Video Card Advice Please

RoryBecker · Jan 17, 2015

So I'm running:

"Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9400 @ 2.66Ghz"
6Gb RAM
Running under X64 win7
My graphics card is quite old now I guess...It's a Geforce 9500 GT... not sure what brand.

I have set every setting I could find to low or medium...

I am typically playing @1280x800

My experience has been ok. Occasionally a bit stuttery... especially around the planets with rings, or just after appearing in front of a star after hyperspace, but by no means a disaster.
Strangely the biggest annoyance is the speed the menus operate at.

I just found out how to display the FPS on screen and took some measurements....

58 FPS - Displaying the video of my spinning ship as the game loads.
8.7 FPS - Down in the docking bay immediatly after loading
8.7 FPS - Showing the main Station menus - Without having left the initial location.
10-15 FPS - during take off sequence inside Azeban City.
20ish FPS - Flying around outside Azeban City

I decided that perhaps a new graphics card might help improve things though..

So I did a little research and was directed at this site -> http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php

I don't know much about modern video cards, but I looked mine up on the site and it's "Passmark G3D Mark" (some sort of benchmark score) was 291

In the past I have bough video cards which were at the time costing around £100, so I went to check out what was available on Amazon.co.uk.
I found that the most popular chipset in this price range was the "NVidia Geforce gtx 750 ti"

I looked that card up on the samer site and the score given was 3688. I read that to mean that this card is more than 10X better than my current one.

Is this a reasonable assumption?

Does anyone else have the card I'm considering?
Does it work well for you?
What resolutions do you play at?
How many of the graphical bells and whistles can you turn on?
What sort of FPS do you get.

What else should I be considering?

Please be gentle.

I used to know about such things, but that was when 3dfx cards were all the rage

#ALongTimeAgo

Thanks very much for any help and information

Cody · Jan 17, 2015

For it's price, the GTX 750Ti is excellent value, and should run the game well.
Beyond that, it becomes a matter of how much you're willing to spend?

Ximrats · Jan 17, 2015

The GTX750ti is a card 5 generations newer than the card you have now. In terms of raw processing power, it eats it for breakfast....covered in vodka...and pain. Russian breakfast, perhaps? Not only is it more powerful, it supports much more modern 'technologies' (without technobabble).

They're both 'midrange' cards but they're seperated by such a large time gap (in terms of PC hardware) that comparing the two is like comparing the processing power of a Nokia 3310 with a more modern 'smartphone'.

Your processor is capable of achieving higher clockspeeds with better cooling, too. Though I've not found this game too demanding overall and I'm not sure how much it'd help.

You may be able to find a 760 (perhaps a 4GB 760) second hand for around that much, giving you even more of a gap over the 750ti (mainly thinking of a bit of future proofing here).

If it makes you feel any better, I was a hardware reviewer/PC tech journalist so I can possibly be trusted

(I hope no-one noticed the typos before I could edit them out, drunken posting ftw! )
EDIT: I need to mention. If you're just going to swap cards like that, please pay attention to the power requirements of each and decide whether sticking in the 750ti straight away will work.

Lordmonkus · Jan 17, 2015

If your cpu isn't bottle necking your system too badly the 750 ti should let you run the game at 1080 resolution with full graphics. I don't think your cpu would be too bad of a bottle neck with Elite however. If you do buy the 750ti and you are still having frame rate issues then you would need to look at a fresh install of windows just to make sure there isn't an issue with windows itself and look into a possible cpu bottle neck after that.

The big problem with your 9800gt is the fact it has ddr3 vram, all the newer cards use ddr5 which is far better. You probably wouldn't need to spend as much money on a new card like a 750ti. I was using a Radeon 7850 with 1 gig of ddr5 vram and it was running the game very good at 1080 and only getting some stuttering in the asteroid heavy extraction points.

I don't know what your exact budget is on upgrading is. Are you looking at just getting something that's enough to make Elite run smooth or are you maybe looking at doing something to possibly further upgrade in the future ?

Ikari · Jan 17, 2015

I'm currently running a 750ti and it's fine get a smooth 60FPS @1080. It's a really good little card for the price and will run most things maxed out, just don't expect to be using it in two years time as it will date quickly.

I run Elite with everything on full except the blur option but that's just personal choice.
Edit: I'am running it with an FX8350 8core processor @4.0gHZ

DB Cooper · Jan 17, 2015

I just installed a Evga gtx 750ti and have no problems with video, prior to that I had a gts 450 with no video quality issues . I got the new card mostly for the shadowplay feature. I can now record in game footage with sound with a simple keystroke. This helps me evaluate my performance in game action, so I might possibly improve my skills. Also, a couple of weeks ago I had a kaboom (instant death) while in a dogfight. Shadowplay might have helped me figure out what happened. It comes free with the nvidia drivers

Old Joe · Jan 17, 2015

There is a, in my opinion, very good article on Tom's Hardware every month - 'best gaming cards for the money'. Might be worth a look for you.

stereoBear · Jan 17, 2015

I'm of course estimating here, but especially since you're playing at 1280x800 (which is only half the amount of pixels to render than 1080p

) you should be A-OK with that card.

You might want to consider looking at AMD's R9 270, which is around £115 and has an even newer generation of chip than the 750 (it is AMD's current generation whilst the 750 is NVIDIA's previous gen). I personally just got rid of my AMD card because... reasons and NVIDIA's shadowplay is a neat feature.

Just make sure you get the 2GB VRAM version in any case and keep an eye on the aforementioned power consumption, maybe upgrade your PSU too.

Monarch Black · Jan 17, 2015

The 750 ti should handle Elite fine, it isn't a super-demanding game, but for future proofing I would look around a find a good deal on a 760. It is a much more powerful card for only a little bit more money. I use one myself and it works really good on most modern games. With twice the memory bandwidth, shaders, texture mappers and output processors, the 760 will last you longer into the future before you need to replace it. Here is a little benchmark comparison between the two.

http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-760-vs-GeForce-GTX-750-Ti

Windscreen Smudge · Jan 17, 2015

stereoBear said:
I'm of course estimating here, but especially since you're playing at 1280x800 (which is only half the amount of pixels to render than 1080p ) you should be A-OK with that card.

You might want to consider looking at AMD's R9 270, which is around £115 and has an even newer generation of chip than the 750 (it is AMD's current generation whilst the 750 is NVIDIA's previous gen). I personally just got rid of my AMD card because... reasons and NVIDIA's shadowplay is a neat feature.

Just make sure you get the 2GB VRAM version in any case and keep an eye on the aforementioned power consumption, maybe upgrade your PSU too.

Second vote for the 270, for the above reasons and also because it seems when you're comparing equivalent cards AMD's seem to do better with ED.
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Check your loads first though. Your processor is pretty old too, and ED is very processor heavy. Make sure that it isn't bottlenecking your current GPU before you buy a faster one that'll be held back to the same extent. You may be better off scraping together a few more quid and just starting fresh.

Cornelius lucius · Jan 17, 2015

I'm running ED at ultra on a 4k screen on a geforce 660, so I think you would be fine with a 750.
Note. I'm only running at 30 fps as using the display port to run at 60fps causes the card to start overheating and glitching(only got standard cooling)

Windscreen Smudge · Jan 17, 2015

Cornelius lucius said:
I'm running ED at ultra on a 4k screen on a geforce 660, so I think you would be fine with a 750.
Note. I'm only running at 30 fps as using the display port to run at 60fps causes the card to start overheating and glitching(only got standard cooling)

Dock at Azeban and take a screenshot with full spec details, if you don't mind.

Galafrey · Jan 17, 2015

I picked up a Radeon R7 250 with 1gb gddr5 for 60 quid, and this runs everything on high nicely

adoredtv · Jan 17, 2015

If your PSU can handle it get the R9 270.

You need at least 1x 6-Pin or 8-pin PCIe connector like these...

If your PSU doesn't have either of these, get a 750 Ti (make sure it doesn't have a 6-pin requirement either, as some 750 Ti's actually do).

ImmerseMe · Jan 18, 2015

Not only did I plan on upgrading due to low memory but my card just blew up, so I've been researching this.

one major factor to look for in a new card is more than two gigs of VRAM. Apparently ED uses upwards of 2.2 gigs on max, and I experienced it using more than one on minimum.

ill be buying a 3 gig card a generation or three old. Remember to check and upgrade your power supply!

ImmerseMe · Jan 18, 2015

Another quick FYI.

posters in this thread are saying ED is CPU heavy. My CPU is a 6 core at 3.3 ghz. I measured it a bit ago, I only ever saw about 70% load. So your 2.6 ghz may be plenty if you bump up the video card a notch.

adoredtv · Jan 18, 2015

ImmerseMe said:
Not only did I plan on upgrading due to low memory but my card just blew up, so I've been researching this.

one major factor to look for in a new card is more than two gigs of VRAM. Apparently ED uses upwards of 2.2 gigs on max, and I experienced it using more than one on minimum.

ill be buying a 3 gig card a generation or three old. Remember to check and upgrade your power supply!

I play on max settings 1080p with a 1GB card so there's no way the game needs 3GB to run perfectly.

Not sure what's going on with it, maybe some kind of caching or something - but the game definitely does not need a 3GB graphics card.

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ImmerseMe said:
Another quick FYI.

posters in this thread are saying ED is CPU heavy. My CPU is a 6 core at 3.3 ghz. I measured it a bit ago, I only ever saw about 70% load. So your 2.6 ghz may be plenty if you bump up the video card a notch.

70% utilisation on a 6-core CPU is really great for gaming only. Were you doing something else as well though, ie recording at the same time?

I agree however that the game isn't CPU heavy at all.

xxThe_Dice_manxx · Jan 18, 2015

For proper advice I would suggest you post the complete spec of your pc.

Googol · Jan 18, 2015

Try this useful link for video card performance stats. Hope it helps.

adoredtv · Jan 18, 2015

Googol said:
Try this useful link for video card performance stats. Hope it helps.

No that's awful.