I'm not talking maxing all games for 5 years, I'm talking more like maxing them for 2 years + and then running them well for another 3. I've had my current setup since October 2010, been working fine.

My 5850 has served me right for more than 5 years, even if now I think that the 5870 would have been worth that extra more .

Although I'm due for an upgrade.

Probably want to wait for the 390x before making a decision if possible.

I'm currently drawing out the specs for a new build (need a new workstation) and will likely end up just going with a GTX 970 for the next 2-3 years rather than pay more for a diminishing rate of cost/performance and keeping it an extra 1-2 years.

Kinda what I'm going with, I've got a 680 i want to replace with a soon to be cheap regular 980 (maybe stock)  and hold out for 2-3 years until returns come back in mid to full range, current returns aren't really that great for us in terms of performance/savings.

Looks like the 980Ti will be my choice after all if recent AMD news turn out to be true!

The Fury XT (That's AMD's flagship) is coming out in two weeks.  LOL just wait!   If you want it to last 5 years, you should want the card with a next gen memory system.

The next gen memory won't help me if there's not enough of it and the card itself performs worse than the alternatives though, right? I'll wait for confirmation from official AMD spokesmen but it seems like the cards they're releasing this quarter will be underwhelming stuff. And I'm not about to wait a whole year for 8GB of HBM on their cards.

Yeah, I'm waiting for official confirmation. But if the most recent news turn out to be true; the 980Ti will be my best choice.

That's not strictly true; there are already games, such as Shadow of Mordor and The Witcher 3 which use more than 4GB of VRAM if available, especially for draw distance and detail. I'll be playing at 1440p and 4GB is actually not quite enough, especially when you consider that I'll be using this card for many years. For 1080p, it wouldn't be worth it, but there are reports of slight worries with cards like the GTX970 not having enough memory for certain games even at that resolution.

I absolutely don't think that 6GB VRAM is useless to me at 1440p and Ultra across the board and for several years to come. 4GB won't exactly be grand in 4-5 years time (which is when I'll likely be upgrading or building a new rig).

For 4k gaming, even the baddest cards are having issues with all effects turned on, 4k gaming is just too early for any single GPU, regardless of memory.

As other have said, just wait.

So far, we still ignore too much about AMD's Fury to make a proper decision. Until the first benchmarks appear, we only have rumors and what some representative said about the performance of the card... with a card that had no BIOS!

Also, 4GB will not be enough, that's true, but we don't know when that will happen or if the card will run out of GPU muscle before the lack of VRAM becomes the limiting factor. After all, the GTX980 doesn't suffer from having 4GB on the games that use more than that, right? Remember that there is a difference between using it and needing it .

Besides, it's only a couple of week before the E3 reveal and AMD has stated that they will be launched this Q2 which ends this June. At the very least, you'll be able to get a 980Ti for a little less as the price gouging would be over!