Graphics card upgrade time, need advice


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So I decided to ask my friend to lend me some money so I can get a new GPU. My current card is an nvidia Geforce 560 Ti and while it's served it's purpose quite nicely for a couple years - some games are starting to really slow it down, and just feel sluggish in general.

 

So, as there are a billion video card options and a billion places to get one from - which card would be a good purchase specifically as an upgrade for the 560Ti, and is around $150? I'm going to try to order from Amazon (got a trial going of Prime) or Newegg, but I'd be open to another online retailer if they are you know, legit and not some mom and pop webstore.

 

I'd like to get a GT750 Superclock from Evga, Amazon has one for $139 last I checked.

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I'd love to, but I'm going to put it into my older PC I don't use anymore, so my niece here can have her own computer. Sorry sir :(

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That's ok, but I would suggest paging phouchg or boo berry (off the top of my head) that can steer you in the right direction for a new graphics card

I am intrigued though.. a 560ti sluggish? I'm running a gt430 and although it wouldn't handle doom at full graphics, it runs quite happily at higher than mid settings on starcraft.... What game's pushing it to the max??

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That's ok, but I would suggest paging phouchg or boo berry (off the top of my head) that can steer you in the right direction for a new graphics card

I am intrigued though.. a 560ti sluggish? I'm running a gt430 and although it wouldn't handle doom at full graphics, it runs quite happily at higher than mid settings on starcraft.... What game's pushing it to the max??

 

Well, I'm also on a fairly old CPU (AMD Phenom X3 @2.4 Ghz (I think)). Watch Dogs, even Wolfenstein (in open areas with lots of dudes on screen at once), BF4 doesn't run that great either.

I just got a GTX 750 Ti FTW ACX which is a tidy card, and is in budget.

 

Yeah I was looking at that one, there's a superclocked one I can get from Amazon for $139. But I'm not sure how much of an upgrade it'd  be over my 560Ti. 

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I'm looking at the Radeon R9 270X right now. Looks like a nice upgrade from the 560Ti actually, and my friend will let me spend the extra money on it since I'm paying her back monthly anyways.

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I'm looking at the Radeon R9 270X right now. Looks like a nice upgrade from the 560Ti actually, and my friend will let me spend the extra money on it since I'm paying her back monthly anyways.

I just bought one of those myself, the Sapphire R9 270X 4GB OC. Been pretty happy with it so far, but haven't got around to test Watch Dogs with it yet. Which 270X in particular is it you're looking at?

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What an odd price. It normally sells for 200$ without any discounts. I guess they included the price of the free games and then discounted them for "teh savings". Anyway, the MSI has the best cooling overall, so it's a good choice.

I think it's recommended to have 3GB+ of VRAM for Watch Dogs. Just a thing to keep in mind if you plan to play that game.

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Technically you won't need a lot of vRAM for any game as long as you aren't running at a resolution over 1080p with AA cranked.

2GB would be perfectly fine especially since you'll be limited by your CPU anyway.

 

For picking a graphics card, I typically go by this chart and compare performance to your price range:

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

 

Personally, I would spend the little extra and get the GTX 760 since it's a bit faster, but I'm also not a fan of AMD cards.

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Personally, I would spend the little extra and get the GTX 760 since it's a bit faster, but I'm also not a fan of AMD cards.

 

 +1 on that, or Catalyst drivers.

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Technically you won't need a lot of vRAM for any game as long as you aren't running at a resolution over 1080p with AA cranked.

2GB would be perfectly fine especially since you'll be limited by your CPU anyway.

 

For picking a graphics card, I typically go by this chart and compare performance to your price range:

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

 

Personally, I would spend the little extra and get the GTX 760 since it's a bit faster, but I'm also not a fan of AMD cards.

For most games this is true, but Watch Dogs actually requires 3GB+, at least if you intend to run with ultra quality texture settings. Which is why I said that he should consider the amount of VRAM if he intends to play Watch Dogs.

But it's very possible other games will face similar requirements in the coming year, so I'd say 3GB+ is more futureproof.

 

In real-life scenarios, the 270X and 760 are about equal. So it's a bit up to preference and cost. I prefer AMD myself (my last two NVIDIA cards just died on me within a year, none of my AMD cards have failed me yet :p). Still, get 3GB VRAM in any case.

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For most games this is true, but Watch Dogs actually requires 3GB+, at least if you intend to run with ultra quality texture settings. Which is why I said that he should consider the amount of VRAM if he intends to play Watch Dogs.

But it's very possible other games will face similar requirements in the coming year, so I'd say 3GB+ is more futureproof.

 

In real-life scenarios, the 270X and 760 are about equal. So it's a bit up to preference and cost. I prefer AMD myself (my last two NVIDIA cards just died on me within a year, none of my AMD cards have failed me yet :p). Still, get 3GB VRAM in any case.

 

Like I said, vRAM is only critical when the resolution is over 1080p with AA turned on.  There are plenty of benchmarks out there that prove that.  http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/watch_dogs_vga_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,9.html

 

Even if he was playing at 1440p, Watch Dogs is optimized like absolute crap, so it runs poorly on any setup at higher resolutions.

 

Also, the 760 is about 20% faster than the 270x in most benchmarks, so they certainly aren't equal.  For an extra $10-20, it's absolutely worth it.

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I decided to get the Sapphire R9 270X. I could have gone with the 760, but the 4GB of vram, and Mantle (when it's optimized and stuff) sold me on the AMD card for the price was what I wanted I suppose. The 4 gigs of vram will help out a bit more considering I will be CPU limited in some cases. Every little bit helps I guess. Thanks for all the advice guys, I appreciate it.

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Like I said, vRAM is only critical when the resolution is over 1080p with AA turned on.  There are plenty of benchmarks out there that prove that.  http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/watch_dogs_vga_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,9.html

 

Even if he was playing at 1440p, Watch Dogs is optimized like absolute crap, so it runs poorly on any setup at higher resolutions.

 

Also, the 760 is about 20% faster than the 270x in most benchmarks, so they certainly aren't equal.  For an extra $10-20, it's absolutely worth it.

"This is one of few games to set a requirement on being able to run with "Ultra" texture quality. This game requires video cards with 3GB of video RAM to run at "Ultra" texture quality settings. If you don't have 3GB of VRAM on your video card, you can run at "High" texture settings."

 

"We also found out that gameplay consistency was a lot better on Radeon R9 290X with "Ultra" textures enabled thanks to its 4GB of VRAM."

 

That being said, that was done with 2560x1600 (http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/05/28/watch_dogs_image_quality_preview/3#.U47OhyjcAhs). Although I've heard from people I know that there are issues with textures on 2GB cards at 1080p too.

 

And at least in the Techspot benchmarks for Watch Dogs, the 760 and 270X were tied in performance. In the Forbes benchmark the 760 was tied with the 270. In Wolfenstein, the 270 seems to vastly outperform the 760 (http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2383917), but apparently there are texture issues for cards with only 2GB VRAM.

 

EDIT: Do you have any links to benchmarks where the 760 is better?

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"This is one of few games to set a requirement on being able to run with "Ultra" texture quality. This game requires video cards with 3GB of video RAM to run at "Ultra" texture quality settings. If you don't have 3GB of VRAM on your video card, you can run at "High" texture settings."

 

"We also found out that gameplay consistency was a lot better on Radeon R9 290X with "Ultra" textures enabled thanks to its 4GB of VRAM."

 

That being said, that was done with 2560x1600 (http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/05/28/watch_dogs_image_quality_preview/3#.U47OhyjcAhs). Although I've heard from people I know that there are issues with textures on 2GB cards at 1080p too.

 

And at least in the Techspot benchmarks for Watch Dogs, the 760 and 270X were tied in performance. In the Forbes benchmark the 760 was tied with the 270. In Wolfenstein, the 270 seems to vastly outperform the 760 (http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2383917), but apparently there are texture issues for cards with only 2GB VRAM.

 

EDIT: Do you have any links to benchmarks where the 760 is better?

Both links you posted are benchmarks over 1080p, so again that's the only case where 2GB+ of vRAM will matter.

Wolfenstein benchmarks at 1080p show the 760 being considerably faster than the 270x:

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Wolfenstein-The-New-Order-PC-257248/Specials/Wolfenstein-The-New-Order-Test-Benchmark-1121737/

 

Both links that I've previously posted show that the 760 is about 20% faster when at 1080p or below.  It's specs are better on paper besides the vRAM.  

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/watch_dogs_vga_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,9.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1863995/270x-4gb-gtx-760-2gb.html

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/118733/gtx-760-2gb-better-benchmarks-vs-r9-270x-4gb-better-memory

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Both links you posted are benchmarks over 1080p, so again that's the only case where 2GB+ of vRAM will matter.

Wolfenstein benchmarks at 1080p show the 760 being considerably faster than the 270x:

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Wolfenstein-The-New-Order-PC-257248/Specials/Wolfenstein-The-New-Order-Test-Benchmark-1121737/

The link I posted about Wolfenstein showed 270 to get higher FPS than the 760 (18 difference on min FPS, 9 difference on average FPS) at 1920x1200. Then again, this benchmark you linked shows a completely different result. So I'd say we need more benchmark data to determine which is actually better in Wolfenstein.

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The link I posted about Wolfenstein showed 270 to get higher FPS than the 760 (18 difference on min FPS, 9 difference on average FPS) at 1920x1200. Then again, this benchmark you linked shows a completely different result. So I'd say we need more benchmark data to determine which is actually better in Wolfenstein.

I don't think you understand what I'm saying.  1920x1200 is higher than 1080p (1920x1080), so obviously the 270x is going to perform better since it has more vRAM. I don't think I need to repeat what I've already said 4 times now...

 

Going by the OP's low-end PC, I doubt that he has a super high res monitor, hence the extra vRAM will be completely pointless.  He's much better off spending the extra few dollars and getting himself 20% more performance.  In a crappy coded game like Watch Dogs, those extra few FPS he'll get will probably make a huge difference.

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If you are going to get an NVIDIA card from EVGA I would look at buying directly from their site.  I did this for my last card and it was cheaper then Newegg.  Amazon didn't have any in-stock on the .ca site and .com wouldn't ship it here...

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I don't think you understand what I'm saying.  1920x1200 is higher than 1080p (1920x1080), so obviously the 270x is going to perform better since it has more vRAM. I don't think I need to repeat what I've already said 4 times now...

 

Going by the OP's low-end PC, I doubt that he has a super high res monitor, hence the extra vRAM will be completely pointless.  He's much better off spending the extra few dollars and getting himself 20% more performance.  In a crappy coded game like Watch Dogs, those extra few FPS he'll get will probably make a huge difference.

 

A new monitor is something I'll be getting in a month or two. Right now it's a pretty low end monitor I'm dealing with, so higher resolutions aren't something I'm looking at. Yet. That being said, getting a card with 4GB of vram enables me to worry about a new monitor (and higher resolutions) as being an actual thing and not dreaming about 1920x res anymore :S

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