GTX 1070/RX-480 Worth Waiting For?

Ergload

My friend's selling me his 970 for a rather cheap price and I'm thinking of getting get it. But, with the 1070 and RX-480 releasing in a few weeks, I was wondering if I might benefit more from waiting for either of the two to release, or am not losing much if I got the 970 for, let's say, around $170?

My monitor's resolution is 1080/60hz, by the way, but I might upgrade to something like a 1080/144hz (if one ever does get released) in a few months or a year.

Raxeon

wait for the 480

Quizzical

It's really a question of budget.  If $170 is your budget and you regard used as being as good as new, I'd take the GTX 970 for $170.  But if you were going to spend $250 or $350 or some such on a card, you'll get something faster by waiting.

It's not at all clear how soon the GTX 1070 will be available.  It nominally launches on June 10, but we don't know if it's really going to be available then or if it will look like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100007709 601201888

Nasa

I would wait. At least the RX-480 uses less power=less heat=less noise. If you really want the 970 you also might get a new 970 cheap soon after release of the new cards. The market will adjust.
I think you should consider a 4K monitor or 4K TV instead of 1080 monitor.

tixylix

480 if money id tight, 1080 if it aint... simples.

Ergload

Quizzical said:

It's really a question of budget.  If $170 is your budget and you regard used as being as good as new, I'd take the GTX 970 for $170.  But if you were going to spend $250 or $350 or some such on a card, you'll get something faster by waiting.

It's not at all clear how soon the GTX 1070 will be available.  It nominally launches on June 10, but we don't know if it's really going to be available then or if it will look like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100007709 601201888

My budget's not really $170. I could certainly go higher, but not as high as $600+ for the 1080 since I don't really have any use for it. I was just wondering if I would be losing much in terms of performance if I got the 970 for $170 and didn't wait for either the 1070 or RX-480.

Nasa said:

I would wait. At least the RX-480 uses less power=less heat=less noise. If you really want the 970 you also might get a new 970 cheap soon after release of the new cards. The market will adjust.
I think you should consider a 4K monitor or 4K TV instead of 1080 monitor.

Thanks for the suggestion. I might just wait. Also, 4K's not really my thing. At least, not for gaming.

Quizzical

Ergload said:

Quizzical said:

It's really a question of budget.  If $170 is your budget and you regard used as being as good as new, I'd take the GTX 970 for $170.  But if you were going to spend $250 or $350 or some such on a card, you'll get something faster by waiting.

It's not at all clear how soon the GTX 1070 will be available.  It nominally launches on June 10, but we don't know if it's really going to be available then or if it will look like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100007709 601201888

My budget's not really $170. I could certainly go higher, but not as high as $600+ for the 1080 since I don't really have any use for it. I was just wondering if I would be losing much in terms of performance if I got the 970 for $170 and didn't wait for either the 1070 or RX-480.

Nasa said:

I would wait. At least the RX-480 uses less power=less heat=less noise. If you really want the 970 you also might get a new 970 cheap soon after release of the new cards. The market will adjust.
I think you should consider a 4K monitor or 4K TV instead of 1080 monitor.

Thanks for the suggestion. I might just wait. Also, 4K's not really my thing. At least, not for gaming.

The GeForce GTX 1070 is definitely going to be faster than the GTX 970.  It's closer to GTX 980 Ti territory, but it's also $450.

With the Radeon RX-480, it's not clear.  My guess is that it will probably be faster than a GeForce GTX 970, and it might be a lot faster than one, but it also might not.  It's also going to be more expensive than $170; AMD has said it will start at $200, presumably for the 4 GB version.  It launches on June 29, but it's not at all clear whether that will be a hard launch.

Don't expect to be able to get a new GeForce GTX 970 for $170 soon or ever.  Nvidia surely has a lot more information about when Pascal cards will be available than they've announced publicly, including for lower end Pascal cards than the GTX 1070.  They'll try to discontinue production of the GTX 970 when they need to so as not to have a ton of inventory that they they have to stick clearance prices on.

Malabooga

Agreed, wait for the new cards, in that price range 480 should be much better option, especially if you want to buy new monitor as you can get Freesync one (works only on AMD cards)

patlefort

The 1070 is faster than a Titan X, so it's definitively worth the wait. It's the biggest upgrade since a long time.

Ren128

At the very least wait till the benchmarks for RX 480 are published by independent sites and see how it stacks up.  Hopefully they'll be out before the 29th (and I do hope its a proper launch on that date).

Ergload

Thanks for the suggestion guys. I'll wait it out as it seems that the RX480 and 1070 are much better choices, even if I may end up spending more for them.

I really do hope that the reviews for the RX480 are released in a week or two.

Malabooga

NDA for 480 ends on 29th June, so i would say dont hold your breath fro anything before that. Theres always a chance they will lift it sooner but i wouldnt count on it.

SEANMCAD

how long should one wait?

Malabooga

29th June lol. IF you want to know about 480. And theres a matter of 1070 availability anyways. GTX1070FE for 449$ that will be available first doesnt really make sense just like 1080FE.

Quizzical

SEANMCAD said:

how long should one wait?

If you're waiting for the Radeon RX-480, expect to wait until June 29.  For the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080, it's unclear.  We'll know more about the GTX 1070 on Friday, when it officially goes on sale.

SEANMCAD

Quizzical said:

SEANMCAD said:

how long should one wait?

If you're waiting for the Radeon RX-480, expect to wait until June 29.  For the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080, it's unclear.  We'll know more about the GTX 1070 on Friday, when it officially goes on sale.

so RX-480 is not on sale yet and will not be until the end of the month but we know more about that 'when' then we do the GTX? odd

Quizzical

SEANMCAD said:

Quizzical said:

SEANMCAD said:

how long should one wait?

If you're waiting for the Radeon RX-480, expect to wait until June 29.  For the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080, it's unclear.  We'll know more about the GTX 1070 on Friday, when it officially goes on sale.

so RX-480 is not on sale yet and will not be until the end of the month but we know more about that 'when' then we do the GTX? odd

Expect the GTX 1070 to be in short supply at least initially, as Nvidia is charging $450 for the first cards, and has already announced price cuts to $380 later.  I have no idea if initially means days, weeks, or months.

We don't know for certain that the RX-480 will be a hard launch.  But considering that it's coming nearly six months after AMD publicly showed off the cards, that's plenty of time to fix problems and accumulate inventory ahead of launch.  It's possible that Global Foundries will have trouble building the chips with acceptable yields, and that could cause delays, as happened with Llano in 2011.

Ridelynn

SEANMCAD said:

Quizzical said:

SEANMCAD said:

how long should one wait?

If you're waiting for the Radeon RX-480, expect to wait until June 29.  For the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080, it's unclear.  We'll know more about the GTX 1070 on Friday, when it officially goes on sale.

so RX-480 is not on sale yet and will not be until the end of the month but we know more about that 'when' then we do the GTX? odd

Well, it had a public demo of a pre-production model a few months ago (not just someone holding up a card at a convention). And it's not using a brand new memory architecture that has unestablished and constrained supply lines.

So, it's not certain, but yeah, we do know a good bit more about the when for AMD than we do (and I would say, still do) from nVidia.

Ergload

Malabooga said:

NDA for 480 ends on 29th June, so i would say dont hold your breath fro anything before that. Theres always a chance they will lift it sooner but i wouldnt count on it.

Oh. I was under the impression that reviewers get a copy a week or two early. Seems like I've got a few more weeks of waiting to do. Lol.

Quizzical

Ergload said:

Malabooga said:

NDA for 480 ends on 29th June, so i would say dont hold your breath fro anything before that. Theres always a chance they will lift it sooner but i wouldnt count on it.

Oh. I was under the impression that reviewers get a copy a week or two early. Seems like I've got a few more weeks of waiting to do. Lol.

Reviewers do get cards sooner, but with an NDA so that they're not allowed to post reviews until a certain date.  Ideally, they have a few weeks with the card to try a bunch of stuff and have a good review ready to go when the NDA ends, but sometimes they get far less time than that and have to rush out a mediocre review or let someone else have all of the launch day page views.

Ergload

I thought that NDA stood for a new internet acronym. It took a while for me to realize that it meant Non-Disclosure Agreement. Lol

Anyway, thanks for explaining.

SEANMCAD

Quizzical said:

SEANMCAD said:

Quizzical said:

SEANMCAD said:

how long should one wait?

If you're waiting for the Radeon RX-480, expect to wait until June 29.  For the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080, it's unclear.  We'll know more about the GTX 1070 on Friday, when it officially goes on sale.

so RX-480 is not on sale yet and will not be until the end of the month but we know more about that 'when' then we do the GTX? odd

Expect the GTX 1070 to be in short supply at least initially, as Nvidia is charging $450 for the first cards, and has already announced price cuts to $380 later.  I have no idea if initially means days, weeks, or months.

We don't know for certain that the RX-480 will be a hard launch.  But considering that it's coming nearly six months after AMD publicly showed off the cards, that's plenty of time to fix problems and accumulate inventory ahead of launch.  It's possible that Global Foundries will have trouble building the chips with acceptable yields, and that could cause delays, as happened with Llano in 2011.

ironically on this day I can get a 1080 easier then I can get an Oculus Rift

Ergload

SEANMCAD said:

Quizzical said:

SEANMCAD said:

Quizzical said:

SEANMCAD said:

how long should one wait?

If you're waiting for the Radeon RX-480, expect to wait until June 29.  For the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080, it's unclear.  We'll know more about the GTX 1070 on Friday, when it officially goes on sale.

so RX-480 is not on sale yet and will not be until the end of the month but we know more about that 'when' then we do the GTX? odd

Expect the GTX 1070 to be in short supply at least initially, as Nvidia is charging $450 for the first cards, and has already announced price cuts to $380 later.  I have no idea if initially means days, weeks, or months.

We don't know for certain that the RX-480 will be a hard launch.  But considering that it's coming nearly six months after AMD publicly showed off the cards, that's plenty of time to fix problems and accumulate inventory ahead of launch.  It's possible that Global Foundries will have trouble building the chips with acceptable yields, and that could cause delays, as happened with Llano in 2011.

ironically on this day I can get a 1080 easier then I can get an Oculus Rift

Proof that the VR hype is real. Lol

Quizzical

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100007709 601201888

Eight cards listed at the moment, all out of stock.  That's 6 GTX 1080s and 2 GTX 1070s.  What I think is interesting about it is that there's not a single founder's edition card of either there.  That means that other cards have started to show up, but it also means that New Egg hasn't received shipment of a single founder's edition card of either in the last couple of weeks or so, as they take down a listing if it has been continuously out of stock for long enough.

Don't get your hopes up about card at MSRP being imminently available, though.  All but one of the listings has a price closer to the founder's edition than to the non-founders MSRP.  One is actually more expensive than a founder's edition card.

Incomparable

I dont know about amd, but the 1070 sounds amazing. So worth the wait to get 1070 over 970. It depends on price sure, but the 1070 is better than even a 980ti, so im not sure how the 970 can offer similar value to that.

Malabooga

Its 30-40% faster than 970 and 40+% more expencive. I would really want to know what you find so amazing about that.