GTX 960

[Judge_Xero]

When looking at video cards also make sure to consider the rest of your system.
To get the most out of a 970 you need a fairly strong Quad-Core.

Even a 960 would need a good Quad.

I did some testing a while back and even a GTX 550ti was bottlenecked by a Q6600 Overclocked to 3.2Ghz in FFXIV. It still played decent at high settings and could hit 45 FPS in empty areas looking at the sky, but in graphically intense areas it took a pretty big hit because the CPU could not keep up with the GPU, not to the point that it was unplayable by any means, but significant enough that there was no reason to have a more powerful GPU.

Probably a good rule of thumb is -

Quad Core CPU that uses DDR3 Ram will be a good pair for a GTX 960 (i3 with Hyperthreading, i5, Phenom II X4/X6)

For the GTX 970, you would want to pair it with any of the newer Quads, (i5/i7 Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell or Phenom II X4/X6 and/or AMD Bulldozer/Piledriver with a hefty Overclock (4.6Ghz)

Not saying that you can't use these with anything else, just saying that if you pair a GTX 980 with a Core2Duo at stocks speeds, you are paying for GPU performance that you will never see.

[Ooshima]

When looking at video cards also make sure to consider the rest of your system.
To get the most out of a 970 you need a fairly strong Quad-Core.

Even a 960 would need a good Quad.

I did some testing a while back and even a GTX 550ti was bottlenecked by a Q6600 Overclocked to 3.2Ghz in FFXIV. It still played decent at high settings and could hit 45 FPS in empty areas looking at the sky, but in graphically intense areas it took a pretty big hit because the CPU could not keep up with the GPU, not to the point that it was unplayable by any means, but significant enough that there was no reason to have a more powerful GPU.

Probably a good rule of thumb is -

Quad Core CPU that uses DDR3 Ram will be a good pair for a GTX 960 (i3 with Hyperthreading, i5, Phenom II X4/X6)

For the GTX 970, you would want to pair it with any of the newer Quads, (i5/i7 Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell or Phenom II X4/X6 and/or AMD Bulldozer/Piledriver with a hefty Overclock (4.6Ghz)

Not saying that you can't use these with anything else, just saying that if you pair a GTX 980 with a Core2Duo at stocks speeds, you are paying for GPU performance that you will never see.

Most of today's game still run good with an overclocked i7-2XXXK at around 4-4.5GHz, so older gen CPU isn't really a problem unless you got a crap and old one.

In any case speaking of GPU upgrades, most of the time single card upgrades over one generation isn't really worth it (ie. 780 to 980). Check out some of the SLI/Crossfire comparisons. For example, if you are on a single 290X it isn't really worth the upgrade to 390X, it would have been better for the buck if you buy another 290X (which is kinda dirt cheap right now) and Crossfire it.

For me I have a pair of GTX 970 in SLI which costs me US$125 above a single piece of GTX 980 but there is a lot of performance there. The performance is equal to the R9 295x2 but at a cost of less than half its price, lower temperature and power draw.