Graphics cards - best bang for the buck?

[Hellhawk666]

GTX 970 for an immediate improvement at your stated monitor resolution.
GTX 980ti for a powerhouse that will eat anything you throw at it at 1440 resolution, and can just handle 4k.

There will be some breakthrough stuff appearing in graphics cards, monitors and VR this year, but I wouldn't expect availability until Q3. If you can wait that long, hold out, save your pennies, and do a mega upgrade when the goodies arrive. Otherwise dive in now with one of the cards mentioned above for an immediate improvement that will carry you through until the new stuff falls in price slightly.

 

[raok]

AMD vs NVIDIA

NVIDIA has better single card performance.

If you want to use 2 cards, get the best performance, you have to use... (If I remember correctly)

AMD Fury X as your primary GPU
NVIDIA GTX 980Ti as your secondary GPU

So basically neither company is better here, you have to use one card from each company.

 

[Crank Larson]

Hyper-V? I'm posting about the FUD regarding AMD's GPU performance in gaming. Nothing else. AMD's APU's and CPU's deserve to be avoided.

And I was responding to your claim that AMD's drivers are great... Mine don't even work properly with games, even ignoring Hyper-V. In fact, we can limit that to just "game" now, as I only run E: D on that PC. And yes, the crash dumps all point to the driver screwing up. What's the point in excellent performance and best value for money when the stability is bad? I'd rather pay more and have a slightly slower system that was rock solid...

 

[Shadowed]

It goes both ways...

Anyway, to expand on my GTX 960 suggestion, that was specifically on the basis of "good enough" performance. No, it will not be the best, especially if you want everything turned up to 11, or at higher resolutions than 1080p. But it is a nice low cost, low power consumption card. What's the current AMD price equivalent? The R7 370? Haven't looked up on it in detail but it is ranked below the 960 in the last chart above. Now, I also have the older 280X, which is without question a faster card than the 960, but it takes double the power to give... not near double the performance. Plus it is a more expensive card when new.

At the top end, when building my latest system I ran both a Fury X and 980Ti, and kept the latter. It is SO MUCH QUIETER even with the standard nvidia reference design, not a fancy OEM upgraded cooler. The Fury X tiny little radiator just can't cope with it. It really should have had a double 120 as standard. Also the 4GB would likely be limiting longer term as Horizons has managed to eat most of the 6GB already (at higher resolutions than 1080p!).

Ok, I agree with you. The GTX 960 isn't a terrible card for its price.. I do recommend excluding ALL 2GB cards for 2016. Another factor we all must remind ourselves is pricing for various countries. AMD has very little market penetration in certain areas in the world and as such, NVIDIA is a MUCH better deal in Asia. So the GTX 960 4GB may offer superior price/performance vs any of AMD's offerings. In the UK, AMD's prices are more competitive than NVIDIA's regarding mid-range. This means the R9 380 is a superior card that is cheaper, uses a bit more power, and has better price/performance.

I cannot recommend a GTX 960 for $200+ however. For 50% more performance I could spend another $100 and have a card that will age much better. I see R9 390's as cheap as $280 at times and with that kind of price, a GTX 960/R9 380 seems like a completely rubbish deal!

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And I was responding to your claim that AMD's drivers are great... Mine don't even work properly with games, even ignoring Hyper-V. In fact, we can limit that to just "game" now, as I only run E: D on that PC. And yes, the crash dumps all point to the driver screwing up. What's the point in excellent performance and best value for money when the stability is bad? I'd rather pay more and have a slightly slower system that was rock solid...

What drivers and card do you have? AMD's Omega and Crimson releases brought excellent stable performance gains for GCN. 6000 series and older is all legacy. It is a bad idea to point your unstable system to AMD's drivers when you have very little proof. You are essentially claiming that all AMD cards are unstable which is a fallacy. You could have faulty ram, motherboard, or any other kind of hardware faults that could make your system unstable when gaming.

 

[Shadowed]

AMD vs NVIDIA

NVIDIA has better single card performance.

If you want to use 2 cards, get the best performance, you have to use... (If I remember correctly)

AMD Fury X as your primary GPU
NVIDIA GTX 980Ti as your secondary GPU

So basically neither company is better here, you have to use one card from each company.

What? Are you recommending someone buys BOTH cards for their 1 system??? That kind of SLI/CFX hybrid is very experimental and will not work for games for many, many years to come.

edit: Much better idea to buy 2 GTX 980 ti's or 2 Fury X's. That means the cards can be used in tandem for a potentially huge performance boost.
The best bang for your buck would be 2 GTX 970's in SLI. They provide 90% the performance of GTX 980 SLI but for much, much cheaper. AMD's CFX has traditionally been slower at supporting games day 1 unlike NVIDIA.

@Mossfoot get the cheapest GTX 970 you can find. If the R9 390 is substantially cheaper, get that. They both run cool and quiet. The R9 390 has 8GB to share between CFX vs the 970's 3.5 GB. This means the 390 CFX has a higher chance of lasting longer. If the GTX 960 4GB is competitive in price vs the R9 380 4GB get whatever. If the R9 380 is cheaper, definitely get that. Avoid 1 or 2GB at all costs.

 

[nosleepdemon]

And then everyone realised that most triple A titles still target current gen consoles, so all the new stuff was moot.

 

[raok]

What? Are you recommending someone buys BOTH cards for their 1 system??? That kind of SLI/CFX hybrid is very experimental and will not work for games for many, many years to come.

Not sure if I should even answer, but for 2016...

As I said, I do not recommend to buy any cards atm.

Just saying for the guys, who are here having a conversation, AMD vs NVIDIA.

 

[Porina]

Ok, I agree with you. The GTX 960 isn't a terrible card for its price.. I do recommend excluding ALL 2GB cards for 2016. Another factor we all must remind ourselves is pricing for various countries. AMD has very little market penetration in certain areas in the world and as such, NVIDIA is a MUCH better deal in Asia. So the GTX 960 4GB may offer superior price/performance vs any of AMD's offerings. In the UK, AMD's prices are more competitive than NVIDIA's regarding mid-range. This means the R9 380 is a superior card that is cheaper, uses a bit more power, and has better price/performance.

I cannot recommend a GTX 960 for $200+ however. For 50% more performance I could spend another $100 and have a card that will age much better. I see R9 390's as cheap as $280 at times and with that kind of price, a GTX 960/R9 380 seems like a completely rubbish deal!

In a further look, it does look like the 960 UK pricing straddles the 370/380, but the cheapest 380's are 2GB cards too. I know we can go above that, but as always there is a question of where do you draw the line? It is easy to say, for a bit more cash, you could go up to whatever is the next one, but still there is that price step to overcome.

 

[Kristov]

And then everyone realised that most triple A titles still target current gen consoles, so all the new stuff was moot.

Hey, I'm really sorry to hear about your loss to a console, you should probably get some help to deal with the grief and pain....

I have Elite on my PC and I got Elite on the XBOne for my grandson(his mom decided he can't have a PC after what she found on her laptop after he used it, I have to agree with her, he's 12 and guess what he's realized!). I watched him play Elite on the XBOne and it's amazing looking on the 75" tv, really feels like you are in the cockpit with that huge screen. However, while I didn't say this to him, it is NOT as good looking as it is on my PC, there's a number of things missing in the graphics and models on the XBOne version of the game. So, it would seem that the tinfoil hat brigade who think the consoles are the reasons for everything they don't like in a PC game are, once again, totally off target and wandering around lost in the woods while searching for a ship lost in the ocean.

 

[BattleMetalChris]

I've got an r9 390 sat in its box gathering dust since it stopped playing nice with ED.

What's the problem with the 390 and ED? I was thinking of picking one up next payday.

 

[Kristov]

What's the problem with the 390 and ED? I was thinking of picking one up next payday.

There's a bug with the AMD drivers and Elite, it's a problem AMD has to fix and so far, they haven't. You can use older drivers, 15.6 I think but don't hold me to that, and you are ok.

 

[Shadowed]

There's a bug with the AMD drivers and Elite, it's a problem AMD has to fix and so far, they haven't. You can use older drivers, 15.6 I think but don't hold me to that, and you are ok.

What bug is that? I've been on Crimson since it was released without any problems. Did you install the 390 with older drivers installed?

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In a further look, it does look like the 960 UK pricing straddles the 370/380, but the cheapest 380's are 2GB cards too. I know we can go above that, but as always there is a question of where do you draw the line? It is easy to say, for a bit more cash, you could go up to whatever is the next one, but still there is that price step to overcome.

Interesting. I was looking at 4GB versions of the 380 and 960 and the 380 was about 20 pounds cheaper. Since prices fluctuate, the 960 or 380 may alternate as better deals. I draw the line at FPS/$ as long as the card has adequate cooling. So if the GTX 970/R9 390 has substantially higher fps/$$$ than definitely go with the higher end tier. If the price gap between the GTX 960 to GTX 970/R9 390 is small like $60-90, then its a no brainer to go with the faster cards.

I try to factor total cost of ownership in when trying to figure out how long a card will last including the upgrade cost to a new one later down the road.

 

[Crank Larson]

I try to factor total cost of ownership in when trying to figure out how long a card will last including the upgrade cost to a new one later down the road.

That's an excellent way to justify spending just that little bit more on the card. I like it. It's going to get me into all sorts of trouble, though...

 

[Kristov]

What bug is that? I've been on Crimson since it was released without any problems. Did you install the 390 with older drivers installed?

The supercruise stutter and fps drop, it's been around for a while now and the Crimson drivers evidently don't fix it for those who get it. I use a GTX 750, no problems at all with it, so I can't really comment on what the AMD problem is like personally. There's plenty of threads about it however, FD and AMD have both stated it's an AMD issue, and AMD is working on it but no resolution yet.

 

[Cmdr Cunomaglus]

I'm a total muppet when it comes to anything related to hardware so the rest of the thread may as well be written in Aramaic as far as I'm concerned but 6 months ago I got a GTX 970 and it's awesome. Not too expensive and when it comes to graphics settings in games, I always set everything to Ultra and then tweak upwards. Of the games I play (Elite, Fallout 4, GTA V, other recent-ish stuff) I never drop under 60FPS, usually 100+

So I'd recommend a GTX 970. My tuppence worth.

 

[Shadowed]

The supercruise stutter and fps drop, it's been around for a while now and the Crimson drivers evidently don't fix it for those who get it. I use a GTX 750, no problems at all with it, so I can't really comment on what the AMD problem is like personally. There's plenty of threads about it however, FD and AMD have both stated it's an AMD issue, and AMD is working on it but no resolution yet.

I get a SC FPS drop when lots of CMDRs are in the area; is that the same thing? So NVIDIA users don't get any FPS problems when many CMDRs are in supercruise?

I thought this was ED's servers being taxed beyond the limit. The GPU and CPU on my system will not work that hard when server fps is low.
edit2: The AMD FPS drop sounds more like an AMD CPU problem where there is poor single thread performance overall. So if I'm wrong please show me! FPS should remain 60 all the time unless many CMDRs are in SC at the same time. Getting FPS dips in open is my way of knowing a CMDR is close

 

[nosleepdemon]

Hey, I'm really sorry to hear about your loss to a console, you should probably get some help to deal with the grief and pain....

I have Elite on my PC and I got Elite on the XBOne for my grandson(his mom decided he can't have a PC after what she found on her laptop after he used it, I have to agree with her, he's 12 and guess what he's realized!). I watched him play Elite on the XBOne and it's amazing looking on the 75" tv, really feels like you are in the cockpit with that huge screen. However, while I didn't say this to him, it is NOT as good looking as it is on my PC, there's a number of things missing in the graphics and models on the XBOne version of the game. So, it would seem that the tinfoil hat brigade who think the consoles are the reasons for everything they don't like in a PC game are, once again, totally off target and wandering around lost in the woods while searching for a ship lost in the ocean.

Im not sure what I just read, I think somewhere things got confused? I don't in any way think that consoles are the reason for why we can't have nice things, but I did just replace a mid range graphics card that lasted me somewhere around five years (gtx 650), because for the most part, new triple A games target console hardware which is where the money is. I replaced it with another budget card (gtx 950) which handles elite really nicely, and I expect it to last at least as long as the gtx 650. The point I was making was that you don't need to go super high end and blow north of 400 dollars for a good looking and smooth experience.

 

[pargyrak]

Had the 970 running a 1440p monitor. Ultra setting and never bellow 59.7. When horizons, on surface fps dropped at 40 with terrain work slider at half.

As I wanted a 4K monitor I bought a 980 Ti (MSI Lightning) Never under 59.7 fps and 45 min on a planet (usually 60).

If you are at 1080p the 970 is fine...

 

[drholliday]

If you have to buy now I'd probably go with a 980. It's not the cheapest card but it has space for some time and it's not suffering from fraud that will bite your ass sooner than later. And with a new platform on the horizon the 980 is probably getting significantly cheaper soon.

AMD is always hard to recommend because they never got and probably never will get their drivers under control. The cards are excellent. But the drivers are an abomination. NVidia has a fair share of driver issues as well. But it's nowhere near AMD.

 

[Fendalton]

GTX970

The price difference between that and the 770 is insignificant when it comes to the performance difference. I have a 770 SC ACX and it runs the game in 60fps but planets drop to 40 fps as it's only a 2GB card.