Dilemma...PG278Q with 980ti or RX 5700 XT

CruisD64

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Hey there...I have a bit of a dilemma. I'm moving to Truckee for a couple of months and will be taking my backup computer with me along with an Asus ROG PG278Q. Currently the system specs are as follows:

i5 4670K @ 4.4
16GB DDR3
1TB nvme SSD
980TI
Asus ROG Swift PG278Q

I guess that's all that really matters for this thread. My question is am I better off keeping the 980TI and using gsync or picking up an RX 5700 XT and using with that monitor without gsync. I know the FPS will be a lot better with the 5700 XT than the 980TI but is it enough to negate gsync? The 980TI is still no slouch. It's been a LONG time since I've gone team red (x800 xt) and I kind of want to just to support them given the impressive specs of the 5700 XT. After my time with the card depending on how I like I'll probably throw it on here for sale. Thoughts?

Games I'll be playing:
AC Odyssey (mostly)
Tomb Raider whatever the new one is
Far Cry 5
BF5
Rocket League :p
Dosbox and Sierra/Lucas games :)
 
If you are planning to upgrade, why not stay nvidia?
 
If you are planning to upgrade, why not stay nvidia?

I wasn't really planning to but I'm curious to try out AMD since it has been so long and they're really onto something. Ideally I'd like to replace my 1080ti with a 2080ti and stick the 1080ti in my backup but $$$$$$. I don't see myself buying anything from nvidia < than 2080ti. Since the AMD card would be more out of curiosity I'm just wondering if it would be a downgrade. I definitely dont want to spend 400 only to have a worse experience than the 980ti due to lack of gsync. Anyway, a mild dilemma and very 1st world problems but was just wondering.
 
I wasn't really planning to but I'm curious to try out AMD since it has been so long and they're really onto something. Ideally I'd like to replace my 1080ti with a 2080ti and stick the 1080ti in my backup but $$$$$$. I don't see myself buying anything from nvidia < than 2080ti. Since the AMD card would be more out of curiosity I'm just wondering if it would be a downgrade. I definitely dont want to spend 400 only to have a worse experience than the 980ti due to lack of gsync. Anyway, a mild dilemma and very 1st world problems but was just wondering.

Well, since you have a G-Sync monitor, you are pretty much stucked with nvidia.
 
You're better off upgrading that system. With the exception of Rocket League from your list, a 4c/4t CPU is like the bare minimum for all the other games, and realistically, that's not enough for a decent experience in Odyssey and BF5. You really need more than 4 threads in modern AAA titles nowadays.
 
You're better off upgrading that system. With the exception of Rocket League from your list, a 4c/4t CPU is like the bare minimum for all the other games, and realistically, that's not enough for a decent experience in Odyssey and BF5. You really need more than 4 threads in modern AAA titles nowadays.

Wow, yeah. You're right. I just looked at some benchmarks and it appears a CPU will have a bigger impact than a GPU upgrade. Maybe Ryzen 3600x and an overclock on the 980ti?

The rig in my sig destroys Odyssey at Very High. 60+ FPS consistently. Same gen cpu though it has a 1080ti. Crazy.
 
Maybe this will help... or not

I have the Asus PG279Q monitor, bought it exclusively for the G-Sync, and have it paired with an RTX card. Since I'm still within the return window though, and have been temped to try out the 5700 XT as well, I borrowed a friends 5700 XT to test how it would pair with my G-Sync monitor since I'll be loosing the VRR. I mostly play FPS games, and pretty much stick to R6 Seige, although I just picked up BFV to play through. For the last week, I've been playing R6 on Ultra with the RTX card. Last night I popped in the 5700 XT, set the same Ultra config in R6, and prepared myself for a screen tearing party... didn't see any. That's not to say gaming with the RTX on the G-Sync isn't a more smooth gaming experience... I just personally couldn't see a difference. And I tried to look. Since it'd be impossible for me to run the cards side by side, I played R6 for a good 15 minutes, took the card out, uninstalled the NV drivers, Installed the 5700 XT, loaded the latest AMD drivers, and launched R6. It looks and plays just a good. If there is a difference, and I don't doubt there is with G-Sync, I just wasn't bothered by it as I couldn't tell myself.

The PG279Q is a gorgeous gaming monitor, and I love it so far. But if I was to switch to the 5700 XT permanent, I'd probably want a Freesync monitor... but that being said, the PG279Q is such a nice monitor, I'd rather keep it, so if using a 5700 XT doesn't affect my gaming experience, then to heck with it.

As other's have already mentioned, you might be able to squeeze some more out of the 980ti with a CPU upgrade first. But I think it also depends what res you play at... 1440P is really more GPU limited then CPU. Personally, with your rig, I'd maybe try to OC your current cpu, and go the 5700 XT route.
While it's true that many games take advantage of more then 4 cores these days, we're not 100% there yet, and even if you look at the newest AAA games, they'd still run good on your 4 core i7.
Another thing to consider right now, if you're looking to keep the budget within $400, a CPU / Motherboard, and new Ram since you're probably using DDR3 now, will cost a lot more than $400. You'd really have a grab a budget CPU/MB/ and 8-16GB cheap ram.

EDIT: ** Just noticed you're running the i5, check ebay and upgrade to a i7 4770/4790 which will give you 8 threads. You can probably grab one really cheap now, like south of $50... and then paid that with the 5700 XT.


Hope that helps.
 
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Now I'm kinda torn. I don't want to spend too much to upgrade this machine because it's a secondary machine, but it could be a primary machine at my parents cabin which I frequent. Now I'm thinking 3600x with a 2070 Super... Bleh. What to do what to do...
 
You're thinking about spending way too much $.
$150 gets you a 1700x or 2600, wraith Prism, and a solid enough motherboard.
I use either with a 1080ti.
I'm bouncing north of 200fps on my Asus 1080p monitor, and solidly above 144hz @ 1440p on my Acer 27".
I'm a fps guy, low quality and fps means everything to me.
I'm not using that 11gb buffer, I'm flogging the core with an aio trying to keep it on 19xx-2100mhz boost for hours at 50c tops.

I had a 980ti hybrid I traded to someone here before that gpu.
It's somewhere around a 1070 or a 1080, more than enough.
You could say that for my use case, I should have kept the 980ti and gone 2080

If cheap Ryzen that worked with whatever Corsair 3200 ram bc the bioses were finally fixed to be on par with an Intel build 980ti-2080 would have happened.

I can feel current game builds liking 6-core, but preferring 8-core.
It's all in how many killstreaks or flat out kills I'm getting a game.

Get your travel build updated cheap, use 980ti, when prices drop around Black Friday spin around the GPU out of curiosity thing again.
 
Try to find a i7 4790 4 core / 8 thread CPU, that'll keep your rig going another year and is a straight drop in for your board. Then upgrade to either the 2070 Super or the 5700 XT, nether will disappoint. I played about 2hrs of BF V on the 5700 XT tonight, 1440P, Ultra settings, amazing. Unfortunately my buddy wants it back :) so sticking the RTX back in the rig.
 
Thanks for all the tips everyone! A lot of good advice!

I would only build up the backup machine if it became the primary machine at my parents cabin after I leave Tahoe.It would see a lot of use since I'm at their cabin roughly 6 days out of the month and I do game on it when I'm there. My parents would also use it. Soooo, I think what I'm going to do for now is just leave it alone and just get up there and start using it. If after the first week I can't handle it since I'm spoiled with my main rig (no way am I hauling my main machine there) I'll take a drive into Reno and buy some parts from Best Buy or something. I'll be in Truckee for roughly 2 months. While there I will be writing music on Ableton and gaming which sound like both would benefit from from a platform upgrade. You don't know until you try I suppose. I haven't really put the current machine through its paces but got everything for really cheap, built it and didn't really use it. The entire machine including the 980ti and 1TB nvme cost me ~400 to build. I also bought the monitor 2 days ago on CL for $120. Kind of a neat story actually :) I'll be up there on Saturday and will put it to the test. I'll report back in a week or so :)

Thanks again!
 
My bad... Yikes, didn't realize the 4790 still sold for over $120!
 
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Gsync or Freesync is more about smoothness for me than eliminating screen tear.

I don’t see higher FPS than 75hz to be meaningfull with VRR. I’ve compared 144hz Freesync to 75hz Freesync and personally couldn’t tell the difference in gameplay on Doom 2016. But I could and can absolutely tell when Freesync was on or off. Now with Gsync it’s the same thing. When it’s off I immediately notice and gameplay feels gross, clunky, and it really ruins the experience.

I think people see differently. For me VRR is a huge positive change and I don’t want to forgo it to the point nearly of disgust.

So how your eyes personally see VRR I don’t know, but no way I’d give up an Nvidia card to an AMD card on a g-sync monitor since you’d lose VRR. If I go back to AMD video card, then I’d absolutely be buying a Freesync monitor.

Ive said this in several threads, but I had a pair of Fury X on a eyefinity surround setup of Freesync monitors and right before a LAN upgraded to a pair of 1080TIs in SLI (this was before Nvidia opened up Freesync support) and while I got nearly double the FPS on the Nvidia cards it felt exceptionally jerky to me without Freesync — to the point it ruined the LAN’s fun for me and I felt I made a big mistake on the cards upgrade. The extra FPS were nothing compared to the buttery smoothness lost by turning off Freesync. I nearly immediately bought a Gsync monitor afterwards, and all was well again.

I personally have no strong preference between Freesync or Gsync - but please don’t take it away!
 
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Ended up getting a platform upgrade since there was a pretty decent deal to be had at my local computer store. I'll be able to recoup some of the cost just by selling the old parts. Picked up a 3600X, Asus x570 TUF, 16GB Corsair Dominator 3600 cas 18 and a H110i RGB. Trigger finger was a little happy today but I'm excited. Gonna see how that does with 980ti and go from there. I plan to overclock the 980ti as much as possible. Thanks for the help everyone!
 
Archaea, I hear you. Gsync/Freesync is probably the greatest upgrade I made since the SSD. I want so bad to support AMD and planned to do so by picking up a 5700 XT but since I'm stuck with gsync realizing I cant give of VRR. I went ahead and did the platform upgrade around AMD. Can't wait to see what it is capable of!
 
but I'm curious to try out AMD since it has been so long and they're really onto something.

They really don't- they almost caught up to Nvidia's last generation, so they're at their usual average of about two years behind.

Ended up getting a platform upgrade since there was a pretty decent deal to be had at my local computer store. I'll be able to recoup some of the cost just by selling the old parts. Picked up a 3600X, Asus x570 TUF, 16GB Corsair Dominator 3600 cas 18 and a H110i RGB. Trigger finger was a little happy today but I'm excited. Gonna see how that does with 980ti and go from there. I plan to overclock the 980ti as much as possible. Thanks for the help everyone!

...and that's what I would have suggested.

GPUs will set a maximum framerate range, but CPUs drive minimums, and minimums are what you feel.

To compare, I've been gaming on a borged-together system with an 8700k and GTX 970. And while there is significant sacrifice with respect to visuals in order to keep its 1440p 165Hz monitor fed, it's actually been a pretty decent experience.
 
If you can spare the extra $50-100, why not go with the 2070 Super and keep the GSync?
 
If you can spare the extra $50-100, why not go with the 2070 Super and keep the GSync?

Yeah, I would. I'm going to see how the platform upgrade helps. If its still not enough, I'll get the 2070 Super. What I would REALLY like to do though is wait for next gen so I can upgrade my main rig and put the 1080ti in it. I'll know by Monday :)
 
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So I put together the platform upgrade tonight. It didn't make a huge difference in FPS in AC:Odyssey but the game play is more enjoyable. It just feels smoother. That's the only game I've tested so far. The FPS was around 46 in Very High settings and is about 52 now. The 980ti still packs a punch I gotta say! And the system feels a lot faster overall. It even feels faster than my 4930k system which I wasn't expecting. Anyway, I'll let you all know how things go with the gaming and update soon.
 
Welp, a platform upgrade and an 2070 Super later I'm quite happy. This machine is nuts. I'm quite happy. What was originally supposed to be a ~$400 upgrade turned into a $ 1200 one. I guess thats how life goes. At least my transmission is ok. Knock on wood. Thanks for all the suggestions!
 
Regarding FreeSync, the experience depends entirely on the monitor. Not all implementations are equal, and some couldn't even be called half-assed. On my Samsung monitor FreeSync is a nightmare of flickering, stuttering, extreme brightness changes, and all other sorts of visual artifacts despite consistent framerates and having tried every setting combination imaginable.
 
Welp, a platform upgrade and an 2070 Super later I'm quite happy. This machine is nuts. I'm quite happy. What was originally supposed to be a ~$400 upgrade turned into a $ 1200 one. I guess thats how life goes. At least my transmission is ok. Knock on wood. Thanks for all the suggestions!

I think you made the right choice, considering your "predicament" i.e. stuck with a gsync monitor. The ideal is obvisiously to have a display that can do both Freesync and Gsync, but having VRR trumps any 5700 xt vs 2070 debate. My display, luckily, works great with both (Freesync on my VII; Gysc on my 2070 from my laptop).
 
With that memory limit on the 980ti I think that would be a bad choice. Either go up to a mid range card and use Nvidia or switch to AMD only if you can get a good deal on the 5700.
 
Yeah. I picked up the 2070 Super but I was thinking about it the other day... I got the MSI Gaming X Trio. I LOVE the MSI cards but basically paid nearly as much for this card as a did my 1080ti almost 2 years ago for "less" performance. RTX is cool but reminds me of how much of a juggernaut the 1080ti was/is for it's time.
 
Yeah. I picked up the 2070 Super but I was thinking about it the other day... I got the MSI Gaming X Trio. I LOVE the MSI cards but basically paid nearly as much for this card as a did my 1080ti almost 2 years ago for "less" performance. RTX is cool but reminds me of how much of a juggernaut the 1080ti was/is for it's time.
Prices are jacked right now but the MSRP on the MSI Gaming X 2070 Super is $515 and something like the Gaming X 1080 ti was $750 back when it came out. And not sure what you mean by less performance as the 2070 Super is a hair faster overall. https://www.techpowerup.com/review/msi-geforce-rtx-2070-super-gaming-x-trio/27.html
 
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