CPU/Vid card

R

Rajincajun

Weaksauce
Joined
Nov 30, 2010
Messages
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Hey guy's I'm needing some help on deciding what vid card I can get that will work with my CPU. As of now I'm running 2 560TI in SLI and system runs good but with the some of the newer games the cards are not cutting it. I run 2560x1440 and would like to try and stay at the res if at all possible and work with the finer details settings to make the games run at playable Frame Rates.

The CPU I have is a i5 2500K I have never over clocked it and if needed I will with if I get a new Vid card.

What vid card could I run with this CPU that would work well? Keep in mind that I can over clock the CPU. I don't want to go insane over clock on the CPU but enough so the games are stable.

Also I'm planning to upgrade the CPU but that may no be until the Fall. Also SLI is also an option.

I'm running an ASRock Z77
8gig 1600 ram
all SSD drives..



Thanks in advance for any help.

R
 
290x / 970 / 980 / Titan X would all be a noticeable improvement. I would keep it to a single card and buy the highest you can afford. I would just check out the [H] reviews. If there's a specific AAA game [H] may have reviewed it too.
 
My budget is not large I'm not looking at going with the latest hardware. I kind of like middle of the road leaning more to higher end if that makes any sense.

I wan't to stick with Nvidia for the GPU also.

Being I have a i5 2500K what GPU will this CPU handle? For me to run a 900 series GPU would I need a faster CPU? Or could I over clock the i5?
 
if you will be aiming to a constant 60FPS you will definitely have to overclock your CPU to 4.4 - 4.5ghz.. if you are very budget restricted go with a GTX 970.. I would not go with anything less than that card if you want to keep it for long time..
 
Araxie said:
if you will be aiming to a constant 60FPS you will definitely have to overclock your CPU to 4.4 - 4.5ghz.. if you are very budget restricted go with a GTX 970.. I would not go with anything less than that card if you want to keep it for long time..
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Not very budget restricted just trying to keep price under control. 60 fps would be nice so if I have to over clock the i5 then so be it. I've had this CPU for a while and feel I have more than gotten my money's worth.

I'm also open for SLI. What do you think about me keeping the i5 OC it and running 2 900 series cards?
 
Rajincajun said:
Not very budget restricted just trying to keep price under control. 60 fps would be nice so if I have to over clock the i5 then so be it. I've had this CPU for a while and feel I have more than gotten my money's worth.

I'm also open for SLI. What do you think about me keeping the i5 OC it and running 2 900 series cards?
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SLI is a mess with NVIDIA right now (unsupported features with no hint at future support, aging link technology, frame pacing issues, voltage inconsistency causing instability), so I wouldn't recommend it. And this is coming from an early adopter of NVIDIA SLI and a staunch advocate for it in past years. At this point it would be best to stick with the single fastest card you can afford, which for your Sandy Bridge platform would be either the R9 290X or GTX 980. I'm optimistic about the realities of multi-GPU improving in the near future with NVLink and DirectX 12, though.
 
What has gotten so bad with sli? My sli titans still work great as well a my other 6xx cards. Honestly upgrading your mb/cpu/ram really will not help you much over current gen, you are honestly better off overclocking what you have and waiting till next gen. Not trying to save you money it's just how it is. I upgraded two of my systems and regretted it and am surprised just how good sandy bridge is, I even regret going from sandy-e to ivy-e. For longevity of gpu's I find that buying the second highest end seems to last the longest vs cost. I have 3x670's and 2x680's and hands down the 670's were the better purchase. I actually cross graded from the sli 680 to sli titan and it was amazing and I am still running the titans and I run 7680x1440. I hope this help steer you some. Maybe an extra 8gig of ram a good cooling setup like an self contained water cooler then over clock it and see where you are at, you would be surprised how gpu's react to faster cpu's. I once went from a 4ghz 920 to a hex core at around 3ghz and my fps went up and that was with a tri sli setup. Don't be afraid to take it in a few step.
 
Forget what the last guy said.. I've had none of the probs as he mentioned And ive read plenty of others are fine as well.. cant say the same for amd! Plus any over clocking program can and will lock the voltage the same for ea card.

Older system with older power supply.. I'd say 980.. grab another when the 980 Ti comes out in like a month when the prices come down. Amd uses a lot more power and heat then nvidia 900 cards.

Don't think your going 970 sli and save a few bucks.. you don't want the limited buggy laggy 3.5 +.5 memory issues at 1440 res. One 980 will be fine if shooting for just 60fps.
 
I don't want to water cool anything so I would like to stay away from that. I know water cooling has coma a very long way. I'm just not that into the gaming rigs as I use to be. So simplicity is what I'm looking for.

Also with AMD and the issues I keep reading about the drivers has me a little hesitant in getting an AMD. Am I over reading into the AMD driver thing? I mean for the price AMD is hard to beat other than the heat and voltage usage they are great cards. Another reason I wanted an Nvidia card, less to worry about.

I have good cooling on my CPU, not enough to super clock it but enough to over clock it some,,,, At least to 4.2 GHZ could do without water cooling????

GTX980 would be nice and It would fit into what I'm looking to spend, I've heard about the GTX970 so I agree with staying away from those. I would like to keep my CPU/MB combo I've had it for a couple of years now and it runs flawlessly. If I could OC the CPU and upgrade the GPU and keep the rig for 2 more years It would be awesome. I think by that time (2 years from now) I'd be ready to do a new rig or even 1 year...
 
The 2500k is still an incredible chip. I don't see it bottlenecking any gpu you would want to buy. From what I hear, a large portion of the 2xxxk series chips overclock very nicely, so you may have that going for you too.
 
Rajincajun said:
Also with AMD and the issues I keep reading about the drivers has me a little hesitant in getting an AMD. Am I over reading into the AMD driver thing? I mean for the price AMD is hard to beat other than the heat and voltage usage they are great cards. Another reason I wanted an Nvidia card, less to worry about.

.
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I`d say the AMD driver issues are mainly with crossfire setups. I have used many AMD single GPUs and never had any issues with drivers. That being said I have also used many Nvidia GPUs and haven`t had issues.
 
Okay great thanks for all the info everyone. I'm going to stick with the 2500k which is fine by me. 3 or 4 years out of a GPU would be pretty sweet. So if ADM issues are more based on the cross fire then the 290x may also be a contender.

Anyone else wanna chime in on the AMD and issues with a single card? AMD pricing is hard to beat so any input would be great.

Thanks again.
 
Well the newest and drivers released were like a 4 month wait. Came out for grand theft auto 5. If you like waiting months for drivers to maybe fix your game issues then by all means save a couple of bucks.
 
I'm in a similar position. Just upgraded to 1440p and my OCd 7950 isn't keeping up as much as I'd like it to. (Running a 3570k @ 4.2)

I'm debating the upgrade to a 970/290x now (don't want to spend 980 money), but am leaning towards waiting for the 390 release. I have a feeling that used cards will take a hit as people start upgrading and I'll be able to get away with a $150 upgrade to a nicely clocable 970 (factoring in the price of my 7950). Still browsing the FS section ;)
 
I like amd gpu' but I always seem to end up back at NVidia. I always seem to have micro stutters or not as smooth gameplay with the amd. So the last amd I bought was a 7950 and it works good just not as good as NVidia. Ultimately either is a good choice. But if you like NVidia I would stick with it.
 
newbs said:
I like amd gpu' but I always seem to end up back at NVidia. I always seem to have micro stutters or not as smooth gameplay with the amd. So the last amd I bought was a 7950 and it works good just not as good as NVidia. Ultimately either is a good choice. But if you like NVidia I would stick with it.
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Same here I have had and AMD I think was my last Vid card which was a couple years ago. It was good but I always go back to Nvidia. I have to say with the price of the 290x man, I'm thinking that would be the way to go.

I'm seeing the 290x from anywhere from low $300 to $400. What Nvidia card would closely match the 290x as for performance?
 
SAPPHIRE TRI-X OC 100361-2SR Radeon R9 290X 4GB 512-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 CrossFireX Support Video Card
$344

Whats are everyone's opinion?
 
Looks like there are a few GTX970s around the same price point as that 290x. Take a look at some benchmarks of games you play or plan to play at your 1440 resolution and see what would serve you best.

The 970 and 290x trade blows across the board, with the 290x eeking ahead as the resolution is cranked up. The 290x will use more power, but if your psu and cooling are ok then it doesn't matter much.

My Gigabyte 290x does pretty well for the games I've been playing - only exception recently was Dying Light (haven't tried it since any latest patches though). I've got GTAV dialed in, looks and runs great - even working fine with SweetFX SMAA injection.
 
EnderW said:
what are you basing this on?
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in the reality?. I had one in my brother machine that i've upgraded to a 2700K btw, the difference in some games (specially recent) between 4.2ghz and 4.5ghz its pretty noticeable let alone between 3.7ghz and 4.5ghz and any person with a 2500K can confirm that.. i made a lot, a lot of test with several games and his overclocked gtx titan(vanilla): Crysis 3, Hitman Absolution, Far Cry 3, Far Cry 4, Watch Dogs, Shadow of Mordor, Bioshock Infinite, Metro 2033, Metro Last Light, Sleeping Dogs definitive edition, Mafia II, Batman Arkham series( Asylum, City, Origins) all noticed a very perceptible bump in frame rates when overclocking between 4.4 and 4.8ghz. minimums frame rate skyrocketed in some cases by more than 12FPS and even more after upgraded to the 2700K at 4.8ghz. so yes a 2500K at stock settings I would call some kind of bottleneck to maintain constant 60FPS
 
Araxie said:
in the reality?. I had one in my brother machine that i've upgraded to a 2700K btw, the difference in some games (specially recent) between 4.2ghz and 4.5ghz its pretty noticeable let alone between 3.7ghz and 4.5ghz and any person with a 2500K can confirm that.. i made a lot, a lot of test with several games and his overclocked gtx titan(vanilla): Crysis 3, Hitman Absolution, Far Cry 3, Far Cry 4, Watch Dogs, Shadow of Mordor, Bioshock Infinite, Metro 2033, Metro Last Light, Sleeping Dogs definitive edition, Mafia II, Batman Arkham series( Asylum, City, Origins) all noticed a very perceptible bump in frame rates when overclocking between 4.4 and 4.8ghz. minimums frame rate skyrocketed in some cases by more than 12FPS and even more after upgraded to the 2700K at 4.8ghz. so yes a 2500K at stock settings I would call some kind of bottleneck to maintain constant 60FPS
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Very interesting, I was planning on putting a GTX 980 in my workstation. CPU is a Xeon E3-1230v2, locked at 3.3GHz, turbo up to 3.7GHz. Perhaps I should keep my old 2600k and have a separate system for gaming.
 
if you don't really need to work with ECC RAM then keep the 2600K.. I would take it all the way before even pick the E3-1230 for gaming.. and since you have it would be good to test and see how it really become a beast pass from 4.4ghz.. the only reason i have this 3770K was because i've degraded my old 2600K which was running at 5.2ghz with high voltages degraded really fast in 5 months..
 
haz_mat said:
Looks like there are a few GTX970s around the same price point as that 290x. Take a look at some benchmarks of games you play or plan to play at your 1440 resolution and see what would serve you best.

The 970 and 290x trade blows across the board, with the 290x eeking ahead as the resolution is cranked up. The 290x will use more power, but if your psu and cooling are ok then it doesn't matter much.

My Gigabyte 290x does pretty well for the games I've been playing - only exception recently was Dying Light (haven't tried it since any latest patches though). I've got GTAV dialed in, looks and runs great - even working fine with SweetFX SMAA injection.
Click to expand...

That Bad azz ,man what FPS are you getting running at 1440?
 
EnderW said:
what are you basing this on?
Click to expand...

So I over clocked the i5K to 4.0Ghz and no issues at all. I'm seeing a nice increase in FPS in most games with just the OC and not changing nothing else.

What is everyone's option on cooling the i5 if I go over 4.0Ghz? How far can I go before I need water cooling? 4.0Ghz with no H2O is holding fine with no issues at the moment.
 
Araxie said:
if you don't really need to work with ECC RAM then keep the 2600K.. I would take it all the way before even pick the E3-1230 for gaming.. and since you have it would be good to test and see how it really become a beast pass from 4.4ghz.. the only reason i have this 3770K was because i've degraded my old 2600K which was running at 5.2ghz with high voltages degraded really fast in 5 months..
Click to expand...

What OC setting should I set my memory? I haven't touched the memory speed yet, should I?
 
Rajincajun said:
So I over clocked the i5K to 4.0Ghz and no issues at all. I'm seeing a nice increase in FPS in most games with just the OC and not changing nothing else.

What is everyone's option on cooling the i5 if I go over 4.0Ghz? How far can I go before I need water cooling? 4.0Ghz with no H2O is holding fine with no issues at the moment.
Click to expand...

what cooler are you using now? those chips overclock pretty well, you can reach high overclocks with mid class air coolers.. even cheaper can assure you great temps at 4.4ghz and above.. try to aim your overclock at least at 4.5ghz which should be perfectly doable with a tiny CM Hyper 212..

Rajincajun said:
What OC setting should I set my memory? I haven't touched the memory speed yet, should I?
Click to expand...

if you are at 1600mhz or above don't worry to mess with it, the performance gain would be little to none in real world usage and gaming..
 
Araxie said:
in the reality?. I had one in my brother machine that i've upgraded to a 2700K btw, the difference in some games (specially recent) between 4.2ghz and 4.5ghz its pretty noticeable let alone between 3.7ghz and 4.5ghz and any person with a 2500K can confirm that.. i made a lot, a lot of test with several games and his overclocked gtx titan(vanilla): Crysis 3, Hitman Absolution, Far Cry 3, Far Cry 4, Watch Dogs, Shadow of Mordor, Bioshock Infinite, Metro 2033, Metro Last Light, Sleeping Dogs definitive edition, Mafia II, Batman Arkham series( Asylum, City, Origins) all noticed a very perceptible bump in frame rates when overclocking between 4.4 and 4.8ghz. minimums frame rate skyrocketed in some cases by more than 12FPS and even more after upgraded to the 2700K at 4.8ghz. so yes a 2500K at stock settings I would call some kind of bottleneck to maintain constant 60FPS
Click to expand...

definitely right there. Even with AMD, and not sure if Intel sees this, the 8core CPUs had this wall that over it saw huge gameplay increases. Seems over 4.7Ghz everything ran just a lot better. And for sure over stock can make a huge, I mean huge, difference in gameplay.
 
spend a little money on a really good air cooler for your CPU and overclock the snot out of it, then wait until the GTX 980TI comes out and pick up 1 or 2 GTX 980's used when people start dumping them to get into the 980TI.
 
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