In conclusion, we went out of our way to break the GTX 970 and couldn't do so in a single card configuration without hitting compute or bandwidth limitations that hobble gaming performance to unplayable levels. We didn't notice any stutter in any of our more reasonable gaming tests that we didn't also see on the GTX 980, though any artefacts of this kind may not be quite as noticeable on the higher-end card - simply because it's faster. In short, we stand by our original review, and believe that the GTX 970 remains the best buy in the £250 category - in the here and now, at least. The only question is whether games will come along that break the 3.5GB barrier - and then to what extent Nvidia's drivers hold up in ensuring the slower VRAM partition is used effectively. Certainly, Nvidia's drivers team is a force to be reckoned with. One contact tells us that their game optimisation efforts include swapping out computationally expensive shaders with hand-written replacements, boosting performance at the expense of the ever-increasing driver download size. When there's that level of effort put into the drivers, it's not an amazing stretch of the imagination to see that major titles at least get the attention they deserve on GTX 970.
