Flying Squirrel Entertainment

The Lounge => Off Topic => Other Games => Topic started by: Colonel Howe on March 04, 2015, 09:29:21 pm

Title: GPU Help
Post by: Colonel Howe on March 04, 2015, 09:29:21 pm
With awesome games like the Witcher 3 and stuff coming out, I'm starting to save up for a new Graphics Card. getting the card will take awhile considering

Make about $100 a week
-$40 for insurance
-$20 for gas
And my bank account that has about $500 dollars saved in it, need to pay a tax on my car which is $300.
So the saving up will take a bit of time but I was wondering if you guys had any suggestions on good GPUs and stuff I should know about before buying and installing (which i would want to do myself). To my understanding, it should just pop in right?

This is card I was thinking of getting: msi v320-005r nvidia geforce gtx 960 2gb
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: Riddlez on March 04, 2015, 09:50:45 pm
This is an empty question if we do not know your motherboard, CPU and RAM.
This both for the sake of compatibility and bottlenecking.


Please provide.
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: Colonel Howe on March 04, 2015, 10:00:26 pm
This is an empty question if we do not know your motherboard, CPU and RAM.
This both for the sake of compatibility and bottlenecking.


Please provide.
sorry bout that

Motherboard:
(System Manufacturer) Alienware
(System Model) Aurora-R4

Installed Memory (RAM):
16 GB

Processor:
Intel Core i7-3820 CPU @3.60 Mhz
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: John Price on March 04, 2015, 10:10:47 pm
Ew alienware....
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: joer5835 on March 05, 2015, 12:30:47 pm
GTX 960? Nonononononono

I strongly recommend you save up a bit more and get something a bit better, like a 970, that's what I'm doing right now. Trust me, it'll be worth it in the long run.
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: Nipplestockings on March 05, 2015, 12:36:27 pm
I'd recommend a 970 too. Of course, I still have an ATI Radeon 6950 back from 2011 which performs perfectly (60 fps on high/max on almost every game) to this day, so I'm not usually the first person advising graphics card upgrades, but since you asked that's my 2 cents.

Don't go cheap with computer parts. It's almost always better to save up a little more and to get the superior hardware than to save an insignificant amount of money on hardware that you're probably gonna have to replace sooner. It ain't worth it.
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: John Price on March 05, 2015, 01:09:13 pm
There has been alot of speculation with the 970 though, NVidia has been getting shit for the card not coming as advertised, Something about the last almost 1gb of memory not being used even when under full load?

Still a great card though, Personally im going for a 980 just because i want to keep my new PC for a few years without making major upgrades unless needed.
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: DoctorWarband on March 05, 2015, 01:28:11 pm
I am waiting for the 1k series. THAT'S a good thing to wait for. Going to get myself a GTX 1000 something and get 420 fps on gaems
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: Nipplestockings on March 05, 2015, 01:50:58 pm
I am waiting for the 1k series. THAT'S a good thing to wait for. Going to get myself a GTX 1000 something and get 420 fps on gaems

What's the point?
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: Colonel Howe on March 05, 2015, 02:21:12 pm
GTX 960? Nonononononono

I strongly recommend you save up a bit more and get something a bit better, like a 970, that's what I'm doing right now. Trust me, it'll be worth it in the long run.
Yeah I posted the wrong link. Was thinking about 970. I would only take a few weeks to save up sum money but Ye. No shit '60s here
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: DoctorWarband on March 05, 2015, 02:53:39 pm
I am waiting for the 1k series. THAT'S a good thing to wait for. Going to get myself a GTX 1000 something and get 420 fps on gaems

What's the point?
The 1k series will have the new Pascal technology, built specially for rendering 3D PROJECTS AND GAMING. So for games it shall be glorious, and run everything on 420 FPS.
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: Riddlez on March 05, 2015, 03:35:41 pm
Yes, and if you wait another year, you'll have the 1100 series. Your shit will run outdated anyways.
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: joer5835 on March 05, 2015, 05:12:59 pm
There has been alot of speculation with the 970 though, NVidia has been getting shit for the card not coming as advertised, Something about the last almost 1gb of memory not being used even when under full load?

Still a great card though, Personally im going for a 980 just because i want to keep my new PC for a few years without making major upgrades unless needed.

The last 500mb vram uses a lower speed than the other 3500mb. Using it would actually slow down your games but it is almost never used unless you game on something bigger than 1080p. So yes, it is techincally a 3.5gb vram card and a lot of people feel cheated by the fact Nvidia advertised it as 4gb. But like I said, unless you go above 1080p there shouldn't be any problems.

It all comes down to what you are planning to do exactly with your GPU and what you prefer to spend your money on in the end.
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: Nipplestockings on March 05, 2015, 10:58:04 pm
My 1TB HDD only came with 950 GB!!1!!! Sue corsair for installing windows on my computer without asking me pls.
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: DoctorWarband on March 05, 2015, 11:06:30 pm
Yes, and if you wait another year, you'll have the 1100 series. Your shit will run outdated anyways.
In truth, my shit is already pretty outdated. A 750ti is already like 2-3 years old, and I bought mine at the beginning of last year. So I suppose that in like 1-2 years I'll have to switch mine too. My processor is good though, i7-4770 3.5@GHz. And ram is sufficient at the time. I am pretty okay with cooling too. 5 fans excluding my GPUs fans.
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: George385 on March 06, 2015, 01:44:32 am
Multi GPU's are better than any single graphics card. So in my opinion, you should get 2 nvidia gtx 670's or something like that, and it will by far beat any of the top graphics cards.
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: Akko on March 06, 2015, 02:13:30 am
Well, you really don't need an amasing GPU to be able to play those games. I am using a MSI Radeon HD 6570 1gb Stealth Edition and it runs a lot of newer games on medium-high settings with some tweaking. I would watch some YouTube videos on certain cards running some of the games you want to play and see for yourself. (Keep in mind that you want to check their specs before you make your decision. Someone could be running some pretty high quality equipment with a shitty GPU.)
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: Nipplestockings on March 06, 2015, 12:01:21 pm
After some consulting I've learned that the Radeon r9 290 is better than the 970 in pretty much every way. I retract my 970 recommendation. Get a 290.

Again though, a top of the line card is pretty unnecessary. Unless you're going to be upgrading everything else on your computer bottlenecking is going to become a problem, as riddlez said.
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: Riddlez on March 06, 2015, 02:34:30 pm
After some consulting I've learned that the Radeon r9 290 is better than the 970 in pretty much every way. I retract my 970 recommendation. Get a 290.

Again though, a top of the line card is pretty unnecessary. Unless you're going to be upgrading everything else on your computer bottlenecking is going to become a problem, as riddlez said.

Think long and hard on the AMD-NVidea issue. It is a shitty situation, but at the moment, developpers 9Not just Unisoft) seem to support NVidea over AMD. It usually causes AMD cards to run worse than their NVidea counterparts.
Though AMD cards come a lot cheaper.
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: Nipplestockings on March 06, 2015, 02:40:06 pm
Developers support Nvidia because they have more money to pay them to do so.

It is true that in most cases Nvidia makes better cards, but in the current high end GPU market, AMD has Nvidia beaten with this card.
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: Onii on March 06, 2015, 02:51:32 pm
There has been alot of speculation with the 970 though, NVidia has been getting shit for the card not coming as advertised, Something about the last almost 1gb of memory not being used even when under full load?

Still a great card though, Personally im going for a 980 just because i want to keep my new PC for a few years without making major upgrades unless needed.

The last 500mb vram uses a lower speed than the other 3500mb. Using it would actually slow down your games but it is almost never used unless you game on something bigger than 1080p. So yes, it is techincally a 3.5gb vram card and a lot of people feel cheated by the fact Nvidia advertised it as 4gb. But like I said, unless you go above 1080p there shouldn't be any problems.

It all comes down to what you are planning to do exactly with your GPU and what you prefer to spend your money on in the end.
I've been on a 970 since December, and it runs like a charm. Those last 500MB really doesn't make a difference.
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: DoctorWarband on March 06, 2015, 03:59:29 pm
There has been alot of speculation with the 970 though, NVidia has been getting shit for the card not coming as advertised, Something about the last almost 1gb of memory not being used even when under full load?

Still a great card though, Personally im going for a 980 just because i want to keep my new PC for a few years without making major upgrades unless needed.

The last 500mb vram uses a lower speed than the other 3500mb. Using it would actually slow down your games but it is almost never used unless you game on something bigger than 1080p. So yes, it is techincally a 3.5gb vram card and a lot of people feel cheated by the fact Nvidia advertised it as 4gb. But like I said, unless you go above 1080p there shouldn't be any problems.

It all comes down to what you are planning to do exactly with your GPU and what you prefer to spend your money on in the end.
I've been on a 970 since December, and it runs like a charm. Those last 500MB really doesn't make a difference.
It's not that 3.5 GBs is a little...
What do you play on it? And do you know how much FPS you get?
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: John Price on March 06, 2015, 04:04:32 pm
I think the differnce between NVidia and AMD is pretty big DEPENDING on what you are going to do with it, Nvidia you get things like Shadowplay etc. which is worth going that little bit more just for that.

Not to mention AMD has been getting a little shitty with optimization for games over the last 5 ish years.

I think its more personal preference, If you have the money go NVidia, If you dont go AMD. AMD is so much more bang for buck style where as NVidia is power.
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: joer5835 on March 06, 2015, 06:28:50 pm
Nvidia is the superior choice as of now, and that's not because they are actually better but because they have bribed pretty much everyone to let games run better on their hardware.

So unless AMD thinks up something that can break up that monopoly, they are kinda screwed.
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: DoctorWarband on March 06, 2015, 06:40:46 pm
I will never go for AMD because my dad once told me he had 3 AMD computers that burned down (not over-cloacking). So from personal experience I rather use Nvidia, but I am not a fanboy, I know AMD has some good cards.
Title: Re: GPU Help
Post by: MrTiki on March 06, 2015, 07:20:19 pm
After some consulting I've learned that the Radeon r9 290 is better than the 970 in pretty much every way. I retract my 970 recommendation. Get a 290.

Again though, a top of the line card is pretty unnecessary. Unless you're going to be upgrading everything else on your computer bottlenecking is going to become a problem, as riddlez said.
It varies a huge amount between games. In some the 290 has an edge of up to 10 fps, in others the 970 has an edge of up to 20 fps, and in other games they run practically identically.
The majority of 1080p gaming benchmarks I've seen have the 970 running ~10 fps higher than the 290. That being said you can get the 290 a fair bit cheaper. Depends what your priorities are.

Personally I'd say get the 970, or wait for the next gen from AMD. Waiting for the next release is always a good idea, because it could well force prices down on existing cards (like the 900 release did) and you'll get a better deal, even if you don't get the latest card.