5 and Fallout 4 look great. COD WW2 runs perfectly on med to high settings as well. However, the way games are produced these days, low settings looks good to old man like me. I remember when 10 fps is considered playable and pixelated was the norm.
my first pc build in 2018 had a Pentium G4560, 2x8gb ram with a msi r9 380. Now that I've built a new rig it lives on as my sisters first gaming pc. i was surprised with how well the cpu/gpu combo hold up for 1080p gaming.
Just this summer I finally moved up from my 1060 3gb. Had that thing for 5 years, and I just upgraded to a 1080 because my friend gave it to me for $200. Actually sold the 1060 for more than I bought the 1080 for lol
The 970 still holds a special place in my heart. I bought mine back in May 2015 so I could run GTA V better than my 660 could manage. I got so many great years of game play out of it. I was still using that card until 2020 when I bought a 2060 and later a 1080ti. The 970 still runs great to this day in my office PC with an 8600k that gets used mainly for Solidworks and general productivity, though I might want to clean out the cooler and maybe replace the thermal paste after so many years.
Rocking my GTX 970 with a palit blower style fan today, despite beeing very loud, i have an absolute 144hz E-Sports beast of a machine. The 8 year old BenQ XL2411 running on 144hz only via DVI only adds to the experience.
got a 2nd hand mini with that very card, 16gb ram and i7 + screen for 300€ right before the prices spike. So so happy I bought it, it's running perfectly.
Can confirm this card is a little warrior standing through the tests of time. I still use mine everyday (at least until I can afford a new GPU) and it's really good for what it is today. I've had mine for 6 years now and showing no signs of slowing down :D Definitely recommend if it's the cheaper option of the inflated GPU pricings
My old EVGA 970 is still going strong in the living room/home theater setup. It is FINALLY going to be retired and used as a cold backup in favor of a 1660 Ti (got super lucky and found a lightly used one at pre-crazy MSRP) that's on the way.
Build my dream PC in 2012 with a mid range Radeon because of money constraints. Finally got my hands on a great GeForce card in 2015 in the form of the MSI GTX 970, and it’s been my rock since then. I’ll be upgrading the PC next year after a very enjoyable 10 years, but the 970 will be joining me until GPU prices come down. I won’t ever sell my 970, it’s gonna be going on display when I’m done with it!
Replaced mine after 6 years of service. The damn thing and the 3.5GB VRAM made a lot of modern game harder to run than they should have. But, it was a great value card for its time, and I got full use out of it. Hopefully there’s a next owner for it, and they will make good use of it like I did.
At around 1:00 I said Nvidia had ended support for most 700 series CPUs. I meant GPUs. Oops!
Haha
but not gtx 750 / 750ti , legendary still rock
still with ddr3 gt730, still getting updates for that
GPEEU
can we get sli video ?
There was a price glitch at our MicroCenter in 2015 and I was able to get a 970 for ~$150 US. That card is still my daily and is about the only thing keeping me sane and not overspending on a GPU to a scalper.
there was a time soon after the launch of the 1000s series that EVGA was selling b-stock 970s for $99. It was by far the best value in gaming at the time.
@@HanduBananu I missed out on that at the time, but my friend acquired a Walmart prebuilt PC on Black Friday from the previous year and obtained the $99.00 GTX 970, so he spent 325.00 for the tower/15 inch monitor/970. He played that for several years and only recently upgraded to a 3070.
I got myself a 1070 for 250euro or something, i had a 100 bucks discount coupon and it was back in the summer of 2019 before the war
@@smokeajeff i got one for £190 used in the same year
@@HanduBananu yeah can confirm they sold b stock 970 for $99. I was able to snag one for that deal, still works like a champ
Shoutout to all the old gamers rocking the 970. This card has been a faithful companion
It could have done without the gimped 512mb of ram. Yup I'm gonna mention that.
Pretty much just recently Upgradeed to 3060Ti so I could game at 100+ on Apex while streaming, but DAMN has my 970 been a clutch king in this age of gaming
@@psnidtibifun how do you all find these cards without paying in blood? My 2070 cost me way more then my previous card ( GTX 1070 )
Got it 1 year ago for 50€, it run everything 1080p perfectly 👌🏻
Mine's been getting unstable recently, man I can't wait for something cheap which can match it from intel or AMD.
I'm still using my GTX 970 after 7 years because of the high gpu prices and I'm impressed what the GTX 970 can run in 2021. I can still play almost every game on lower settings.
Yeah it's a surprising beast
Everyone was losing it over the whole 4gb fiasco (I still remember the dumbass memes lmao) while not realizing this was one of the best price to performance cards of all time
we've only just gone past the time where the 750ti can manage modern titles, so it's not that surprising really.
@@jackjude Overall maybe, at 1080p it's been a little while since the 750ti passed that mark.
I wish you win a contest or something that gets you a fresh new GPU of 2000/3000 series. That graphics jump would be amazing
Just wanted to say its crazy how time flies. I remember when you were a small channel with not that many subs but had this level of professionalism that usually comes from big channels with subs that you have now. Absolutely amazing and no doubt you will get to 1 million.
Professionalism is only one factor. I guess that people are just tired with restless, pompous youtubers with elevated voices.
I come here for smooth, polite monologues with occasional tongue-in-cheek comments. I also appreciate that I am not reminded to subscribe at the very beginning of each video and then every couple of minutes, it is always left for viewer to decide at the end of the material where it should be. Cultural approach is on a different level here.
In time he very well might, but Hardware Unboxed, which I think is the gold standard for performance tests and hardware reviews, isn't even at a million yet, so it might take a while.
Dude keeps to his own style and bailiwick and I get a kick out of maximizing older hardware and tweaking games to run on older cheap stuff.
fuck, why everyone says this about time
shit :(
Still lives with his sister/gf though.
Switched mine out for a 3070 back in December (for MSRP fortunately), since I also upgraded to 1440p. Still, the 970 has a special place in my heart, felt like it could handle about anything I threw at it. Actually got a place in my cabinet, can't get myself to sell it. Such a trooper, still working perfectly after 5 years.
pls buddy sell it to me :((((((((((((((((( fuck these prices everywhere
Same dude, my 970 has consistently impressed me with every new game released that I could still run at high settings somehow, $350 6 years ago, that is a ridiculous price to performance ratio. Was my first real video card in my first real gaming PC I built, when I finally build a new one this Christmas this whole PC is going to be displayed like a museum piece lol
Find someone local that wants to build a PC, like a kid or something and do them a solid.
I gave both my strix 970's for my two kids builds.
I still got a Asus gtx 680dcii I keep as a backup. When I can upgrade my kids I will get shot of one 970 and the 680 and keep 970 as a backup.
Just finished building my dream PC right before I had to head home for a holiday and my first PC is still here, G3258 Pentium with a GTX 970 still going as strong as ever, I'm 100% never going to sell this PC way too many memories
I still have my first PC as well. i7 920 + GTX 260 core 216 Superclocked SLI. It can’t play anything these days but it was great back then.
I was 21 when I bought the 970, when I finally upgrade next year, I will be 29. It's quite amazing to think that I've been gaming with this card through all my 20s. Lots of great gaming memories.
Im finally upgrading my gtx 580 lol
@@kurruptedsoul9677 same im finally upgrading my intel Pentium j series cpu which ran gta sa max settings for an average of 55 fps. I cant believe i played games older than 2010s for all my teenage years
@Sir Wilfrid Laurier Weak.
Still rocking the strix model, got it in May 2015. Still going strong. The card is great as I am going through the backlog of games that I missed throughout the years.
Don't always have money but got a 390X for the 8gb vram. The 970 was cheaper though, can't remember by how much. Times were good then when everyone was getting 970s prices seem amazing compared to now and GPUs were everywhere lol. Was getting 750TIs for next to nothing and 970s were smashing it for not a lot of money. Definitely good times
Just looked it up and £220/250 got you a 970 back then. 😁 didn't know how blessed we were 🤣
yep, my asus strix runs just fine as well. No heat difference, has not gotten louder etc, and its been heavily used.
I am all so still using my 970 strix, VR is getting a bit much for it but its acceptable. defiantly my favourite model of the 970. I bought it for £180 in 2017
I had two strix 970's in sli but have split them up for both my kids.
Excellent GPU and the strix version has a metal fan shroud which made it seem a touch more premium than the other OEM 970's.
Seriously considered a third for triple sli but when I tested with my mates MSI 970 that ended that thinking.
Brilliant GPU for the cash the strix and my kids are over the delighted and have not touched Xbox in nearly 12 month
2:08 that was really neat, playing dirt 2 is paying off 😅
agree !!
That was sick
Some insane control.
I had the exact same 970! It was an absolute beast, served me well for so many years.
Bought the 970 strix for my girlfriend a year ago, just before that huge gpu price spike. The best decision I've made in a long time.
So when you both are getting married?
@@pk417 June next year :)
@@MrRagemanPL congrats bro i hope gpu prices get normal before you have kids
@@MrRagemanPL Yo bro, very happy for ya! And all of this is kinda funny too, because I also - back in early 2020 - bought a second-hand 1070 for my girlfriend's first PC. Still can't believe I paid less than 190€ for it, with today's prices... Cheers, and good luck to both of ya :3
Same here but RX 570.
Yeah, glad to see you still giving all of us a great heads-up on which cards can still play 1080p well enough for the time being. That is where we are today, unfortunately.
Had a couple different 970s maybe 4 years ago. They were really capable cards and I'd recommend getting one if you have no interest in mining and just need a card that isn't heavily scalped.
1080s are also cards that miners rarely use these days too.
I bought one last year for $70 on ebay, and it can run literally all my games at 60+ fps at 1440p.
Yep managed to get one for £100 a few months back with an AIO included, was pretty pleased with the price considering what some other second cards are going for. It's been a hell of an improvement from my HD7850.
@@e.n.l1976 Oh coming from a 7850 I bet it felt like a huge improvement! My first card was an MSI HD 6450 and I moved up to a Strix R7 370 4GB, felt like 30x better!
Capable until you pas 3.5 GB 😂
My 970 died nearly 5 years ago still under warranty.
EVGA RMA replaced it with a 1060.
The 1060 died 6 months later.
EVGA replaced it with a 1070.
Still going strong!
So 970 turned to 1070 for free lol
YOu got the worst generation of EVGA cards. Could also be due to faulty PSU, I hope you have changed PSU's since them.
@@YellowLAVA Yep haha, the 970 was 2nd hand too. I bought it prebuilt off a local gumtree seller for £300.
2600K, 970, 16GB RAM to replace my at the time FX 8350, r9 280 which I gave to my younger brother. I've now upgraded to a Ryzen 3600 and my bro has the 2600K and an r9 380 which I got for £50 off a friend.
The free 1070.
Yup, these cards around 6-7 years old aged really well. I'm still rocking an R9 Fury and it runs all the games I want to play well enough.
One of my favorite channels. I was JUST looking at getting a GTX 970 or a 980Ti. Always a smart move to change with the landscape and adapt. I love the budget oriented views of the channel already, so it fit even before the techdemic, but videos like this just hit the nail on the head. Great stuff, man, thanks.
I had an EVGA 970 SSC in my gaming PC from 2015 to 2019. Then I got a completely new build rocking an RTX 2080 Super. But the old gaming PC and the 970 live on as I give them to my kid and she still games on it to this day.
I'm so happy I got the 980 a few years ago. Would have wanted to upgrade but in the current market I'm just glad that I can still use this for some time to come.
980s are very solid, and don't have the 3.5gb vram bs the 970 has. I'm a bit better off with my Vega 64 Liquid but I hope we both will be able to get new cards soon!
Yea im on 980ti waiting for 4000series and then go big
I'm currently using an R9 390, the AMD equivalent to the 970. It's still a beast of a card and I'm glad it's still alive.
@@insertnamehere3007 wtf lol no they were not the r9 290 is still great for budget builds today i got one for 60 quid and its performance is relative to a 1060
@@arcticwolf1599 agreed
Found the nVidia fanboy.
Have my R9 390 too in the racing sim rig - runs most racing games at fairly high detail. Shame AMD stopped support for latest drivers.
@@k3ntris fr man I'm sick of nvidia fan boys. Just like the 3060 now my 6600xt is better and cheaper but is frowned upon because its amd
Another great video. Something I think you should talk about more in your videos though is overclocking headroom. Considering that modern overclocking in 99% of cases is 100% safe, it would be great to highlight in your GPU reviews from here on since there's free performance on the table. Some games that aren't playable on a stock card could become playable with a decently-tuned overclock.
- With Love, a Random guy on the Internet
Yeah I agree, I don't cover overclocking enough. I think it's usually because I don't do it very often myself, but I should try and do it more because it could be very useful especially for weaker cards than this that might struggle at stock.
still running this gpu mainly for PUBG. still very capable... my system is xeon e1220v3, 16gb ddr3, asus vanguard b85 mobo... solid 60 at 1080 with mix utra, high and low.... regards from the philippines... nice vid as always man...
Still using my 970 and I got no complaints with it. I'm always looking at prices to upgrade but my 970 still handles everything I throw at it extremely well.
Woah! Thanks for making a vid on them! I’ve been using a Windforce 970 since it went on sale, it’s been going strong paired to a Xeon X3450 so I’m more than happy with how long it’s been lasting!
Some tech yes advance with the x3450?
I'd agree with this, my 960 was starting to get clobbered with modern games, cyberpunk needed 80-90% res scale. I think the 4gb 960 is okay if you're okay with 720-900p or scaling in newer games.
*siiip* yep, 960 was a good graphics card
A 2GB 960 was pretty much all I could find last year that was good enough without paying scalper prices. I'm waiting til the 4000s before I play RDR2, CB, etc (imo what's the point of playing games like that if I can't crank the gfx up on my 1440p ultrawide), but at least the 960 was a big step up from gaming on a laptop with a 750M I guess
cyberpunk.... phhhaahahahaa
This GPU was serving me from January 2015 to november 2019 so almost 5 years! Best buy ever for my PC, second one was 4770@4,7GHz which i also swapped after 5 years. Now my brother in law is the owner of this GPU, its still running, i just clean it and changed thermal paste so Temp goes down to 65-67c from 75~~@1450Mhz, so its like new one once again!
Rocking this in my rig, considering it was free, can not complain...
2:07 that was some amazing driving.
Lol this is EXACTLY what I have been saying about the 970! I purchased my 3 fan windforce model for $200 :( a few months ago as a temp gpu until newer gpus become affordable again, i can play any game I want at at least 40 fps at 1080p, and get high refresh rate on games older than 5 years.
I had that card unitil it died last week. Was a faithful performer since I bought it on launch day.
@@theh0lybible Nice to hear it lasted so long! Sorry that it died however, what variant was it by chance? If it was made by EVGA thats normal lol.
I still have my windforce model, I’ve ran it OC’ed to hell at 1,500Mhz for idk how long, she’s still going strong with a strong overclock, its those triple fans!
@@Probookuser03 I have the gigabyte windforce model it still works like a dream.
I love how this channel is like the "This is your life" of graphics cards.
Had a 970. Good times good times. Can't game on it anymore though it still works as normal use.
I am surprised 970 can even run FS at 60fps
A legendary card from a legendary generation. Maxwell and pascal have and will be remembered quite fondly, despite their shortcomings.
im genuenly curious as to how and where u get these capable 2nd hand cards, I wanted a 2nd hand 1650 super or 1060 for my budget build but after not being able to find either, gave up and had to go for a gt 1030 :(
eBay
@@GamerdaXtremz ah yes, the dangerous lootbox
Hey, just a thought, you can get a Quadro K2200 for under 100 bucks in the US. It's the same performance as a 750ti and has 4gb vram, so you'd be able to get a ~15% performance boost and with better texture settings. You could probably flip the 1030 and profit as well.
@@Chernosjk Nani!? Just look at people feedback, description, return policy or just buy any New GPU...
@@Chernosjk Not really
Good video. I have a GTX 970 in my closet as my backup GPU. I recently tested it in some newish games, and it was still serviceable. It ran The Division 2 at 1440p medium at 45+ FPS. Not ideal, but definitely playable.
I bought myself a 980 a couple of months ago. Running great even though I bought it as a "faulty" unit. My friend gave it me to test if it works fine and instead of returning it, I gave him 150€
thanks for this video. i been keeping an eye on these cards as i need to build a pc for my younger brother. its amazing to see how well these old cards perform at 1080p even today.
got mine for £80 the shroud was a tiny bit Brocken but its still amazing and sold my 750 ti for £80 so it was a free upgrade
Im actually planning on buying a 970, very nice to see a video on one!
2:07 that was clean as hell. Are we just gonna act like it didn't happen?
Fr
I still have my 970 and love the card. Never disappointed me at all. Even have a 970M in a laptop that works awesome
I guess I'm living in the past because I'm still rocking GTX 460
awesome, an old favourite of mine :)
I used that for most of the pandemic, played minecraft just fine!
I live in in the stone age with a GT 730...
My gtx 670 is still holding up for most basic needs. Mount and blade warband? Crusader kings? Csgo? One or too f2p shooters like warface? No problems. And the few interesting modern games like mount and blade 2 bannerlord need a bit tweaking but run well enough.
I’ve built my sons rig around a zotac AMP! 970, with a Ryzen 3100 and 16gb of ram. Glad this review was on to remind me it’s still capable, the equiv 1070 upgrade is silly money. He can wait a bit longer!
3k views in 15 minutes! Happy for you, keep up the great videos.
I've always adored the styling of your videos. Please keep it up i look forward to them all the time
I had this exact same MSI card in my first actual gaming PC I bought back in 2015. It was a superb card and ran everything at pretty much ultra or at least high until I bought my current RTX 2070 Super few years ago. I modified and sold the old PC to a friend and this card is still going strong in that machine. It is definitely one of the best value cards ever! I kinda miss it..
I was thinking off buying one and this has definitely made me make my decision. Getting one in a couple week. Another great video :)
Love to see how this 970 matches up against the RX 570. Great video.
Man I remember selling one of mine to a friend for $100+shipping way back.
Those cards are still great.
oh i'm glad i foun the channel again, love the content very much
I used a GTX 970 from like late 2016 thru 2018 and I loved it especially for the price to performance on the used market back then, I still recommend whoever is on a budget to get this card if you don’t mind Medium-Low on the newest AAA games
I had a founders 970 at the start of the pandemic, great card for 1080 but some games pushed it to full load the entire game, it took it lime a champ. Running an MSI 1070ti now, with the same cooler as the one in your video, wonderful temps and nearly zero noise. I still would recommend a 970 to anyone currently looking to just get the job done at 1080p
i love my 970!! evga ssc model. bought it on launch. first big purchase i saved up for as a kid! I still use it everyday. very capable and quiet. it was originally paired with an i5 4670k, but i’ve since upgraded to a xeon e3 1275 v3
As soon as I saw the title and thumbnail I figured it was a 970. I've been rocking mine for a few years now, and I'll hold on to it for a while longer, as long as prices stay this crazy. Just finished a playthrough of The Witcher 3 at high 60fps, and am now playing through Control at medium/high, hitting around 40-45fps. Great card considering the age and price!
The dream card of all of us back in 2014/5, still proudly performing new games. I'm feeling too old at this point (i was 11 back then...)
@@insertnamehere3007 lmao
@@insertnamehere3007 lmao you're right :v but i still miss that era tho, life was easier with a lot of gaming mood and friends and it's so good to go back and see that card running games from its gen like fallout 4 again
I actually go off and use a 980 since 2018, it still running great for 1080p and for older games, 1440p and hits over 60fps no problem at all. It's a nice piece.
Would be interessting to see the GTX 980 and how well it aged compared to the well aged GTX 970.
And great video as always!
A few years ago I gave this card to a friend. Then. Last year I sold my 5700xt and got a 970 for myself. And now I just sent a pc with a 970 to a friend who's studying in another city.
This card is like a good friend who's had my back for years.
Somehow got one in the middle of covid when GPUs went wild for £80. Apparently it was broken, but in the pictures, the seller showed the cables were plugged into the motherboard's iGPU slots
I f-uckin love your videos!
I use a 280x/7970 and its still goin strong 1080p in well optimized games.
Opting for a 1060 for extra VRAM and +40% performance but ~$250 it's just not worth it...
Yes, i can absolutely agree that the 970 fits in to that place, till this day i never had a single problem with it, but i also would say, that the 780 also fulfils that purpose.
My cousin recently got his 780 from me to his birthday and it reaches very similar results.
I still use this. Pretty much sufficient for my usage. Shockingly it can still run most games at low - decent graphics
Just switched from a 970 to a 3080 this summer. It served me well for over 6 years. Amazing card!
funny to see you cover a 970, i got that exact model card a couple days ago and its been nice
Woo! Was watching one of your vids and this was uploaded!
I still use and will continue for some time, a 1060 6GB. I do not play many AAA titles, I play mostly retro games and well as emulation and am still very happy.
Man this brings me back
This was my first gaming gpu
miss that old thing ;(
I used one till very recently, going to retire it to my second pc, still an amazing card and will keep going for many years, and in my opinion the MSI cooler looks very nice
Wife's got mine after I upgraded to a 2060. Plays all the games she wants to play just fine. For modern triple A titles you're gonna have to drop settings sure, but many new indie games will still play just fine on it at very high ultra settings at 1080p. And of course it will play Triple A games that are a couple of years old just fine.
I'm amazed at how much they can still resell for.
I bought this exact model 4 years ago, and was happy with it, handled everything i threw at it with ease.. Nowadays, it still holds up pretty well, even though i don't really play any of the new titles. And it's decent enough to play some VR titles as well.
Gave my old rig to my older brother to play civ and less demanding titles because hes not too much of a pc gamer but man, the 970 really served me well for so many years. it got me into pc gaming and i absolutely loved playing the witcher 3 on that card. happy to be on my 1070 now and can say that if ur on a 970 and can get your hands on a 1070 for a decent price Do it, the performance jump is kinda crazy.
Asus Strix 1080ti 11G still my work horse.
Hi I have 1080 Ti MSI Gaming X edition. Still not built my build with it, how shall it hold in 2021/22 with gaming.
I am waiting for exam so I can build new PC with it.
@@devendra.sanghavi I'm running an I-7700k with it and I've never played a game my PC cannot handle at 60fps (Most basic games run perfectly on my 1440 Monitor) I play just about all types of games from Microsoft flight sim (in VR as well) to First Person Shooters and MMORPG's. CPU is water cooled but besides that it is a pretty basic set up that still gets the job done well today. Had this build since late 2017.
Best of luck on your build!
Bought this card just few weeks ago, had to say that this is one the most budget card from 2014... capable of running every game you throw at it...its a beast of a card..💥💯🤘
Gtx 970 & i5 10400f are what i run too!
Recently picked up a 1440p and 165hz monitor and I can enjoy League with high refresh and most other titles I play with 1080p 60 such as Monster Hunter World and MH Rise next year, actually even with high refresh rate and 1440p.
I'm glad i picked up this 970 in 2017.
Can we just appreciate that crazy maneuver at 2:09
Just paid still money for a RTX 3070ti. Wasn’t happy with myself until I started replaying Metro Exodus. I booted up the enhanced edition and was blown away by the RT lighting. Now I’m loving it and I’ll just sell one of my kidneys.
Used to run this card a few years ago, it was pretty capable. Now it's sitting in my mom's home office pc, just chilling out.
The 900/1000 series have aged so well. System requirements have barely increased in the past 5 years, except maybe if you want to go for 1440p 144hz which was way less common back when the cards came out. I was lucky enough to buy my 1060 right before the cryptomining thing happened in 2016/2017 or so when cards increased massively in price, although nowhere near as much as the prices increased in the past couple of years. Funnily enough I could still get almost the same amount that I paid for my 1060 over 5 years ago if I sold it now
I'm still rocking the 970 and it's still a beast. My son built his first budget pc with the 770 SC and that thing is still doing good, although now that support has ended for it and we will have to upgrade it at some point in the near future.
I was using my Radeon HD 6970 (a modified 6950) all the way up until the beginning of 2019 (when I finally built a totally new PC) which was paired with an AMD FX 6300. It was able to play most games at the time at HD Low to Medium-High depending on title. No surprise that a lot of people are still getting use out of their old GTX 970 cards as those were quite powerful when released despite the RAM controversy.
While talking about performance on older cards, it would be cool if you could do a video on a piece of software on Steam called "Lossless Scaling". It now uses amd fsr, and means you can use fsr on any game at all not just on games that have built in support!
There is a demo version but I don't think fsr is an option in that, it is just the full version from before the developer added fsr from what I can tell (which can still work surprisingly well, but the new fsr implementation is much better).
It has high input lag
@@samsunghandy No it doesn't. Magpie, which was the first 3rd party tool to do this (and completely unrelated) had high input lag because it used a very different way of adding it.
Lossless Scaling has very little in almost all games, including those that were unplayable with Magpie. It will never be perfect, especially in all games, that's just the nature of how these tools work. But it is miles ahead of Magpie and the issues it had.
2:08 legit pro gamer moves
Yeah I thought that myself :D
@@RandomGaminginHD Like your content mate, keep it up!
My 760 lasted me nearly 8 years, died the other day, I got a 1650 Super to replace it (which I do love) but there was something special about those cards, they were always capeable of so much more than they should have been able to do.
Had one for the last couple years and it did fine for me. Recently sold and picked up a Radeon 6600. I'm not a big FPS guy and don't have any monitors over 60hz, so the slower playing games with slightly better visuals are more my style these days. 6600 is great for SoTR at 1440.
I've been running a GTX970 Ti Black Edition for a few years now and love it, not in a hurry to replace it either. I upgraded the board and cpu (Ryzen 1500X from 8350FX) a couple years back and it still goes well. I get avg. 60fps on CP77 using mod/patches, but games like Far Cry 5 and Fallout 4 look great. COD WW2 runs perfectly on med to high settings as well.
However, the way games are produced these days, low settings looks good to old man like me. I remember when 10 fps is considered playable and pixelated was the norm.
This proves how much he understands gaming you don't need a high end gpu for gaming contrary to what other tech enthusiasts will tell you
my first pc build in 2018 had a Pentium G4560, 2x8gb ram with a msi r9 380. Now that I've built a new rig it lives on as my sisters first gaming pc. i was surprised with how well the cpu/gpu combo hold up for 1080p gaming.
Bro, my gtx 970 has been super reliable throughout the whole time I've owned it, would still recommend today :)
Just this summer I finally moved up from my 1060 3gb. Had that thing for 5 years, and I just upgraded to a 1080 because my friend gave it to me for $200. Actually sold the 1060 for more than I bought the 1080 for lol
My 970 got so much done as my first card back from 2016-2019ish. Such a solid card back in its day
The 970 still holds a special place in my heart. I bought mine back in May 2015 so I could run GTA V better than my 660 could manage. I got so many great years of game play out of it. I was still using that card until 2020 when I bought a 2060 and later a 1080ti. The 970 still runs great to this day in my office PC with an 8600k that gets used mainly for Solidworks and general productivity, though I might want to clean out the cooler and maybe replace the thermal paste after so many years.
Rocking my GTX 970 with a palit blower style fan today, despite beeing very loud, i have an absolute 144hz E-Sports beast of a machine. The 8 year old BenQ XL2411 running on 144hz only via DVI only adds to the experience.
got a 2nd hand mini with that very card, 16gb ram and i7 + screen for 300€ right before the prices spike. So so happy I bought it, it's running perfectly.
I love my i5-10400f and 1660 Super perfect combo for 1080p and mid range 1440p gaming. Works a dream.
Can confirm this card is a little warrior standing through the tests of time. I still use mine everyday (at least until I can afford a new GPU) and it's really good for what it is today. I've had mine for 6 years now and showing no signs of slowing down :D Definitely recommend if it's the cheaper option of the inflated GPU pricings
My old EVGA 970 is still going strong in the living room/home theater setup. It is FINALLY going to be retired and used as a cold backup in favor of a 1660 Ti (got super lucky and found a lightly used one at pre-crazy MSRP) that's on the way.
I had this exact model up until a year and a half ago when I switched to the 2070 super. It is now sitting in my windows 7 rig going strong.
Built my first ever PC with this as my GPU (bought it from a friend) paired it with a Ryzen 5 3600. Got me through the entire lockdown lol.
Love these vids, some games I would lvoe to see you cycle in for benchmarking: Hunt: Showdown, Fall Guys, B4B, New World
Build my dream PC in 2012 with a mid range Radeon because of money constraints. Finally got my hands on a great GeForce card in 2015 in the form of the MSI GTX 970, and it’s been my rock since then. I’ll be upgrading the PC next year after a very enjoyable 10 years, but the 970 will be joining me until GPU prices come down. I won’t ever sell my 970, it’s gonna be going on display when I’m done with it!
Replaced mine after 6 years of service. The damn thing and the 3.5GB VRAM made a lot of modern game harder to run than they should have. But, it was a great value card for its time, and I got full use out of it. Hopefully there’s a next owner for it, and they will make good use of it like I did.