my GPU is evga 680 superclocked 2gb version. my cpu is intel i7 4930k overclocked at 3.6ghz. Generally does this seem balanced? I bought the card 2 years ago and just built my new pc. Is there any bottleneck or I should be fine? I use my pc for pretty much everything, workstation and gaming
Is my GPU balanced with CPU?
- Thread starter wolffex
- Start date
Solution
iam2thecrowe
Glorious
- Jul 4, 2010
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it will be fine for a single 1080p monitor, although you can put a much more powerful gpu (or dual gpu's) with it and still not be cpu bottlenecked. Assuming your playing at 1080p, you could go to a gtx980 if you felt the need. If you have a monitor capable of displaying 120/144hz than you could go dual 970's/980's if you felt the need for the extra framerate. If you want to start triple monitor, or higher than 1080p res gaming then dual 970's or 980's is a good idea. But basically, if your happy with the performance, then you dont need to upgrade the gpu.
I am only using one monitor and don't plan on upgrading my monitor for a very very long time. My monitor is 22 inches with max resolution 1920x1080 and I am happy with it, lg22m35. Would upgrading to a 980 be worth it to run newer games such as GTA 5, or will my current GPU run gta 5 very smoothly at 1080 resolution? Thank you
iam2thecrowe
Glorious
- Jul 4, 2010
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dont know about gtaiv as its not released yet. If you want to max it out you will probably want to look at a 4gb card like a r9 290x 4gb , gtx970 (3.5gb +0.5gb card) or gtx980 4gb , but it should certainly be playable at medium settings at least on the card you have now i would say. If its as poorly optimized as previous gta games then even a beast of a system wont run it great, hopefully they do a decent job porting to pc this time.
photonboy
Titan
- Jun 20, 2006
- 21,567
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- 85,015
Hey,
Your GPU is the primary bottleneck in your system.
That doesn't necessarily mean you need to upgrade. I would suggest WAITING until you have GTA5 and see how the game performs after careful tweaking of settings. If you can run at 1080p at near max settings whilst maintaining 60FPS there's little need to upgrade.
(I have a GTX680 myself and I'm holding off upgrading until I buy a game that will significantly benefit. I won't do it for a small visual increase)
I can't comment further until the game has been benchmarked, however if interested in WITCHER 3 then be aware that will be very demanding so you'd benefit significantly from a GTX980. It's important to note that a game on "ULTRA" settings might run at 40FPS but dropping a few settings might look nearly IDENTICAL and get you to 60FPS.
GTX680 vs GTX980:
This is an AVERAGE of about 20 games so it's quite accurate. Comparing a stock GTX680 to a stock GTX980 we get 95/58 which is almost 64% average improvement.
GPU comparison: https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_980_Gaming/25.html
*If the game supports MFAA then the difference might be closer to a 80% improvement; also I didn't include the higher overclock (980 can overclock proportionately higher). Put another way a game might run at 35FPS with your current setup but get about 63FPS with a GTX980.
It's also important to note that 2GB of VRAM may not be enough (for highest quality) for several upcoming games.
SUMMARY:
- a GTX680 is still a great card
- GTA5 probably runs great with a GTX680 but not likely at max quality, 1080p, 60FPS
- Witcher 3 and other future games will benefit significantly from a GTX980
- A 1.7X increase in frame rate is possible
Other:
Look into using "Adaptive VSYNC" if you haven't already. I force it on for a few games. For example, in AC Brotherhood I had to enable VSYNC because screen tear was too bad with it off. However, when I couldn't output 60FPS the game would stutter a lot (sync mismatch).
I disabled VSYNC with FRAPS running then tweaked until I got 60FPS at least 90% of the time. I then forced on Adaptive VSYNC which would run at 60FPS VSYNC'd; any time I couldn't output 60FPS I just got screen tear instead of stutter. When screen tear got a bit too often (more demanding areas) i then dropped from 8xMSAA to 4xMSAA to increase average frame rate and thus found my OPTIMAL setup.
Your GPU is the primary bottleneck in your system.
That doesn't necessarily mean you need to upgrade. I would suggest WAITING until you have GTA5 and see how the game performs after careful tweaking of settings. If you can run at 1080p at near max settings whilst maintaining 60FPS there's little need to upgrade.
(I have a GTX680 myself and I'm holding off upgrading until I buy a game that will significantly benefit. I won't do it for a small visual increase)
I can't comment further until the game has been benchmarked, however if interested in WITCHER 3 then be aware that will be very demanding so you'd benefit significantly from a GTX980. It's important to note that a game on "ULTRA" settings might run at 40FPS but dropping a few settings might look nearly IDENTICAL and get you to 60FPS.
GTX680 vs GTX980:
This is an AVERAGE of about 20 games so it's quite accurate. Comparing a stock GTX680 to a stock GTX980 we get 95/58 which is almost 64% average improvement.
GPU comparison: https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_980_Gaming/25.html
*If the game supports MFAA then the difference might be closer to a 80% improvement; also I didn't include the higher overclock (980 can overclock proportionately higher). Put another way a game might run at 35FPS with your current setup but get about 63FPS with a GTX980.
It's also important to note that 2GB of VRAM may not be enough (for highest quality) for several upcoming games.
SUMMARY:
- a GTX680 is still a great card
- GTA5 probably runs great with a GTX680 but not likely at max quality, 1080p, 60FPS
- Witcher 3 and other future games will benefit significantly from a GTX980
- A 1.7X increase in frame rate is possible
Other:
Look into using "Adaptive VSYNC" if you haven't already. I force it on for a few games. For example, in AC Brotherhood I had to enable VSYNC because screen tear was too bad with it off. However, when I couldn't output 60FPS the game would stutter a lot (sync mismatch).
I disabled VSYNC with FRAPS running then tweaked until I got 60FPS at least 90% of the time. I then forced on Adaptive VSYNC which would run at 60FPS VSYNC'd; any time I couldn't output 60FPS I just got screen tear instead of stutter. When screen tear got a bit too often (more demanding areas) i then dropped from 8xMSAA to 4xMSAA to increase average frame rate and thus found my OPTIMAL setup.
photonboy
Titan
- Jun 20, 2006
- 21,567
- 13
- 85,015
Recommended cards:
The GTX970 memory issue is rather complex, however I'm still recommending this card. I'll discuss at the end. Otherwise, the GTX980 gets about 15% higher frame rates but the difference in price between my recommend 980 and 970 is 66%.
(With such a price difference SLI becomes an interesting option. i.e. 2xGTX970 but many pros/cons to that.)
GTX970: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-04gp42974kr
GTX980: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-04gp42983kr
Memory issue of GTX970:
For reasons not worth discussing, the last 512MB of the GTX970's 4GB (4096MB) runs much slower. If a game uses under 3.5GB this is not an issue. If it populates any of the slower memory it MAY be an issue.
The tricky part is how the game and/or Windows handles this when a particular game is running. It's POSSIBLE to populate with infrequently accessed data and move the data there into the faster memory if needed. This already happens in our systems but using the main memory (DDR3) to buffer data then move to the Video memory for faster access.
Extensive testing has suggested a minimal frame rate drop on average which is fine (relative to what it would have been if that memory was full access speed).
*HOWEVER, other testing has shown there are situations where a game can STUTTER but it's very, very difficult to determine how common this will be as well as whether this is an easily fixable situation (Windows or NVidia driver update? Future games are much better at moving memory pools?). It's also important to note that it's currently difficult to find games that use more than 3.5GB so hard to predict how common this will be once games use more than 3.5GB on a regular basis.
**My analysis is that overall it's a MINOR ISSUE so I'm still recommending the GTX970. In particular the above EVGA model for about $335.
The GTX970 memory issue is rather complex, however I'm still recommending this card. I'll discuss at the end. Otherwise, the GTX980 gets about 15% higher frame rates but the difference in price between my recommend 980 and 970 is 66%.
(With such a price difference SLI becomes an interesting option. i.e. 2xGTX970 but many pros/cons to that.)
GTX970: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-04gp42974kr
GTX980: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-04gp42983kr
Memory issue of GTX970:
For reasons not worth discussing, the last 512MB of the GTX970's 4GB (4096MB) runs much slower. If a game uses under 3.5GB this is not an issue. If it populates any of the slower memory it MAY be an issue.
The tricky part is how the game and/or Windows handles this when a particular game is running. It's POSSIBLE to populate with infrequently accessed data and move the data there into the faster memory if needed. This already happens in our systems but using the main memory (DDR3) to buffer data then move to the Video memory for faster access.
Extensive testing has suggested a minimal frame rate drop on average which is fine (relative to what it would have been if that memory was full access speed).
*HOWEVER, other testing has shown there are situations where a game can STUTTER but it's very, very difficult to determine how common this will be as well as whether this is an easily fixable situation (Windows or NVidia driver update? Future games are much better at moving memory pools?). It's also important to note that it's currently difficult to find games that use more than 3.5GB so hard to predict how common this will be once games use more than 3.5GB on a regular basis.
**My analysis is that overall it's a MINOR ISSUE so I'm still recommending the GTX970. In particular the above EVGA model for about $335.
iam2thecrowe
Glorious
- Jul 4, 2010
- 10,591
- 21
- 44,965
my 2c on the memory issue, you can just look at the gtx660, it had a very similar issue, 2gb 192bit claimed, yet 1.5gb had access to 192bit bus and the remaining 512mb was on 64 bit. This is potentially a bigger issue because as a ratio, thats 1/4 of the ram. I had the 660 (a pair of them even) and although it was brilliant upon release it had slowdowns in newer games that used more than 1.5gb vram, but the cards actual usage was locket at 1.5gb, it never used the slower memory. For me it caused crashes to desktop too until i reduced the settings to use less vram. I then switched to a 7970 3gb and never looked back. This is less likely to affect the 970 as it does have 3.5gb at the very least which is still quite a lot..
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