Well first off... Don't think most games will run at max quality+145 fps. To many factors are involved in most games rendering to actually push performance to this level in actuality.

The main advantage to higher hz and higher pixel count, personally, is that you obsolete issues such as tearing to a degree and massively reduce the need for memory intensive AA so you can upscale the base textures for improved quality. Optically it takes a generally trained eye to notice normal usage differences between 60FPS and 120FPS or 144FPS. Many will dispute this saying they have magical eyes and they are both correct and incorrect. Your eye/brain combo can notice movement differences in excess of these timings but when other things are going on in your brain, such as playing a game, you habitually wont notice it unless you are viewing a specific screen intentionally for the purposes of noticing a difference. When people claim to notice major changes and they don't know exactly what to look for in the image(different movements are easier for our brain to notice) they actually are noticing variations in the rendering of the image... which frankly will happen in 99.9% of consumer video games. To much happens for the image to be absolutely 100% unaffected by all the other calculations going on and while we might not notice a 60hz difference we damn well notice a 1hz hitch when a frame gets slightly delayed due to a glitch in the games code.

Additionally higher pixel count does not equate to linear changes in performance.. IE going from 1080p to 4k is not a 4x increase in raw power needed. At higher pixel count other factors are involved and frame processing can become slightly more efficient under certain circumstances.. TLDR 4k doesnt need 4x the card.. but it does need more memory and pixel rate.

Back to your question the 970 typically is a 4gb card while the 960 is a 2gb card. The lower tiered card also has 65% less pixel fill rate. If you intend to use 1440p and any FPS above 60 you will want to seriously consider the extra memory. Using a 2gb card in will cripple its ability to reliably finish the frame without thrashing in many modern games.
Directly to EVE online.. currently the engine isn't very demanding except for HDR and sound... the GFX team keeps adding stuff at an amazing rate though so I wouldn't exactly rely on current eve as a good benchmark.. especially with all the major behind the scenes code changes going on that we DON'T see.

1080p
interleave none = no vsync

my gtx970 goes up to 280 in space, 500+ in station
enough for your 144GHz

You want data : here are my settings and here is a screen of fps count.
http://i.imgur.com/Fx5OIRP.png (I realize I was in windowed mode, add more fps (not much) for fullscreen)


I'm playing in full high quality, except Anti Aliasing to none, my eyes can't really tell the difference when things move around
sure on static screenshot it's clear as crystal, but in space when things move at 60 fps without ever a drop, you don't see it.

anyway, 240 is way over what you need for 144hz screen

Oh, I have a 1rst gen i7 960 from 4 years ago I think, about as powerful as a current i5 and I think that's what's limiting my reaching the 1000 fps bar...

and yes, 970 is better than 960, no there is no ram issue if your card was released after the manufacturing bug announcement (beware cheap 970) and I don't like ATI/AMD on simple gut feeling basis (and the most ****** drivers ever : catalol)

Not sure what you're getting at about interleave, it has nothing to do with vsync. The processor also has nothing to do with preventing you from hitting 1000 fps. Your processor probably isn't even hitting 50% utilization in EvE.

I think that setting is called "Interval." If you're talking about the one in the Esc-menu.

no there is no ram issue if your card was released after the manufacturing bug announcement

How can you measure FPS in game? I have the 960 and i run it on max everything with no lag at all, I can spout numbers if someone tells me how.

CTRL+F in game or use 3rd party OSD software such as RivaTuner. You can get that with MSIAfterburner or PercisionX.

Ok, after that with the GTX 960 FTW with max everything, I get:
275 FPS just warping around
Brief dip to 80 FPS on system load after a jump
250 FPS on a gate with no players (Just NPC's)
110 FPS on the Jita undock (Changed depending on which direction you were looking at, lowest I got was looking back at the station for 100 FPS)

I'm running 2 monitors with 2 docs open and Mozilla along with EvE, so the others shouldn't affect it much.

OP: I'm sorry you've had to listen to the drone of people not understanding what you're asking.

I have a 970 with a 1440p / 144Hz screen. I can not maintain 144fps with everything on highest. Knocking off AA helps a lot, and keeps it much closer to the 144FPS. Knocking all settings down to medium and I've never not been at full FPS.

I'm sure I could find a good balance of some being on highest / medium, but I tend to stick with medium on the off chance I get into large fleet battles and it drops slightly.

Ok, after that with the GTX 960 FTW with max everything, I get:
275 FPS just warping around
Brief dip to 80 FPS on system load after a jump
250 FPS on a gate with no players (Just NPC's)
110 FPS on the Jita undock (Changed depending on which direction you were looking at, lowest I got was looking back at the station for 100 FPS)

I'm running 2 monitors with 2 docs open and Mozilla along with EvE, so the others shouldn't affect it much.

1440p at 60 hz and you should be loving it.

Pretty much my thoughts. I can achieve this for a reasonable price. The temptation to kick it up a notch and do it all at 120-140fps is a costly one... Willing to pay the price if those framerates can remain stable at max settings and if people who have experienced this can testify that it is worth the big bump in price... if not, 1440p at 60fps is nothing to complain about. Game already looks gorgeous on my TN 21in 1080p. Can't wait to see it in 1440p, 27in, IPS. The 144hz factor is the sticking point right now. The price difference is almost double to do 1440p, IPS, and 144hz all in one panel compared to just 1440p/IPS.