Just tell me what graphics card to get

[hbriggs]

Hi guys,
Ive had my pc for a few months just waiting to get graphics card when they come down in price and after buying about 20 games and not being able to run them im just gonna order one.

My rig is basically a 3570k asus, corsair etc components all premium. corsair 650ax psu

monitors 2048x1152

budget can range from 200-350 ish dont really want to spend too much.

i want it to be future proofed for a couple year at least.

ive been looking at the 660/670/7950/7970 but theres so much variation in reviews and benchmarks its hard to choose.

please help.

Henry

 

[paddys09]

I would go for the 670, but this thread isnt really goin to help you because others are going to say the 7970

 

[hbriggs]

yeah its really hard to decide, is nvidias physX quite important in deciding or not?

 

[Hiii]

I would go for the 670, but this thread isnt really goin to help you because others are going to say the 7970

The 670 is not in his budget i think.
The best cards under $350 are the 660 Ti and the 7950 i think, the 7950 is supposed to compete against the 670 not the 660 Ti also the 7950 is superior in benchmarks i think, also it has 1GB of ram more.

 

[Pinhedd]

Hi guys,
Ive had my pc for a few months just waiting to get graphics card when they come down in price and after buying about 20 games and not being able to run them im just gonna order one.

My rig is basically a 3570k asus, corsair etc components all premium. corsair 650ax psu

monitors 2048x1152

budget can range from 200-350 ish dont really want to spend too much.

i want it to be future proofed for a couple year at least.

ive been looking at the 660/670/7950/7970 but theres so much variation in reviews and benchmarks its hard to choose.

please help.

Henry

The 660 and 7950 are both kinda 'meh'. The lowest 7970 is around $410, the good ones with aftermarket coolers are still around $450 give or take.

The 670 can be had for a bit cheaper at around $399 but the 7970 will outperform the 670 by a bit.

 

[Mousemonkey]

yeah its really hard to decide, is nvidias physX quite important in deciding or not?

Do any of your games use PhysX?

 

[blazorthon]

With current drivers, the 7970 generally out-performs the 670 a little and it wins by larger margins when high AA, tessellation and DirectC lighting features are used (Kepler GPUs can't get playable performance with those features, but most games don't support them yet, so it's kinda like AMD's argument against single card PhysX right now).

However, the 7950, with overclocking, is no worse than a 7970 because the 7950 and the 7970 can go equally far when they have the same cooler.

You won't get a 670 nor a 7970 at $350 or lower unless you get lucky with sales or go to a store that sells even Nvidia cards under MSRP (that's usually AMD's thing to do). If you were to get one of them at a price like that, then it would probably be the 7970.

Regardless, again, if you overclock, then the 7950 is the best answer right now. Only the 7970 GHz Edition can consistently get higher average performance in most games with overclocking.

Do PhysX or other features matter to you?

To know this, you'd want to know what games you want to play. Most modern games don't support PhysX and several of those that do don't make much use of it.

 

[Pinhedd]

yeah its really hard to decide, is nvidias physX quite important in deciding or not?

PhysX is very nice to have, it's extremely pretty but it is not a "free" technology. It has a computational cost and does detract from the frame rate by a very large amount. It is recommended to run PhysX with either two identical cards in SLI or with a lower model card acting as a dedicated PhysX card as this will negate the gameplay impact. Many people recommend the GTX 460 and 560 as a dedicated PhysX cards

 

[hbriggs]

Do any of your games use PhysX?

I dont know ha, bf3, crysis 2 (just posting ones i think may have it)

 

[blazorthon]

I don't think that BF3 makes good use of PhysX, but Crysis 2 might. I'll check.

 

[hbriggs]

sorry i meant £200-350 im live in the uk

 

[Pinhedd]

I dont know ha, bf3, crysis 2 (just posting ones i think may have it)

Crysis 2 can use hardware PhysX, BF3 doesn't as it uses its own implementation

 

[blazorthon]

I thought so. Does Crysis 2 make good use out of it? Supporting it and using it extensively and well aren't the same.

 

[Pinhedd]

sorry i meant £200-350 im live in the uk

Well you're set then

http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/gpu-amd/radeon-hd7970-pci-e

http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/gpu-nvidia/geforce-gtx-670-pci-e

All of those should be within your budget

 

[ram1009]

Personally & FWIW, I don't use any AMD cards. I've tried many over the years and have concluded that their drivers are always buggy. I hope you have better luck if you get one. Ths GTX 660ti is probably the best in your price range. I'm about to get one myself.

 

[hbriggs]

I thought so. Does Crysis 2 make good use out of it? Supporting it and using it extensively and well aren't the same.

Are there any games where phyx makes a real difference?

 

[blazorthon]

Personally & FWIW, I don't use any AMD cards. I've tried many over the years and have concluded that their drivers are always buggy. I hope you have better luck if you get one. Ths GTX 660ti is probably the best in your price range. I'm about to get one myself.

AMD has improved their drivers. Their Catalyst 12.6 and up are the best that they've ever done and are excellent. The 660 TI is also a very unbalanced card that I don't recommend. It isn't worth going $100 cheaper than a 670. If you want a cheaper Nvidia card than the 670, then I suggest waiting for the next cards down from the 660 TI. They should offer extremely similar performance at considerably lower prices like the 670 versus the 680.

 

[blazorthon]

Are there any games where phyx makes a real difference?

I think that the Batman series would count as making a significant difference with PhysX.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Are there any games where phyx makes a real difference?

As has already been said, it's just eye candy. If you are say, shooting at someone who is crouching behind a breeze block wall and you are using a small calibre weapon then chunks will fly off the wall but you won't penetrate and if you then switch to a larger calibre weapon which in RL would penetrate, in the game not only will it still not penetrate but the chunks flying off will be exactly the same size as they were when you were using your pop gun.

 

[Pinhedd]

I thought so. Does Crysis 2 make good use out of it? Supporting it and using it extensively and well aren't the same.

I haven't tried it myself but I believe that it does. Crysis 2 was heavily marketed as a TWIMTBP title and NVidia usually turns the chaos up to 11 in such flagship titles. There are tons of particle effects in that game even with software physics.

Are there any games where phyx makes a real difference?

PhysX is purely an aesthetic layer. It largely handles soft-body physics such as cloth and fluid surfaces, as well as particle effects and geometric subdivision. PhysX never feeds back into the game logic and thus doesn't impact gameplay at all, it just makes stuff like hair and clothing look more natural and less like it was precooked into the model.

There are a lot of games which do PhysX really well. Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham City do, Metro 2033 (also has DirectCompute so PhysX is not strictly necessary), Borderlands, etc...

Hard body physics such as thrown objects and collisions are almost always handled by the CPU using a separate physics enginer (such as Havok) because this makes it easier to integrate into the game logic.

It is also possible to execute hardware-accelerated level PhysX on just a CPU but it will slow down even a 3960x

 

[paddys09]

Its only a handful of games.... I think Borderlands 2 is going to make good use of it.

 

[hbriggs]

As has already been said, it's just eye candy. If you are say, shooting at someone who is crouching behind a breeze block wall and you are using a small calibre weapon then chunks will fly off the wall but you won't penetrate and if you then switch to a larger calibre weapon which in RL would penetrate, in the game not only will it still not penetrate but the chunks flying off will be exactly the same size as they were when you were using your pop gun.

Okay thanks for the help ill not include phyx from my purchase

 

[hbriggs]

Couple more things
1) Will the price for the graphics card come down any more?
2) should i get one with a higher clock speed(say 1000Mhz instead of 950Mhz)
or shud i just up the speed myself?

 

[Pinhedd]

Couple more things
1) Will the price for the graphics card come down any more?
2) should i get one with a higher clock speed(say 1000Mhz instead of 950Mhz)
or shud i just up the speed myself?

1. Probably. I expect them to drop before or around the holiday season

2. Yes. Manufacturers reserve higher quality chips for the factory overclocked cards. This means that not only are you getting a faster card with a better cooler to begin with, you will most likely be able to take it further should you choose to do so. The extra $10-$20 for a better cooler and higher quality chip is usually worth it even if you leave it at factory settings.

 

[ram1009]

AMD has improved their drivers. Their Catalyst 12.6 and up are the best that they've ever done and are excellent. The 660 TI is also a very unbalanced card that I don't recommend. It isn't worth going $100 cheaper than a 670. If you want a cheaper Nvidia card than the 670, then I suggest waiting for the next cards down from the 660 TI. They should offer extremely similar performance at considerably lower prices like the 670 versus the 680.

I've heard similar claims before and even fallen for them at times. One release doesn't make a trend even if you're right. BTW, what is your source for the 660 opinion? Everything I've read is positive.