GPU to play Bioshock

M

MeowMeow

n00b
Joined
Jun 5, 2013
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Hey everybody,

I grew out of games a little and other than SC2, I haven't had any interest in gaming for awhile, which is why I was really happy with the HD4000 unit on my Core i5.

That was until I saw a trailer of the new Bioshock.

Fucking hell man, I want to play this game SO badly, but I don't have a GPU.

Here's my mainboard:

https://www.alternate.de/GIGABYTE/GIGABYTE+GA-H77N-WiFi,_Mainboard/html/product/1035449/?

If you spotted the problem, you win a thousand nerd-dollars.

Do you have any recommendations for an affordable graphics-card that doesn't make too much noise?
Oh yeah, my monitor resolution is 1920*1080, if that's relevant.

Thank you very much!

My PC:

Int Core i5-3570 3400 1155
Tt Munich 430W ATX23
D3 4GB 1333-999 NT GSK
GiBy GA-H77N-WiFi H77 RG SI
 
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all i know is the new bioshock is decently demanding to play on pretty mode, and its a big difference between medium settings and pretty settings lol. a 570 or better would do it i feel.
 
looks like 660ti/7950 are around 60fps maxed out. (also, from experience, my older GTX 580 managed to keep 60fps the whole time)
 
what is your PSU and what size card can you actually fit in your case. for the motherboard I am guessing not much
 
Bioshock Infinite runs like butter on my machine.

(if that helps you)
 
horrorshow said:
Bioshock Infinite runs like butter on my machine.

(if that helps you)
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and when did you play it? the game had hitches and stutters that they just finally had a patch to address 2 weeks ago. it fixed most of it but now the game will wig out after a while and even says that will happen in the patch notes.
 
cannondale06 said:
and when did you play it? the game had hitches and stutters that they just finally had a patch to address 2 weeks ago. it fixed most of it but now the game will wig out after a while and even says that will happen in the patch notes.
Click to expand...

I played it about a week ago and it seemed fine....

(I'm aware of the patch history etc)
 
MeowMeow said:
Haha, I'm so clueless about hardware, I don't even know which of the items in your signature is your graphics card.
Click to expand...

You are [H] noob. :D
BTW whats your budget?.i think an amd 7950 is best bang for the buck right now.
 
I don't want to (or rather: don't have to) play on maxed out settings, so I'd prefer to get a mid-range graphics card to save money. I don't play that many games any more, so much more would be a waste.

The gpus in the article are all around the 300 € range (when it comes to hardware, alas, dollar to euro rate is about 1:1), but in the conclusion it seems like they are all a little overkill.
 
then grab a amd 7870 or nvidia 650 ti boost.its a good investment and not an overkill.u should get it around for 150-170 on newegg.
 
I'm looking to play with all settings maxed out at 1080P, frame rate average of 40 FPS. I've been planning to buy a GTX 660, but is that going to cut it? Should I get the 660 Ti instead?

The article linked above was not helpful, all the tests were for 2560x1440
 
660 and 660ti is about $80 difference, if that is not going to break your bank I would recommend the ti
 
cannondale06 said:
not at 60 fps if that matters
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I don't display fps but it's smooth as butter and I don't have lag spikes while gaming.

I just downloaded fraps, I am curious.

EDIT: okay, the fps varies as high as 80 and as low as 40. Still quite playable.
 
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stealthy123 said:
I don't display fps but it's smooth as butter and I don't have lag spikes while gaming.
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I find that hard to believe since reviews show a 7850 cant even average 40 fps. that means there are lots of dips below 30 fps for sure. just running Ultra dynamic shadows has a massive impact on framerates. heck my card is 50% faster than yours for this game and there are spots that will drop to 35 fps with Ultra dynamic shadows where on Very High its gets 60 and High it gets 95 fps. not to mention the game itself still has some stutters no matter how fast your system is. the last patch fixed most stuttering issues though the game will be unstable after a while.

bottom line is I dont believe its smooth as butter the whole time for you or anyone else. and with a mid range card like yours at least a setting or two needs to be dialed back a notch.
 
janas19 said:
I'm looking to play with all settings maxed out at 1080P, frame rate average of 40 FPS. I've been planning to buy a GTX 660, but is that going to cut it? Should I get the 660 Ti instead?

The article linked above was not helpful, all the tests were for 2560x1440
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a plain 660 will do fine. you will need to turn down dynamic shows to high and lower your texture resolution one notch for the best experience.

http://www.techspot.com/review/655-bioshock-infinite-performance/page3.html


btw you will eventually run into some artifacting if using the newest 320.18 drivers. you can revert back to patch 3 for the game and get lots of stuttering or go back to 314.22 drivers. hopefully they will get all the stuttering issues addressed very soon with a more stable patch.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3126250
 
cannondale06 said:
a plain 660 will do fine. you will need to turn down dynamic shows to high and lower your texture resolution one notch for the best experience.

http://www.techspot.com/review/655-bioshock-infinite-performance/page3.html


btw you will eventually run into some artifacting if using the newest 320.18 drivers. you can revert back to patch 3 for the game and get lots of stuttering or go back to 314.22 drivers. hopefully they will get all the stuttering issues addressed very soon with a more stable patch.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3126250
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Dammit, now I'm feeling antsy again, I'd really like to enjoy the full experience of Bioshock. Will turning down dynamic shadows and texturing by one level make it look much worse? FWIW, $80 is a lot of money to me. I don't do much FPS gaming with notable exceptions.
 
janas19 said:
Dammit, now I'm feeling antsy again, I'd really like to enjoy the full experience of Bioshock. Will turning down dynamic shadows and texturing by one level make it look much worse? FWIW, $80 is a lot of money to me. I don't do much FPS gaming with notable exceptions.
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turning down the shadows a couple notches is not noticeable at all but will make the game run MUCH faster. here you can see where the settings were compared. http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/04/17/bioshock_infinite_video_card_performance_iq_review/7
 
I think you'd be quite happy with a 7850. I wouldn't recommend a 650 ti boost.
 
cannondale06 said:
turning down the shadows a couple notches is not noticeable at all but will make the game run MUCH faster. here you can see where the settings were compared. http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/04/17/bioshock_infinite_video_card_performance_iq_review/7
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You are awesome, I love you. :D

I'm building a system right now and debating whether to go with the EVGA 660 3GB signature edition, or a 660 Ti 3GB. Retail, the 660 Ti is about $80 more, so I don't think that's worth it. But if I could find one for $250 used, that'd be a good deal I imagine.
 
janas19 said:
You are awesome, I love you. :D

I'm building a system right now and debating whether to go with the EVGA 660 3GB signature edition, or a 660 Ti 3GB. Retail, the 660 Ti is about $80 more, so I don't think that's worth it. But if I could find one for $250 used, that'd be a good deal I imagine.
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no point in getting a 3gb 660ti over the 2gb. the card will run out of gpu power long before 2gb of vram is an issue. in fact the 3gb card could end up a wee bit slower in some cases due to more latency from twice as many chips on that modest 192 bit bus.
 
cannondale06 said:
no point in getting a 3gb 660ti over the 2gb. the card will run out of gpu power long before 2gb of vram is an issue. in fact the 3gb card could end up a wee bit slower in some cases due to more latency from twice as many chips on that modest 192 bit bus.
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Hmm, well now I'm just jacking the thread - sorry OP - but...

The link to the patch thread states that on high resolutions, some artifacting is evident due to low vram - would the 3GB vram help erase that problem? http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3126250

Also, I thought the 3GB would let me do infinite Skyrim texture mods.

I don't know, but if it helps, I'm gaining a lot from your insights *grin*
 
screw the 660ti, buy a used 670 off of someone upgrading to 7xx series for like $250
 
cannondale06 said:
why not? the 650 ti boost is even faster than the 7870 in this game.
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Does the boost have more shaders? I honestly dont know but from what I've read the 7850 is faster than a 650 ti on this game and I'm betting an OC version of the 7850 (or just oc'ing it yourself) would still outperform the 650 ti boost. if you have benchmarks that show otherwise I'd love to see them. this is what I've seen

http://www.techspot.com/review/655-bioshock-infinite-performance/page2.html
 
greybaby said:
Does the boost have more shaders? I honestly dont know but from what I've read the 7850 is faster than a 650 ti on this game and I'm betting an OC version of the 7850 (or just oc'ing it yourself) would still outperform the 650 ti boost. if you have benchmarks that show otherwise I'd love to see them. this is what I've seen

http://www.techspot.com/review/655-bioshock-infinite-performance/page2.html
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you could have simply googled 650 ti boost. if you did then you would see that its a much faster card than the 650 ti. it is not much slower than the plain 660 so it would be ahead of even the 7870 in this game.

 
I did google it. Not only that, your benchmark has aa turned off. That might be relevant to some folks who don't care about aa, but a lot of people do at the 160 dollar car mark. From what I've read the 650 ti boost while fast doesn't overclock very well, due to the boost already taking it pretty high. I'm just saying that I highly doubt that a 650 ti boost could keep up with a even moderately overclocked 7850. The 7850 BEGS to be overclocked man!

This site isn't the best, but I think it illustrates my point

http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-HD-7850-vs-GeForce-GTX-650-Ti-Boost
 
greybaby said:
I did google it. Not only that, your benchmark has aa turned off. That might be relevant to some folks who don't care about aa, but a lot of people do at the 160 dollar car mark. From what I've read the 650 ti boost while fast doesn't overclock very well, due to the boost already taking it pretty high. I'm just saying that I highly doubt that a 650 ti boost could keep up with a even moderately overclocked 7850. The 7850 BEGS to be overclocked man!

This site isn't the best, but I think it illustrates my point

http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-HD-7850-vs-GeForce-GTX-650-Ti-Boost
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um if you googled it then you would not have had to ask if it has more shaders. the 650 ti boost is slightly faster than the 7850 overall. in Bioshock its faster than the 7870 and thats a fact. Bioshock only uses FXAA so thats not going to make the 7870 suddenly beat the 650 ti boost. ;)

and that site you linked to is crap. all they do is try to cobble a bunch of numbers together from all the reviews out there. they ended up showing the 680 as being faster than the 770 so that alone should tell you to avoid looking there.
 
I've used a GTX660 playing through Bioshock Infinite with zero issues at 1920x1080.
 
kirbyrj said:
I've used a GTX660 playing through Bioshock Infinite with zero issues at 1920x1080.
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lol the game had stuttering issues so you could not avoid those if you played more than 2 weeks ago. patch 4 just came out 2 weeks ago and fixed 90% of the stutters. there is still an optimization issue with dynamic shadows though that has not been fixed. framerates will tank in front of some doors unless you lower the shadows setting to high instead of very high or ultra which are DX11 options only. also the game is unstable with patch 4 after long periods of play and will eventually artifact if using patch 4 with 314.22 drivers.
 
cannondale06 said:
um if you googled it then you would not have had to ask if it has more shaders. the 650 ti boost is slightly faster than the 7850 overall. in Bioshock its faster than the 7870 and thats a fact. Bioshock only uses FXAA so thats not going to make the 7870 suddenly beat the 650 ti boost. ;)

and that site you linked to is crap. all they do is try to cobble a bunch of numbers together from all the reviews out there. they ended up showing the 680 as being faster than the 770 so that alone should tell you to avoid looking there.
Click to expand...

So your saying your site (which doesn't have fxaa, which you says give it an edge) is valid but mine is not? Sure its cobbled, but as I said I really think that a 650 ti boost has nothing on an oc'ed 7850. I can't find anything to the contrary. The site you gave, as I stated before, only shows what cards do without goodies turned on. Gotta turn on goodies for valid benchmarks at teh 160 dollar point in my opinion.
 
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