GPU 's specs effect on gaming and future-proofing

[BLizZaRth]

So, hey there guys!
That 'd be my first thread here and I apologize if that is a repost or anything...

To the point, I recently started modding Skyrim and I was surprised to see how low my graphics 's settings were compared to the viable options out there (through modding that is and an unofficial configuration manager)
So far I only had minor issues with my GPU (like 20ish fps drops on extreme settings on some high-end games, pretty good for its age)

Anyway being a hardcore gamer I was thinking about upgrading, and since GPU power is what my systems lacks the most, I figured out I 'd better start with that.

I already know a couple of things about how GPU specs affect gaming -like texture loading is connected to GPU 's bits or that resolution has to do with RAM- but nothing much really so any lights on the matter would be appreciated so that I could make my own choices in the future without need of asking.

I did some research but i just couldn't make up my mind on what to buy. Nvidia 's flagship is gtx Titan followed by gtx 690 with probably the best performances so far.On the other hand HD 7990 from AMD seems triggering as well but lacks the driver 's support and technologies nvidia puts in its GPUs.I do know that these cards are only for 3x monitor @ 1080 systems and nothing else could make use of their power now or in the short future but I need some guidance on what to get for my system. Should it be a gtx 690 and settle myself for the next 3-5 years or just get a gtx 680 and upgrade when it starts stretching way too much? Since I have no idea of what is yet to come both from Nvidia and AMD and game game publishers and I 'm looking to future-proof I 'd like your opinions on the matter. I 'm also open to advices like "You 'd better wait 'till summer and get that one when it 's released".

My system specs are:

CPU : AMD Phenom II x6 1090T
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H
RAM : 8 gb (2x4 gb) Crosshair Vengeance
GPU : NVIDIA Geforce GTX 470 MSI Twin FrozrII
Hard Disk: 232 gb 5200rpm (don't mind it)

 

[BLizZaRth]

Forgot to mention that I 'm using a single monitor @ 1920x1080 and I might be getting a 3D screen in 2-3 years time.

 

[pete123edgar]

Well what is your psu? And I think nvidia/amd next release would be end of this year that is 8+ months. Anyway if you want to use for a long time, a 7970 ghz would do fine. If you want the next flagship gpu form amd/nv then just buy a 7870 LE/GTX 660ti or 7950 like I did and sell it when the new release comes out.

 

[ws1173]

So, hey there guys!
That 'd be my first thread here and I apologize if that is a repost or anything...

To the point, I recently started modding Skyrim and I was surprised to see how low my graphics 's settings were compared to the viable options out there (through modding that is and an unofficial configuration manager)
So far I only had minor issues with my GPU (like 20ish fps drops on extreme settings on some high-end games, pretty good for its age)

Anyway being a hardcore gamer I was thinking about upgrading, and since GPU power is what my systems lacks the most, I figured out I 'd better start with that.

I already know a couple of things about how GPU specs affect gaming -like texture loading is connected to GPU 's bits or that resolution has to do with RAM- but nothing much really so any lights on the matter would be appreciated so that I could make my own choices in the future without need of asking.

I did some research but i just couldn't make up my mind on what to buy. Nvidia 's flagship is gtx Titan followed by gtx 690 with probably the best performances so far.On the other hand HD 7990 from AMD seems triggering as well but lacks the driver 's support and technologies nvidia puts in its GPUs.I do know that these cards are only for 3x monitor @ 1080 systems and nothing else could make use of their power now or in the short future but I need some guidance on what to get for my system. Should it be a gtx 690 and settle myself for the next 3-5 years or just get a gtx 680 and upgrade when it starts stretching way too much? Since I have no idea of what is yet to come both from Nvidia and AMD and game game publishers and I 'm looking to future-proof I 'd like your opinions on the matter. I 'm also open to advices like "You 'd better wait 'till summer and get that one when it 's released".

My system specs are:

CPU : AMD Phenom II x6 1090T
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H
RAM : 8 gb (2x4 gb) Crosshair Vengeance
GPU : NVIDIA Geforce GTX 470 MSI Twin FrozrII
Hard Disk: 232 gb 5200rpm (don't mind it)

So, I'm not sure exactly what price range you're thinking, but if you're hoping to "future-proof" your machine for gaming, a good way to do that would be to look at the suggested/tested requirements for Crysis 3. Crysis 3 is a very graphics-intensive game, and in fact many people are still struggling to keep up with the graphics demand of Crysis 2. Tom's Hardware recently posted an article about a comparison they did with 16 different graphics cards, which shows how they performed with Crysis 3 under various quality settings. To be honest though, if you want your computer to perform as well as possible, you might need to upgrade more than the graphics card. From what I can see, I don't think you motherboard supports SLI (I could be wrong about that), and Intel processors really are much stronger than AMD processors (although they are also more expensive). In general, I'm pretty sure that if you invest in a GTX Titan (or 2 or 3 of them if you really have the big bucks), then you should be good for quite a while. However, in my opinion it would be a shame to upgrade to a Titan and leave the rest of your system how it is... you would want to upgrade the rest eventually (sooner rather than later), and make sure you invest in a good motherboard with PCIe 3.0 and SLI support.

 

[BLizZaRth]

Currently I have a 750w thermaltake PSU ,nothing fancy. I don 't much care about it 's name or tittle -like flagship or champion- it 's just that I take it for a fact that Nvidia 's software is way better and I 'm looking for something to really settle me and stop licking the screen out desire every time I 'm looking at a top GPU 's review.

@ws1173 I could spend up to 1k for a GPU and then just gradually rebuild my system.Indeed my motherboard doesn't support neither SLI or crossfire but I figured that since I 'm using a single monitor one card should suffice, in case I go for a 2nd screen (3rd is out of the question for the next couple of years) I thought that a 4gb 680 would handle the task nicely though I do have some tiny doubts. Anyway I know that intel is far from better compared to AMD but at the time I got the motherboard and the CPU I was previously running duo-core, ancient stuff, Black-ops release date i think it was, so it was an emergency upgrade and didn't have the cash at the time. Now about the Titan.... I 'm not sure I should go that far off from my requirements.I mean one is fine but 2 of them? That 'd be12 gb of GPU ram and no game will ever need more than 4.Perhaps I should simply wait for the 690 first price-drop since it 's anniversary is close by and get an intel 6-core afterwards? I 'm still very confused by the choices alone.

 

[ws1173]

Indeed my motherboard doesn't support neither SLI or crossfire but I figured that since I 'm using a single monitor one card should suffice...

Now about the Titan.... I 'm not sure I should go that far off from my requirements.I mean one is fine but 2 of them? That 'd be12 gb of GPU ram and no game will ever need more than 4.Perhaps I should simply wait for the 690 first price-drop since it 's anniversary is close by and get an intel 6-core afterwards? I 'm still very confused by the choices alone.

The reason I mentioned SLI as an option is because sometimes having two lower quality graphics cards can actually be better AND cheaper than having a higher-quality card. For example, when I was building my current system a year and a half ago, the best graphics card on the market was the GTX 580, which was going for $500. Instead of getting that, I ended up going with a 2x GTX 560 Ti setup which cost me about $60 less, and provides comparable, if not better, performance. The reason I suggested the Titan (or multiple Titans) for you is because I didn't know what your price range is. However, honestly, it might be better to have 2 cards (in the 660Ti - 690 range) than to have one Titan... I'm not positive that it is, but I think that's what I would go with.

 

[nbelote]

AMD's driver support has improved significantly over the past year. Don't let past experiences put you off, they're far better than they used to be... even better than Nvidia in some cases, in respect to driver support.

 

[BLizZaRth]

The reason I mentioned SLI as an option is because sometimes having two lower quality graphics cards can actually be better AND cheaper than having a higher-quality card. For example, when I was building my current system a year and a half ago, the best graphics card on the market was the GTX 580, which was going for $500. Instead of getting that, I ended up going with a 2x GTX 560 Ti setup which cost me about $60 less, and provides comparable, if not better, performance. The reason I suggested the Titan (or multiple Titans) for you is because I didn't know what your price range is. However, honestly, it might be better to have 2 cards (in the 660Ti - 690 range) than to have one Titan... I'm not positive that it is, but I think that's what I would go with.

Although I see your point, I would argue that a single card leaves your system fully upgradeable and that is part of making it future-proof so if I'm ever going to do have SLI in my system it will be with one of the 3 best options available. Getting a motherboard with SLI feature won't be a problem and I 'm what you said in your previous response made me seriously think about moving to intel which would be another 500 hundred the least on a hexacore CPU plus a minimum of 200 for an appropriate motherboard -quad SLI included. I feel like the CPU is too much of an expense and since I have a great one -includes a feature which allows it to overclock up to 3 cores if needed, otherwise I could simply be using less or more cores which is a big boost for any game). Given what nbelote mentioned, I now recall reading some encouraging threads about AMD 's software and hardware which I had completely forgot about.I 'll consider the CPU matter but it 's nothing that worries me for the next year or so.
The question that still remains is whether will a gtx 680 4gb be able to handle a duo monitor set-up and some some 3d movies or do I move on and place the titanic in my case (either titan or 690) and of course I do take into account heating and dbs since it all is in my bedroom.

 

[ws1173]

Although I see your point, I would argue that a single card leaves your system fully upgradeable and that is part of making it future-proof so if I'm ever going to do have SLI in my system it will be with one of the 3 best options available.

When you say that a single card makes your computer more upgradable, do you mean because it has one more PCI slot open? Also, as far as the CPU goes, you don't need to be spending that much, even if you're going with Intel. I'd go with something like the i7-3770k. It's an excellent quad-core processor, much less expensive, and is very capable of OCing. And to your last point, a GTX 680 4GB will be very capable of running a dual monitor setup (although I suppose it depends on what you're using it for. Dual monitors with a graphics-intensive game would be obviously more trying on the GPU, but that one should still have no problem with it). I don't know a ton about 3D stuff, but even my old 660Ti's say they're 3D vision capable, so you should be fine there, too.

 

[BLizZaRth]

That was exactly what I mean with upgradeable. But on the CPU matter my mind is really "fragmented" so to speak.I might be studying technology stuff and perhaps move to robotics (hardware design and creation or so) later -in half a decade I 'd say- so I don't know what that will take....but even with that out of the equation it still kind of feels like a waste of money since it's only been 2 years from my last cpu upgrade.I guess I 'll just need to take a look at the Crysis 3 requirements you mentioned and probably extend my research on the processors.
Still trying to figure out if GPU 's ram has anything to do with performance on high qualities.

 

[Emelth]

Skyrim is not a graphic intensive game in general in with the mods 560ti, 7950, 670, 7970 would be the way to go for you

 

[BLizZaRth]

Skyrim is not a graphic intensive game in general in with the mods 560ti, 7950, 670, 7970 would be the way to go for you

On ultra setting (8x AA, x16 anisotropic filt., textures up to 8192x8192, water multi-sampling DOF , shaders, LOD, blur, all water reflections on) and about 2 hundred mods running it could become the ultimate game-stretcher.