Still good for budget gaming in 2023, but only having 4GBs of VRAM is a limiting factor. The fans can get a bit loud at full load though. It sags a bit.

It was a great card when it launched, and it's a very serviceable card now. Has good performance for my current use cases (so, Minecraft, for the most part) and was a good card when I started using it from the start of 2022 in my main build to now in my secondary build. It's kinda on its deathbed though, as the thing's starting to artifact and glitch, but only in some use cases. It's not dead yet though, so I don't care.

Couldnt find any other GPU for my budget so a 970 should still be able to do some work! For its price it was a no brainer for me, but i did got a 750 Watt PSU so i could upgrade later on

This punched well above its weight for several years. In 2022, I was playing Horizon Zero Dawn, Andromeda, and Borderlands 3 at high settings without issue. A little loud in some cases but not too much.

Put it in this PC after upgrading my main build, and it works very well here. Nothing to complain about. It has good performance for my needs on this PC. The one thing I don't particularly like (although it's more nitpicking than anything) is the MSI logo lighting up as I keep this PC in my room, and it can be somewhat distracting when trying to sleep (although my phone is more distracting anyways, so it doesn't really matter much.)

it does what i need it to do, and I don't have the money for a 30 series card.. yet. got it for free so that's nice.

I used this card from 2016-2021 and it did itself proud. In the awful GPU market of 2021-22, this card stands head and shoulders above the crowd as the best budget card for the money.

Why didn't they put a backplate on this? Vertical mount is mandatory.

Good performance for older card. Compares to rx 580 4gb or GTX 1060 3gb. Runs cool with new thermal paste.

Been serving me for nearly 7 years, been great but I definitely feel the need to upgrade. I do wish that I had pulled the trigger on a 5700xt last year, 350euro for that performance would have been awesome in hindsight.... **** COVID :)