Hardware & Technical GTX 750 Ti vs R7 260X/265 or even R9 270?

ConcreteFloater

C
Hello Commanders!

I am looking to upgrade an old PC (with a Corsair 450W PSU) to get the most out of ED. I should end up with the following:

Intel Core2 Quad Q9550 @ 2.83 GHz
4GB PC2-8500 (maybe 8GB if budget allows - will it make a big difference?)

I am considering the following graphics cards:

GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB
AMD R7 260X or 265
AMD R9 270

I know that on paper the AMD cards look better but I understand that ED is optimised for Nvidia. I am therefore curious which of these will give me the better performance. Will it be the GTX 750 Ti because it is better optimised or will it be the R9 270 because it is a higher end card? I will initially run at 1280x1024 but possibly later at 1920x1080.

Hmmmm.......

I would appreciate all thoughts on the matter.

Many thanks in advance!

CF
 
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ConcreteFloater

C
Surfinjo said:
If you look at the latest hierarchy chart, may I suggest you go for something quite a bit higher? perhaps more memory as well? http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html

The GTX 750 Ti is probably going to let you down.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your input. I have also found the following on tomshardware:

"The next step back lands us in 1920x1080 territory, where a Radeon R9 380, R9 285, or GeForce GTX 960 should handle business adeptly around the $200 mark".

It seems I could get a GTX 960 for about £150, £50 more than the GTX 750 Ti so I can just about budget for that. £40 on the CPU and I should be able to bump the RAM up to 8GB for about £60.

My only concern now is that my Motherboard only has a 4.0 GB/s PCI-E 16x slot (PCI-E 1.0?) and the latest cards are PCI-E 3.0. Am I now looking at a significant bottleneck or will it be minor? If I have to upgrade my Motherboard and PSU too I'm out of the realms of a 'quick, low-budget tune-up'!
 

Porina

Porina
What CPU do you have at the moment? I've ran Q6600+960 previously. The 960 is enough for ultra at 1080p, and the Q6600 as example is "enough" for now. 8GB over 4GB probably wont make a huge difference except possibly helping load times a bit, especially if you don't have SSD. Wouldn't worry about PCIe bandwidths.
 

Ferryclacker

F
Your CPU wont be able to keep up with the GTX 960.
ED is a rather CPU intensive game to.
On top of that you at first want to play at 1280x1024 wich will put even more strain on your CPU.
The price of a GTX 960 probably also gets you a 2nd hand 2500K + board and RAM wich IMO would be a better upgrade.

From the other cards you mentioned (750ti, 260x, 265 and 270) the 750ti is the weakest if you count in overclocking.
OC vs OC a 750ti can only surpas a 260x if you mod its BIOS.
If you dont OC the cards the 750ti is stronger then a 260x

So... i would go with a CPU upgrade and if possible a 2GB 260x or better.
And if you be looking at 960's then also look at the 280x, they share the same price but the 280x is a faster and has more Vram.... it also uses alot more power (generating more heat) then a 960 to though.
 

Porina

Porina
It depends if we're just talking ED here or other games too. I have run the GTX960 with a Q6600 in the past although as I was testing 4k with that combo, so I don't have lower resolution data on it.

ED is not CPU intensive, although of course it still has a lower limit which the E6750 would probably drop below. The quad cores of that generation would manage it ok. If the Q9550 is a drop in replacement at low enough cost, it would do.

It doesn't matter that playing at lower resolution can increase CPU dependence, if you work on the "enough" fps principle. No need to feed the fps your monitor can't display.

I've also got a 280X and it is a bit faster than a 960, but the 960 is fast enough not to be limited at 1080p the extra speed of the 280X wont be needed for ED. I'd also argue they're not at price parity, at least not that I can find a 280X as low as the £150 starting price of a 960. The 280X is hard to find new anyway since it has been succeeded.
 

ConcreteFloater

C
Ferryclacker said:
The price of a GTX 960 probably also gets you a 2nd hand 2500K + board and RAM wich IMO would be a better upgrade.
Click to expand...

Are you saying don't upgrade my video card and spend the cash on CPU, board and RAM? I currently have a GeForce 7600 GT (256 MB), would that combination really work?!

I am string to avoid 'scope creep'! I wand something to see me through the next year or so until the various VR headsets are on the market. I will then go for a big upgrade to be able to run VR. In the mean time I want a pleasant, playable experience with minimal spend - Horizons too if possible but I'll cross that bridge when I get there! Other than ED I'm not really a gamer, I'll dabble in a few other things but time doesn't really allow me to.

Looking at Tom's Hardware budget gaming PC they specify the following:

Core i3-4170 3.7 GHz ~ £90
ASRock H97M Pro4 ~ £75
G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3 1600 8GB ~ £45
Saphire Radeon R9 380 ~ £150

Total ~ £360 (rough ebay prices)

I could source a Core i5-2500K for about the same as the i3 above so I'd do that.

For about the same cash I could run the GTX 960. If I do that I save about £30 having to buy a new PSU too (I currently have 450W).

BUT....

Option 2 is to just drop in a Core2 Quad Q9550 (~£45). Get 8 GB RAM (~£45) and the GPU. That would avoid the need for a new board, PSU and could all be done for about £240.

So basically, Core2 Quad Q9550 setup for £240 or i5 2500K setup for an extra £160

It's 'only' a saving of £160 but will the extra £160 with the upgraded board and i5 be a distinct improvement?

...Tempting!!!
 

ConcreteFloater

C
Porina said:
It depends if we're just talking ED here or other games too.
Click to expand...

Pretty much just ED.

Porina said:
ED is not CPU intensive, although of course it still has a lower limit which the E6750 would probably drop below. The quad cores of that generation would manage it ok. If the Q9550 is a drop in replacement at low enough cost, it would do.
Click to expand...

I would be about a £40-45 cost - Perfectly doable

Porina said:
It doesn't matter that playing at lower resolution can increase CPU dependence, if you work on the "enough" fps principle. No need to feed the fps your monitor can't display.

I've also got a 280X and it is a bit faster than a 960, but the 960 is fast enough not to be limited at 1080p the extra speed of the 280X wont be needed for ED. I'd also argue they're not at price parity, at least not that I can find a 280X as low as the £150 starting price of a 960. The 280X is hard to find new anyway since it has been succeeded.
Click to expand...

All great first-hand info Porina. Thank you very much!
 

Porina

Porina
Tricky one. The high spec system would no doubt be better. I forgot a potential spanner in the works, in that Horizons performance might vary from that of spaceflight. So until we know more that is a bit of an unknown.
 

CmdrJacks

CmdrJacks
I have an R9 280X and while it is a fantastic card I couldn't in good conscience recommend an AMD card for this game at the moment due to the driver issues.
 

ConcreteFloater

C
Porina said:
Tricky one. The high spec system would no doubt be better. I forgot a potential spanner in the works, in that Horizons performance might vary from that of spaceflight. So until we know more that is a bit of an unknown.
Click to expand...

Seems like spending that bit more and upgrading the CPU and board too could be worth while. Thanks for the info.

- - - Updated - - -

CmdrJacks said:
I have an R9 280X and while it is a fantastic card I couldn't in good conscience recommend an AMD card for this game at the moment due to the driver issues.
Click to expand...

I have read about this too. It seems that although the R9 is the faster card, even if I can get it for the same money I may get similar performance out of the GTX 960 for less noise, heat and power.

Is that a fair understanding of the situation?

Thanks.
 

Ferryclacker

F
ConcreteFloater said:
Seems like spending that bit more and upgrading the CPU and board too could be worth while. Thanks for the info.

- - - Updated - - -



I have read about this too. It seems that although the R9 is the faster card, even if I can get it for the same money I may get similar performance out of the GTX 960 for less noise, heat and power.

Is that a fair understanding of the situation?

Thanks.
Click to expand...


Just face it, your in a crap situation.
You just need a complete new system really.
Your CPU is to old and spending money on an old system (upgrade to Q9550 or so) is a waste of money and in the end you will want to upgrade that to.
I think the best you can do now is get a 2nd hand GTX 650ti boost, GTX660, GTX 750ti, HD7850, HD7870, 260x, 270 and so on as a place holder untill you have enough money to do a proper upgrade.
I would try to spend as little as possible for a place holder GPU so you can save up faster for a new system (board, ram, CPU and PSU)
Btw, it doesnt feel like ED is optimised for Nvidia at all.. i have PC's here with Nvidia and AMD graphics and the best performing system is the one with an AMD 290x.
Yes my GTX 980 cramps out more FPS (was alot more expensive to) but Nvidia downsampling is just plain ugly (DSR) while AMD's is super crisp and sharp (VSR)
On my 980 i have to play 1920x1080 on my 290x i pay at 3200x1800..... i reckon you can imagine on wich card graphics in ED looks best....
Also have a GTX 960 wich runs ED at 1920x1080 highest ingame settings (NO super sampling though) but not with a steady 60FPS, it cant downsample either because it runs out of memory and causes big frame dips.
That a 960 isnt really fitted for downsampling is ok because its not nearly as expensive as a 290x or even a 980 for that matter.
Also my previous AMD card was a 280x (Toxic version) and there is no way a 960 even come's close to it, dont compare a boosting 960 to a reference clocked 280x, compare it to a 1150mhz 280x (some even come like that from factory) My 280x used to run 1250mhz even.
No matter how hard you overclock a 960 it will not pass a 1150mhz 280x, next to that a 280x has 3GB Vram wich make's it alot more suitable for 1440P or higher in some games.
The only drawback you have is heat and power draw.
And the driver issue's is really something of the past (4xxx and 5xxx series) AMD drivers are really good now.
Lately its Nvidia that has rather buggy drivers tbh.
Only thing better about Nvidia drivers is that if you run in SLI (wich you wont) they bring out profile's for new games to be run with SLI faster then AMD brings out CF profiles.
Also have a look at the R9 380 btw, second hand 680 and 7970's to but again i would first get something as cheap as possible as a place holder so you can upgrade the rest of the PC asap.
 

Porina

Porina
Ferryclacker said:
Also have a GTX 960 wich runs ED at 1920x1080 highest ingame settings (NO super sampling though) but not with a steady 60FPS, it cant downsample either because it runs out of memory and causes big frame dips.
That a 960 isnt really fitted for downsampling is ok because its not nearly as expensive as a 290x or even a 980 for that matter.
Also my previous AMD card was a 280x (Toxic version) and there is no way a 960 even come's close to it, dont compare a boosting 960 to a reference clocked 280x, compare it to a 1150mhz 280x (some even come like that from factory) My 280x used to run 1250mhz even.
Click to expand...

I just had to run a test again, right now, as that doesn't match up with my recollection. My test system is basically my old main desktop until a few months ago: i7-2600k running 4 cores at 3.5 GHz. I have turned off hyper-threading for other reasons previously. 8 GB 1333 ram. Asus Strix 960 with however much OC they put in that. Monitor is 1920x1200, so slightly more than 1080p. Had to do a new ED install since the old copy wouldn't upgrade for some reason. Tried two scenarios, which is in station, and also the 1st combat training mission. In both cases fps remained solid on 60 at Ultra settings. I could see all 4 CPU cores being part used, but combined it was using less than one core equivalent on average. Didn't turn off vsync to see how high it could have gone.

The 280X is more powerful at higher resolutions, but I'd still argue it isn't needed over a 960 if you only want to use 1080p.
 

Ferryclacker

F
Porina said:
I just had to run a test again, right now, as that doesn't match up with my recollection. My test system is basically my old main desktop until a few months ago: i7-2600k running 4 cores at 3.5 GHz. I have turned off hyper-threading for other reasons previously. 8 GB 1333 ram. Asus Strix 960 with however much OC they put in that. Monitor is 1920x1200, so slightly more than 1080p. Had to do a new ED install since the old copy wouldn't upgrade for some reason. Tried two scenarios, which is in station, and also the 1st combat training mission. In both cases fps remained solid on 60 at Ultra settings. I could see all 4 CPU cores being part used, but combined it was using less than one core equivalent on average. Didn't turn off vsync to see how high it could have gone.

The 280X is more powerful at higher resolutions, but I'd still argue it isn't needed over a 960 if you only want to use 1080p.
Click to expand...

Your 960 can run it ok now because AA ingame doesnt work anymore.
When it does it will be a big hit against FPS.

Not bashing the 960 here, i wouldnt have bought one if i didnt like it. (have an EVGA SSC)
It doesnt come close to a 280x at all (when you OC and i do alot) but i like the card because of how silent and "green" it is.

On the CPU usage.
It depends on where you are and what you are doing.
In intense CZ's (lots of physics from all the ships) or supercruising with many NPC's/players on the map or plotting a route around the core on the galaxy map CPU usage is alot higher then in other situations.
 

Porina

Porina
Even with 1.2 and 1.3 where I did most of my play on that system, I really don't recall encountering situations dropping below 60fps.

I'm not up to speed on the AMD 300 series cards, how about one of those? In a quick look the R9 380 seems to be in the same price bracket as the 960. I'm not negative on a 280X (also have one, XFX Black edition) but I'm just not sure it is right to look at a new one now. If a used one pops up for much less, maybe, but the dual power connector requirement still needs to be considered.
 

Ferryclacker

F
Porina said:
Even with 1.2 and 1.3 where I did most of my play on that system, I really don't recall encountering situations dropping below 60fps.

I'm not up to speed on the AMD 300 series cards, how about one of those? In a quick look the R9 380 seems to be in the same price bracket as the 960. I'm not negative on a 280X (also have one, XFX Black edition) but I'm just not sure it is right to look at a new one now. If a used one pops up for much less, maybe, but the dual power connector requirement still needs to be considered.
Click to expand...


A 280x is only nice new if you find old stock.
They should be around a 960 price wich is 200,- euro here.... i reckon 180pound ?
The R9 380 is basicly a slightly upgraded 285.
It perform like 5% better then a stock 280x but has 1 less GB of Vram.
When you both overclock them to the same speed they are smilar (slight edge to the 280x) with again the 280x having 1 more GB of Vram.
The 380 has GCN1.2 instead of 1.1 on the 280x though.

The best card you can get now IMO are the 280x, 290, 290x and the GTX980 or 980ti.
All other cards are in betweeners with not much to offer except a to high price.
I quess for the price a 380 isnt that bad but a 280x used to be the same price, has 1 GB more of Vram and has alot of OC headroom.
I rather have a 380 then a 960 tbh, i have my 960 purely for my wife's Warcraft, Warcraft simply does better on Nvidia.
 

ConcreteFloater

C
Thanks everyone for all your input. Really very good food for thought!

I have been trawling our favourite online auction site to get a feel for what I can do and I managed to get a the following:

GTX 660 for £68
8GB Crucial Balistix for £41
Intel Core2 Quad Q9650 for £45

So, for £154 I should be able to get, maybe not stunning but reasonable gameplay without having to also upgrade my motherboard or PSU. It seemed like a reasonable temporary step and I imagine I'll be able to resell it all for not too much loss in 6-12 months.

The longer-term plan is to wait until we start to see VR on the market, to assess the requirements for that and also the requirements for 'Horizons'. Then I'll get the big budget out and treat myself!!! Mmmmm.......

Anyway, thanks again for all the thoughts. I'll come back in a week or so to let you know how it plays - okay I hope!
 
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