Shopping for a Graphics Card. Opinions on the GeForce GTX 970?

InfraGreen

Hey guys. I'm currently in the beginning stages of building myself a gaming PC! In spite of being a savvy IT technician outside of the forum who should be able to do these things on my own, I decided to get my first ideas for a build from the generator at ChooseMyPC.net (not plugging but it's a pretty nice tool!). For my budget, it suggested the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970, which is about $330 through the right sources. I decided to see how it would perform with TS3, which is what matters, so I referred to the handy table at Mod The Sims and...not listed at all. However, the table of graphics cards' performance with TS4 lists the GTX 970 as something that can handle that game at the highest settings.

So, does anyone have experiences with playing TS3 with the GeForce GTX 970 card? I'm assuming its fine, but you can never be too careful before dropping $330 on it!

TacoChaos

its more than enough for ts3.

InfraGreen

TacoChaos wrote: »

its more than enough for ts3.

Yeah, I had a feeling that if anything it would be overkill.

In an attempt to shave some of the costs off my build, I looked up an old graphics card and saw that the GeForce GTX 680 was about $70 less and also confirmed to be TS3-ready. Is there any noticeable performance dip between those cards, and is it worth the money I'll save?

CodySimstein

Hello,

The GTX 970 is incredibly overkill for just The Sims 3, as its definitely overkill for The Sims 4 from the MTS link (I wonder if MTS has somehow gotten inspiration from my supported graphics card list...). The only time I'd recommend a GTX 970 is if you were playing more demanding games, or playing The Sims 3/4 at extremely high resolutions.

I would suggest looking at the NVIDIA GTX 760 or AMD R9 270X, as both should be more than enough for the game - if you really feel like spending extra money, you could get a GTX 770 or R9 280/280X. I would recommend buying more recent parts where possible if upgrading, so I wouldn't go for the GTX 680 as its a bit older.

I hope this helps and keep simming,

Cody