Vid card recommendations?

Goatblaster

Goatblaster

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Jun 17, 2013
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Been a while since I've been [hard]core gaming, but looking to get back into it! I'm on a budget though, and was looking for some opinions for upgrade(s). Here's my current system specs. I'm thinking of just a vid card upgrade, not necessarily the entire system, unless that might prove pointless, opinions requested ;)

  • Asus Rampage II Gene Motherboard (1366 socket)
  • Intel core i7-920 OC'd to 3.6ghz
  • 12GB OCZ DDR3-1600
  • 128GB OCZ Vertex 3 SSD - Boot drive
  • 1TB WD Black secondary drive
  • 1000 Watt Antec True Power PS
    [*]Sapphire Radeon 5870 vid card
  • 3 x Dell P2310h Monitors (5760x1080 eyefinity setup - 2 on DVI one on DisplayPort)
  • Antec 902 case
  • Bland, crappy DVD drive I haven't touched in 3 years :p

As you can see, I've got some older equipment by today's standards, but when I bought in December 2009, I splurged. The system has held up surprisingly well over time.

I'm fairly certain the main system bottleneck I'm seeing when gaming in eyefinity specifically and at higher detail levels is just the vid card's aging horsepower and limited 1GB of vid card mem, by today's standards anyway. I have no complaints about boot up speed, processing speed, etc, etc, buttery smooth, but when eyfinity gaming, I typically need to keep games at medium to lower detail settings and tweak stuff to get a 50+ framerate. I'd like to kick it up a notch, but don't think I'm quite ready to splurge on a new mobo, CPU, RAM, etc. - so I'm hoping just a decent vid card upgrade would prove worthy. Thoughts?

Also, nVidia / AMD suggestions welcome (triple monitor friendly of course). Also, if you don't think it's worth throwing a new vid card in "this" particular rig, I'd like to know that also! :p I can wait / save if need be.

The system has been rock solid since 2009 really, no issues. I'm looking to get into some of the newer Call of Duty, Battlefield FPS games mainly, possibly a few MMO's (WoW, GW2, etc.), at higher detail levels under the 3 screen setup. At "least" 2GB of RAM vid card, for sure. 3 would be better.

Any suggestions are appreciated. Tx!

- Goatblaster
 
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Best performing card would be a GTX 780. If that is too expensive a HD 7970 had might work out better for you. Might bottleneck on a few games but you should fine until you finish upgrading the rest of the system. Overclocking your CPU a bit more more might help.
 
Goatblaster said:
Been a while since I've been [hard]core gaming, but looking to get back into it! I'm on a budget though, and was looking for some opinions for upgrade(s). Here's my current system specs. I'm thinking of just a vid card upgrade, not necessarily the entire system, unless that might prove pointless, opinions requested ;)

  • Asus Rampage II Gene Motherboard (1366 socket)
  • Intel core i7-920 OC'd to 3.6ghz
  • 12GB OCZ DDR3-1600
  • 128GB OCZ Vertex 3 SSD - Boot drive
  • 1TB WD Black secondary drive
  • 1000 Watt Antec True Power PS
    [*]Sapphire Radeon 5870 vid card
  • 3 x Dell P2310h Monitors (5870x1080 eyefinity setup - 2 on DVI one on DisplayPort)
  • Antec 902 case
  • Bland, crappy DVD drive I haven't touched in 3 years :p

As you can see, I've got some older equipment by today's standards, but when I bought in December 2009, I splurged. The system has held up surprisingly well over time.

I'm fairly certain the main system bottleneck I'm seeing when gaming in eyefinity specifically and at higher detail levels is just the vid card's aging horsepower and limited 1GB of vid card mem, by today's standards anyway. I have no complaints about boot up speed, processing speed, etc, etc, buttery smooth, but when eyfinity gaming, I typically need to keep games at medium to lower detail settings and tweak stuff to get a 50+ framerate. I'd like to kick it up a notch, but don't think I'm quite ready to splurge on a new mobo, CPU, RAM, etc. - so I'm hoping just a decent vid card upgrade would prove worthy. Thoughts?

Also, nVidia / AMD suggestions welcome (triple monitor friendly of course). Also, if you don't think it's worth throwing a new vid card in "this" particular rig, I'd like to know that also! :p I can wait / save if need be.

The system has been rock solid since 2009 really, no issues. I'm looking to get into some of the newer Call of Duty, Battlefield FPS games mainly, possibly a few MMO's (WoW, GW2, etc.), at higher detail levels under the 3 screen setup. At "least" 2GB of RAM vid card, for sure. 3 would be better.

Any suggestions are appreciated. Tx!

- Goatblaster
Click to expand...

my man, loving how much information you put here. unfortunately it is incredibly difficult to make a suggestion when you dont give a budget and the resolution you're playing at.

considering you said you have an eyefinity set up I am assuming it is a higher resolution. sli is the way to go there you can swoop 2 670s for less than 1 780 now and the performance would be pretty insane.

Ryleh said:
Best performing card would be a GTX 780. If that is too expensive a HD 7970 had might work out better for you. Might bottleneck on a few games but you should fine until you finish upgrading the rest of the system. Overclocking your CPU a bit more more might help.
Click to expand...

how do you figure he will have a bottleneck ? lol.
 
Ryleh said:
Best performing card would be a GTX 780. If that is too expensive a HD 7970 had might work out better for you. Might bottleneck on a few games but you should fine until you finish upgrading the rest of the system. Overclocking your CPU a bit more more might help.
Click to expand...

Tx for the reply. The 780 me thinks a wee bit out of current budget, but might consider saving / waiting for a beast like that. I'll check local pricing on the 7970 too.

As for CPU, I'm running a corsair H50 enclosed water cooler, which keeps temps nice and low. I've tried 3.8 and 4.0 OC's, unfortunately not stable. Might be my chip, not sure.
 
dremic said:
my man, loving how much information you put here. unfortunately it is incredibly difficult to make a suggestion when you dont give a budget and the resolution you're playing at.

considering you said you have an eyefinity set up I am assuming it is a higher resolution. sli is the way to go there you can swoop 2 670s for less than 1 780 now and the performance would be pretty insane.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. The resolution is above, but listed in the system specs - 5760x1080. As for budget? Well, I left that open to hear a range of suggestions, but you're right. If I had to budget, I'd say, hoping for somewhere between the $250 and $400 range? Am I nuts for thinking that would net me a decent upgrade to a 5870? :p

I'm also limited to single PCI slot currently - my board has 2 PCI-e slots only and the other is occupied by RAID controller to my 16TB array. So I'd be limited to a single PCI-e, but could swap things around for a 2-slot or 3-slot solution.

Edit - Also, dremic, you feel that the system specs I provided would be sufficient to push even today's generation of vid cards decently? I've been out of the game for a bit, built a few systems here and there but never really upgrades - mostly new builds for buddies.
 
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Goatblaster said:
Thanks for the reply. The resolution is above, but listed in the system specs - 5870x1080. As for budget? Well, I left that open to hear a range of suggestions, but you're right. If I had to budget, I'd say, hoping for somewhere between the $250 and $400 range? Am I nuts for thinking that would net me a decent upgrade to a 5870? :p

I'm also limited to single PCI slot currently - my board has 2 PCI-e slots only and the other is occupied by RAID controller to my 16TB array. So I'd be limited to a single PCI-e, but could swap things around for a 2-slot or 3-slot solution.

Edit - Also, dremic, you feel that the system specs I provided would be sufficient to push even today's generation of vid cards decently? I've been out of the game for a bit, built a few systems here and there but never really upgrades - mostly new builds for buddies.
Click to expand...

$250-$450 will probably only net you a single card unless you find someone selling two 660-tis and has a bundle price. When I said you'd be fine most everything, I was primarily referring to well made games and non-demanding games. There are still some games out there that are crazy about IPC. As far as bad games go, crysis is a good example because if a single thread maxes out the entire thing comes crumbling. Planetside 2, Dark Souls, GTA IV, etc# are other examples. Skyrim was for a while too but it seems to have gotten fixed.

Going off your listed games I think you'll be fine. It's more of the exception and not the norm. Probably a pretty pointless thing to bring up actually. Comes to mind that since you won't be maxing most anything out it's probably irrelevant.

Whatever you do, you should definitely go used.
 
Goatblaster said:
Thanks for the reply. The resolution is above, but listed in the system specs - 5870x1080. As for budget? Well, I left that open to hear a range of suggestions, but you're right. If I had to budget, I'd say, hoping for somewhere between the $250 and $400 range? Am I nuts for thinking that would net me a decent upgrade to a 5870? :p

I'm also limited to single PCI slot currently - my board has 2 PCI-e slots only and the other is occupied by RAID controller to my 16TB array. So I'd be limited to a single PCI-e, but could swap things around for a 2-slot or 3-slot solution.

Edit - Also, dremic, you feel that the system specs I provided would be sufficient to push even today's generation of vid cards decently? I've been out of the game for a bit, built a few systems here and there but never really upgrades - mostly new builds for buddies.
Click to expand...

your system is perfectly viable still, especially at the resolution you're playing at all of the weight is entirely on the GPU.


resolution increase = heavy on gpu, less on cpu

resolution decrease = heavier on cpu, less heavy on gpu

at your resolution the GPU is carrying most of the burden. and a 920 is still pretty great.

at your budget a 7970 can be had at 350$ AMIR right now. which is better than a 670

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...E16814202008&gclid=CJDQxqrN67cCFWFxQgodjEwAmg

thats a killer deal. if you want to future proof a little bit though you should get a 670 to prepare for an SLI setup. most people on [H] will tell you SLI > CF all day.


If I were you though I would settle on the 7970

perfrel.gif


its a pretty decent jump in performance.
 
I appreciate the replies folks, thank you! Glad to hear my system can still push pixels decently after a vid card change. I'm in Canada, so newegg.ca for me, not .com, I'll check out some of those cards mentioned. Tx! :p
 
Thanks for the input folks. In the end, I managed to score an EVGA 4GB GTX 680 FTW LE edition at what I "think" is an incredible price, never used, with 2 years warranty left on it. Got it for $280 CA. The performance is damn impressive compared to my old Radeon 5870. Tx again for the input! :p
 
Please get the hd7970 GHz edition at that resolution. You will notice hell lot of improvement I can tell because I was coming from 9800gt to this card and couldn't be happier. Newegg got some independence's sale coming out. You should get somewhere like $325 after rebate (saw the vaporX one last few days). And, you can always make it xfire down the road if you need extra power
 
Goatblaster said:
Thanks for the input folks. In the end, I managed to score an EVGA 4GB GTX 680 FTW LE edition at what I "think" is an incredible price, never used, with 2 years warranty left on it. Got it for $280 CA. The performance is damn impressive compared to my old Radeon 5870. Tx again for the input! :p
Click to expand...

Good move. I love my GTX 680. I lost all respect for AMD with my 4890. Nvidia all the way!
 
Goatblaster said:
Thanks for the input folks. In the end, I managed to score an EVGA 4GB GTX 680 FTW LE edition at what I "think" is an incredible price, never used, with 2 years warranty left on it. Got it for $280 CA. The performance is damn impressive compared to my old Radeon 5870. Tx again for the input! :p
Click to expand...

That's an absolute steal. Congrats man!
 
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