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On June 26 2014 12:26 Myrmidon wrote: If you keep playing newer AAA titles at higher settings, buying new graphics cards regularly is unavoidable.
It depends on the game and usage, but roughly 770 is 20% faster than 760. As as you'd expect from how price/performance goes in the price range, is that worth being 35% more expensive? Also, for what it's worth, if you like high-res textures, AA, etc. it could be that you can't really think of the 770 as much of a long-term investment, what with the 2 GB of VRAM at the price point you quote.
It's more than that (often closer to 30) but still price/perf favors 760 still, and 770 is in the awkward point of being the best of the "bad" gpu's before the step from gk104 to gk110
On June 26 2014 08:43 DystopiaX wrote: I have a 560TI that ran into the MSI "one fan broke" problem. I'm just out of warranty but sent the RMA request in anyway just in case, but chances are that they'll deny my request. Rather than buying a new aftermarket fan/heatsink I think I'd rather just buy a new graphics card, which is why I'm here.
My monitor's native resolution is 1920X1080, buying in the US. I want to spend $300 or less but that's a "soft cap", I'd be willing to spend a tiny bit more if it's worth it. As for retailers, I'm down to buy online but there's also a microcenter nearby. As for brand preferences I liked my experience with Nvidia so I'm leaning towards another Nvidia card but if there's a better deal for an AMD card I'm not opposed to buying one either.
What games do you play, what's your other hardware (CPU mainly) and what FPS + graphical settings targets do you want?
Everything really, LoL/SC2/Heroes of the Storm then singleplayer stuff like Watch dogs etc., sandy bridge i5-2400. As for graphical settings, the best that I can get for the price point I mentioned really.
I think in terms of cost-efficiency, R9 280 and GTX 760 are "good" and better than R9 280X / GTX 770. However once you up the price again, the R9 290 becomes once again pretty cost-efficient.
On June 26 2014 13:57 Incognoto wrote: I think in terms of cost-efficiency, R9 280 and GTX 760 are "good" and better than R9 280X / GTX 770. However once you up the price again, the R9 290 becomes once again pretty cost-efficient.
Wouldn't the R9 290 be 50% better than the GTX 760 but also be 50% more expensive? That's pretty cost-efficient.
It's more than 50% better, just not at stock because "factory OC" 760's/770's are sold at basically the max frequencies they can do (i can only add 26-39mhz to my 770) and 290's are not
780ti can hit 2x performance of 760 (1152 vs 2880 cudas lol), 290/290x are not so far behind
It's good, but they can't really advertise having better API's etc when they're ahead on one game that's actually played (bf4) and behind on a few dozen others due to lacking DX driver efficiency (nvidia's response to closed mantle release was 337.5 driver, which gave 1.3x performance in bf4 from that alone) - right now it's kinda a case of..
in 6 months to a year mantle might be more relevant, it might be open too. But we'll have new GPU's and be closer to dx12 then anyway. They need to move faster with adoption where it's needed most, more games like bf4, planetside 2, RTS and MMO scene
You could put say a 780ti in a highly CPU limited situation with a 4670k@4.5ghz and get 100fps
and then switch it for a 290 in the same situation and get 60fps
with neither GPU hitting 25% load
AMD put out mantle, Nvidia made massive leaps forward in terms of directx efficiency in response. AMD is playing catch-up and probably will be for a little while
I'm guessing though that when CPU isn't a bottleneck then AMD and Nvidia are roughly on par, it comes down to something like the GPUs itself. That's where AMD's cost-efficiency comes into play. Generally speaking I feel that AMD has some very strong bang for buck with the R9 290 for example. If playing games that aren't highly CPU demanding, like "most" games really (I'm thinking that a game like Skyrim or something), getting a good AMD card is "good".
However if playing CPU-limited games, Starcraft 2, Planetside 2, Il-2 Cliffs of Dover (flight-sim games are pretty CPU demanding afaik) Nvidia comes out ahead with its CPU-efficient drivers in DirectX. I think the "premium" you pay for Nvidia GPUs is pretty justified at the moment, though that may change if AMD catches up in DirectX.
I'm guessing though that if you're streaming you may also want Nvidia? To reduce the overall load on the CPU.
On June 26 2014 16:42 Incognoto wrote: I'm guessing though that when CPU isn't a bottleneck then AMD and Nvidia are roughly on par, it comes down to something like the GPUs itself. That's where AMD's cost-efficiency comes into play. Generally speaking I feel that AMD has some very strong bang for buck with the R9 290 for example. If playing games that aren't highly CPU demanding, like "most" games really (I'm thinking that a game like Skyrim or something), getting a good AMD card is "good".
However if playing CPU-limited games, Starcraft 2, Planetside 2, Il-2 Cliffs of Dover (flight-sim games are pretty CPU demanding afaik) Nvidia comes out ahead with its CPU-efficient drivers in DirectX. I think the "premium" you pay for Nvidia GPUs is pretty justified at the moment, though that may change if AMD catches up in DirectX.
I'm guessing though that if you're streaming you may also want Nvidia? To reduce the overall load on the CPU.
NVENC is useful, not so much for streaming. It's nice for somebody with a pentium g3258 to be able to record at 1080p30 while playing a game that highly loads both of their cores, with a good quality and no noticable performance impact. I recorded this earlier~
That's another game where Nvidia drivers seem to be significantly better (i saw some numbers like almost 1.5x more FPS on nvidia in cpu limited situation.. that seems extreme but it wouldn't surprise me if there was a big gap having seen that and other numbers, it's dx11 game) and there are massive complaints about game performance, optimization etc.
So I'm looking at upgrading my computer, and was looking at the budget professional. I'm wondering if any of the parts have switched around and there are cheaper/better ones that I can get but still keep it around this price. Also one more thing I have a Dell XPS 420 and am wondering if I am able to reuse the case just temporarily or if I would need to buy a new one.
My old computer (~2007) is slowly falling apart. No hurry or anything, but I'm looking to replace it and know nothing about computer parts these days, so any input would be appreciated.
I have an external sound card and a PSU that's far newer than the rest of the computer and a bit overkill for it, that I think is still quite okay.
What is your budget? I'm kinda okay with spending 600-700 USD or something along those lines, perhaps more or less depending on what's worth it.
What is your monitor's native resolution? 1920*1080
What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings? Starcraft 2, CS:GO and other non-hardcore games... preferably very stable at medium settings, even at high load moments.
What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming? Listening to music, matlab, watching TV series and what not.. streams and forums of course
Do you intend to overclock? I'm kinda indifferent to it. I'm no hardcore OC dude, but if it can be done without water cooling and custom chassi modding, I guess, why not?
Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire? Not that I'm aware of.
Do you need an operating system? No. Or actually yes, but I already have them.
Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget? Nope. I have an external audio card, HIDs and so on..
If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify. Last time, I preferred intel/nvidia but I don't know.
What country will you be buying your parts in? Sweden. Or any place close to Sweden at least.
If you have any retailer preferences, please specify. Nope. Except I'm not a big fan of shady small shops.
So what are you even looking to replace? CPU, motherboard, RAM, graphics card?
Maybe you should also get an SSD. The difference between a 2007 processor and a current one is fairly large; overclocking would increase that lead somewhat but would take extra time and money (but not any case modding, custom water cooling loops, or anything that involved), so maybe you should just forget about it.
That's about 600 USD. If you need a new case, optical drive, or anything on that level, that could be added. Actually, how many drives do you have, and are they all SATA? If some aren't SATA (so are IDE / PATA, use the big ribbon cable), they're not going to be compatible with a new motherboard.
The graphics card is overkill for the purposes, but I don't think there's much sense in going lower.
Thank you! I'm not really looking to replace the parts, but rather the whole computer. I have two or three SATA drives @ 0.5 TB, but I'm considering buying one big to replace them all. I've also missed all the hype about SSDs. Are they as good as people say they are?
I'm wondering what processor is best for a game like SC2. Should it be fast with few cores or vice versa? What is important?
My old computer (~2007) is slowly falling apart. No hurry or anything, but I'm looking to replace it and know nothing about computer parts these days, so any input would be appreciated.
I have an external sound card and a PSU that's far newer than the rest of the computer and a bit overkill for it, that I think is still quite okay.
What is your budget? I'm kinda okay with spending 600-700 USD or something along those lines, perhaps more or less depending on what's worth it.
What is your monitor's native resolution? 1920*1080
What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings? Starcraft 2, CS:GO and other non-hardcore games... preferably very stable at medium settings, even at high load moments.
What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming? Listening to music, matlab, watching TV series and what not.. streams and forums of course
Do you intend to overclock? I'm kinda indifferent to it. I'm no hardcore OC dude, but if it can be done without water cooling and custom chassi modding, I guess, why not?
Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire? Not that I'm aware of.
Do you need an operating system? No. Or actually yes, but I already have them.
Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget? Nope. I have an external audio card, HIDs and so on..
If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify. Last time, I preferred intel/nvidia but I don't know.
What country will you be buying your parts in? Sweden. Or any place close to Sweden at least.
If you have any retailer preferences, please specify. Nope. Except I'm not a big fan of shady small shops.
So what are you even looking to replace? CPU, motherboard, RAM, graphics card?
Maybe you should also get an SSD. The difference between a 2007 processor and a current one is fairly large; overclocking would increase that lead somewhat but would take extra time and money (but not any case modding, custom water cooling loops, or anything that involved), so maybe you should just forget about it.
That's about 600 USD. If you need a new case, optical drive, or anything on that level, that could be added. Actually, how many drives do you have, and are they all SATA? If some aren't SATA (so are IDE / PATA, use the big ribbon cable), they're not going to be compatible with a new motherboard.
The graphics card is overkill for the purposes, but I don't think there's much sense in going lower.
Thank you! I'm not really looking to replace the parts, but rather the whole computer. I have two or three SATA drives @ 0.5 TB, but I'm considering buying one big to replace them all. I've also missed all the hype about SSDs. Are they as good as people say they are?
I'm wondering what processor is best for a game like SC2. Should it be fast with few cores or vice versa? What is important?
As fast as possible, more than 2 cores won't help.
i5 4670k/4690k @ OC > Pentium G3258 @ OC, nothing else to buy really just for sc2, unless you're running stock settings
This looks pretty much the same even if you disable all but 2 cores:
they list sc2 with significant performance increases. It IS corsair, but backs up benches that i did before
Here's bench i was looking for:
Haswell Pentium at high clock speeds (4.6ghz instead of 3.0) would be way up there. AVX doesn't affect performance in sc2, i'm not sure what extent cache effects performance, or the other missing instruction sets
On June 26 2014 09:59 GhandiEAGLE wrote: I'm thinking of buying a Roswell Capstone 450 and a Sapphire R9 270 Vapor-X, will those two work properly together? Just a quick precaution.
Yes.
Thanks. Was just having a quick irrational panic attack since it said it needed 500 watts and the capstone on the box said 450 w
I'm running an Asus R9 280x DirectCu II TOP card on the Capstone 450. No issues. (Well, related to power, anyways.)
What is your monitor's native resolution? 2x monitor at 1080p
What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings? sc2 medium, beyond earth
What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming? run some vms, programming, would like to have option to get into CUDA programming so would like nvidia card
Do you intend to overclock? no
Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire? no
Do you need an operating system? no
Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget? no
If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify. nvidia GPU
What country will you be buying your parts in? USA
If you have any retailer preferences, please specify. none - live near microcenter
What is your monitor's native resolution? 2x monitor at 1080p
What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings? sc2 medium, beyond earth
What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming? run some vms, programming, would like to have option to get into CUDA programming so would like nvidia card
Do you intend to overclock? no
Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire? no
Do you need an operating system? no
Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget? no
If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify. nvidia GPU
What country will you be buying your parts in? USA
If you have any retailer preferences, please specify. none - live near microcenter
Not sure if typo or what but 7 series boards are LGA 1155, not LGA1150. The 8 and 9 series boards are LGA1150 and for Haswell-R / Devil Cannon support, you need a 9 series board or a 8 series board with an updated BIOS (you cannot update BIOS without an already supported CPU) so unless you are for certain getting a 8 series board with an updated BIOS. I would save myself the trouble and pick a 9 series board.
GTX 750 Ti for $170 is very overpriced and the same can be said for the Crucial M500 at $125 and possibly the Fractal Design Core 3000 at $80 as well.
GTX 750 Ti is suppose to be under $150 and the Crucial MX100 (successor to the M500) has better performance and can be had for around $100.
Cooler Master Elite Power 460 is junk. EVGA 500B is a much better choice and comes in at around $50, $30 after mail in rebate.
they list sc2 with significant performance increases. It IS corsair, but backs up benches that i did before
For what it's worth, Corsair's post / testing on that link is by a former AnandTech writer—granted, one that may give you some pause, given the quality of work sometimes (the old systems / cases / cooling reviewer).
If the memory makes a decent amount of difference, you might think the amount of cache would make a difference too, seeing as that's what you're relying on before hitting the memory. Also, note the old Core i5 vs. i3 results in SC2, even adjusting for clock speeds. And Phenom II vs. Athlon II. The cache does seem to be something of a deal in SC2.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/MofZgKl.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.corsair.com/~/media/Corsair/Blog/2014-02/HaswellRealWorld/HRW-OCPercent.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/1yEKW5e.png)
