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Need help with a GPU

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  • GPUs
  • Games
  • Graphics
Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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December 4, 2013 7:40:13 PM

So just curious I'm going to play games like BF4, Ghosts, GTAV So what GPU/GPUs would be good for those?

More about : gpu

December 4, 2013 7:49:07 PM

The list by @Ironsounds encompasses a lot of GPUs, and anything past the top 50 will not net you good performance. If you're looking to buy a GPU, you should list what your budget is.
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December 5, 2013 1:12:18 PM

What about 2 Sapphire R9 280x Toxics?
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December 5, 2013 4:18:07 PM

ChanceTheNinja said:
What about 2 Sapphire R9 280x Toxics?


I never recommend going for SLI or CrossFire as a part of a brand new GPU configuration. If you already had a single R9 280X, it'd be a much more considerable option. However, if you're looking for a new GPU configuration from the start, a rule of thumb is that a single GPU setup is almost always more preferable to a multi-GPU setup. This is because SLI and CrossFire, CrossFire especially, are never going to be as stable as a single GPU. Some games (though this is becoming increasingly rarer) do not experience a big boost from CrossFire, but typically with things like frame latency and overall frame time variance, a single GPU setup is more efficient.

Besides that, a single GTX 780 Ti is mindblowingly powerful. It's currently the only single GPU setup capable of achieving a greater than 60 fps average at 1920x1080 at maximum settings for Crysis 3.



I know they list the R9 290X there as well which is also superb, but that's only when it can maintain its base clock frequency and right now the only R9 290Xs out there have reference coolers and hence become extremely hot, which causes them to underclock. Taking a look on that benchmark, towards the bottom you'll see "R9 290X (retail)", which is their retail bought GPU which suffers from poor cooling and hence, underclocks a lot. AMD apparently did some updates to the GPU's fan speed so it doesn't underclock as much, but I wouldn't trust that just yet. I'd only trust the R9 290X once it has custom coolers from manufacturers, and currently they don't. Plus, Nvidia has more reliable drivers.

Speaking of which, I know I listed another GTX 780 Ti in a post above but on second thought, you might be interested in getting one with a custom cooler. Currently, Newegg is sold out but you should wait for them to be restocked or perhaps search around for another GTX 780 Ti with a custom cooler on a different site. The custom cooled GTX 780 Ti's, at least from EVGA, are factory overclocked by 300 MHz compared to other manufacturers which can make a pretty big leap in performance, usually around 5 - 10 fps greater, but compared to the 780 Ti that they've manufactured themselves it's a much more modest increase of only around 26 MHz, though the extra cooling may be nice for keeping temps down. Here's the link to Newegg's EVGA custom cooled GTX 780 Ti:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

You can auto-notify newegg to inform you of when they restock, or you can just purchase the in-stock reference cooler that I listed above:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?gclid=COimwI...
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December 5, 2013 4:26:48 PM

ChanceTheNinja said:
What about 2 Sapphire R9 280x Toxics?


go with the 780ti. It is a beast of a card and one card solutions are more simple and energy efficient than 2 card solutions. The 780ti is the fully enabled version of nvidias chip, it's literally the best nvidia can do right now. If you do 2 280's, then you have to buy the next high end $700 card to improve. If you go a 780ti, you can then sli that instead of a completely new card to keep up with games.
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December 5, 2013 7:27:36 PM

In your benchmarks it seems the Radeon 7990 is much faster, would that be the better choice?
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December 5, 2013 7:31:55 PM

7990 is hard to find and close to the $1000 mark
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December 5, 2013 7:36:34 PM

:/  Alright what fps could I get on something like Ghosts with high (not ultra) settings? Also what brand is the best?
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December 5, 2013 8:14:41 PM

ChanceTheNinja said:
:/ Alright what fps could I get on something like Ghosts with high (not ultra) settings? Also what brand is the best?


Ghosts? If that's the most demanding game you expect to play then you could certainly chop a good $400 off your budget and still get far past 60 fps. Call of Duty has never been a demanding series, and just because it's moved to next-gen doesn't mean that's changed. Sure, the settings are more demanding, but CoD is designed to run on $150 hardware on, I suppose medium settings, at 1920x1080 (for multiplayer anyway) and still achieve 60 fps. Needless to say, a GTX 780 Ti would decimate Ghosts. In fact, the game is so non-GPU intensive that any benchmarks I can find for it won't even list the GTX 780, let alone the GTX 780 Ti, simply because it's obvious that the game would be blown away. The closest thing I could find was a GTX 770 (~$330) which still nets an average and minimum fps above 60 fps (depending on which benchmarks you're looking at; depending on the drivers and patches used and other hardware aside from the GPU, the results can vary quite a bit, but still the GTX 770 is almost always in/above the 60 fps range) and that's at ultra settings at 1920x1080.

If you're curious about the far more demanding Battlefield 4, you'll easily get far above 60 fps with a GTX 780 Ti, but not so easily with a GTX 770 I believe.

UPDATE: As for which brand is best, there's usually not a huge difference. I think the three best for Nvidia in no particular order are Gigabyte, ASUS, and EVGA, and perhaps MSI somewhere behind. For AMD, it's about the same but throw Sapphire towards the top.

UPDATE 2: Be warned, also, that Ghosts is a good example of how much triple A publishers like Activision don't care for PC gamers at all (or for any players it seems). The game is terribly ported, requiring 6 GB of RAM just to run even though it doesn't even take up 4 GBs of actual RAM when running! (This issue may have been patched, iirc), and from what I hear the benchmarks are very unstable. One playthrough of a level has reports of getting 60 fps, and yet another playthrough of the same level with the same hardware and software can get an average of 45 fps. Personally, this doesn't concern me because I think CoD is the spawn of Satan and must die since they're thousands of far better games out there, but whatever. That's just for you to be aware, but don't be concerned too much since both official and unofficial updates to the game should improve its technical issues greatly.
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December 5, 2013 8:37:59 PM

ChanceTheNinja said:
:/ Alright what fps could I get on something like Ghosts with high (not ultra) settings? Also what brand is the best?


i play bf4 on a 1920x1080 screen on ultra with a $300 280x. Ghosts is a lot less than that.
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