Video Card suggestions....

[stealthbob]

I tend to always find a way to cheap out on one thing or another and regret it, my purchase a couple of months ago I think is in that category.

I got a Geforce 960 with 2 GB of vram and quickly learned I would be better off with the 970 and the 4 GB of vram...or so I think.

The good thing is Dad wants to upgrade and wants my 960, he has offered to buy it but who can sell something to their Dad right? lol At least this way I can rationalize that I am doing a good thing by upgrading. (what ever gets me through the day guess...)

I have an i7 477k with assus z-87 mobo and 32 GB ram on board.

My question is, will I see a noticeable gain with the upgrade to the 970 or is it somewhat incremental as it pertains to xplane?

[wmburns]

My question is, will I see a noticeable gain with the upgrade to the 970 or is it somewhat incremental as it pertains to xplane?

Do you want the Ward Cleaver or the YOLO answer?

YOLO answer: you can never be too rich or too thin. You deserve it! Go for it!

Ward Cleaver: Are you sure that you need the update verses want? Oh by the way, regarding video memory. The X-Plane developer blog states that X-Plane does not benefit from additional VRAM. As long as there is enough to load it does not improve performance.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050032/

but who can sell something to their Dad right?

Would you be looking for someone else that is interested in your old video gear? If so, count me in.

Note. I'm cheap as well so keep this in mind when dealing used computer gear.

[ridikamus]

I run a 970 GTX and I'm quite happy with it. If you're an X-Plane user, I'm going to suggest that you go for the upgrade. In X-Plane 10, the additional VRAM does serve an important purpose....it ensures that you can run without texture compression at higher texture quality settings. See this post by Jason Chandler, one of X-Plane's long time, well known aircraft developers, for a visual explanation of why texture compression is bad.

[Ryan B]

I run a 970 GTX and I'm quite happy with it. If you're an X-Plane user, I'm going to suggest that you go for the upgrade. In X-Plane 10, the additional VRAM does serve an important purpose....it ensures that you can run without texture compression at higher texture quality settings. See this post by Jason Chandler, one of X-Plane's long time, near-legendary aircraft developers, for a visual explanation of why texture compression is bad.

This... I was using a gtx 570 1.2GB vram for a long time. I could only run textures at normal (because I like eye candy and ran fps killing payware hehe)... upgrading to a GTX 970 made a huge difference. Night and day really. I can run extreme textures (but use one notch down because I can't tell the difference)

[stealthbob]

I guess pops is getting a new video card!

Thanks guys

[BK1984]

I also run the 970. I couldn't be more pleased with it. X-Plane looks amazing.