ASUS GTX 970 Dragon Knight Overview | Generated by AI
Question: What is this ASUS GTX 970 4GB “Dragon Knight” GPU listing?
Answer:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 is an older gaming GPU released in 2014 based on NVIDIA’s Maxwell (GM204) architecture.
The listing:
华硕 GTX970-4G 龙骑士显卡 接口OK，PCIE通道OK 已经清灰换好硅脂了。 到手直接上机。
means:
-
ASUS GTX970-4G Dragon Knight
- ASUS custom cooler version (“龙骑士” = Dragon Knight series)
- 4GB GDDR5 VRAM
-
接口 OK
- Display outputs tested
-
PCIe 通道 OK
- PCIe connection works, GPU recognized normally
-
清灰换硅脂
- Seller cleaned dust and replaced thermal paste
-
直接上机
- Ready to install
Specs
| GTX 970 | |
|---|---|
| Architecture | Maxwell GM204 |
| CUDA cores | 1664 |
| VRAM | 4GB GDDR5 |
| Memory bus | 256-bit (effectively 224-bit usable due to GTX 970 memory partition issue) |
| PCIe | 3.0 x16 |
| Power | ~145W |
| Recommended PSU | 500W |
| Release | 2014 |
AI / LLM usage
For your AI experiments, this card is basically not useful.
Reasons:
-
Only 4GB VRAM
- Cannot run meaningful modern LLM inference.
- Even tiny models need careful quantization.
-
No Tensor Cores
- Maxwell has CUDA cores only.
- No FP16 acceleration like RTX cards.
-
Old CUDA support
- Modern PyTorch wheels usually target newer NVIDIA architectures.
- You will fight compatibility issues.
Compared with your RTX 4070:
| GTX 970 | RTX 4070 | |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Maxwell | Ada Lovelace |
| VRAM | 4GB | 12GB |
| CUDA cores | 1664 | 5888 |
| Tensor cores | ❌ | ✅ 4th gen |
| FP16 | weak | very strong |
| LLM | no | yes |
Gaming today
Still okay for:
-
1080p esports:
- League of Legends
- CS2 (low settings)
- Valorant
-
Older AAA games:
- GTA V
- Witcher 3 (old version)
Not good for:
- Cyberpunk
- New AAA games
- Ray tracing
Price judgment (2026)
On second-hand markets:
- Around 200–400 CNY: reasonable
- Above 500 CNY: not attractive
For a cheap desktop GPU it is okay, but for an AI workstation I would skip it.
Your previous GPU direction (RTX 3060 12GB / RTX 3090 / multiple RTX cards) makes much more sense because VRAM is the limiting resource for LLM work. A GTX 970 is basically a display card today, not a compute card.
Generated by AI. Curating and sharing still takes effort.
If you find it useful, feel free to
donate.
WeChat: @lzwjava
·
X: @lzwjava ·
Say hi 👋