Graphics cards - best bang for the buck?

[Shadowed]

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.

Why a GTX 980 over a GTX 970? All major 3rd parties interchange their coolers with cards of similar tdp. The GTX 970 would be of the same quality but cost signifanctly less while providing essentially the same performance. In other words, the 980 is a waste of money.

AMD's major driver problems have been fixed for a few years now. Computer hardware moves really fast and it is very unwise to set your opinions in stone when dealing with electronics manufacturers. Every GPU generation brings tons of reasons to switch back and forth between AMD and NVIDIA and one will get burned for sticking with one for too long.

Currently, the GTX 970 and R9 390 offer the best performance while having decent longevity. For new PC gamers, the GTX 960 with its 1x6 pin requirement is very attractive for those with a pre-built PC. I will continue to always recommend to steer clear of 2 GB cards due to their poor longevity.

 

[drholliday]

Why a GTX 980 over a GTX 970? All major 3rd parties interchange their coolers with cards of similar tdp. The GTX 970 would be of the same quality but cost signifanctly less while providing essentially the same performance. In other words, the 980 is a waste of money.

Because the 970 might and will create a memory bottleneck soon. Right now it's mostly irrelevant. But that won't last for long.

AMD's major driver problems have been fixed for a few years now.

No they have not as recently demonstrated with the new Crimson. Or ask anyone with a 390 and W10 here. Finally it works as expected in GTA. Was one of the longest running bugs on the tracker and right now ED is #1 or 2. AMD needs forever to fix even massive problems in AAA titles. As I said. NVidia has its fair share of issues as well. But those are usually sorted out significantly faster.

 

[Wes Mattix]

Nvidia is typically just flat out better than AMD. They had a chance with the Fury X, but it launched essentially un-overclockable, which is laughable because it was advertised as "an overclocker's dream." I think it's only recently had its voltage unlocked. Nvidia has some really amazing distributors (EVGA comes to mind) with better customer service, and their cards just generally work better with most games.

That said, they are a very greedy company. Well, that's an oxymoron. They are more greedy than AMD, at least. Their cards work better because they stick their noses into game development to make it so. They know that their cards will work better which is why they charge so much more for them. I'm about to buy a G-Sync monitor that would cost $500 less if Nvidia would just play ball with the industry, but they don't need to, so they won't.

I actually hate Nvidia, but at the end of the day, they make a more reliable product, even if they've rigged the system for that to be the case. I can't imagine not buying Pascal when it comes out.

 

[the100thmonkey]

A single 970 will perform very well up to 2560x1440 - most likely you can just set everything to ultra and forget about it.

Anything over that -- including VR -- you'll need a more powerful card to get solid 70+FPS.

 

[mossfoot]

Definitely going to look for some "slightly used" 970s when the new super cards come out.

But regarding obsolescence - will that be as much of a factor for Elite Dangerous as other games? They're tweaking all the time, sure, but will they make it so the game in 3 years won't on a machine that can run ED right now?

I know there's some cases of that now (Mac can't run Horizons) - but right now people on a PC who don't have a 64 bit system can still run base ED in 32 bit.

I wonder how it will transition over the coming years and how/when things will be left behind?

 

[Shadowed]

Because the 970 might and will create a memory bottleneck soon. Right now it's mostly irrelevant. But that won't last for long.



No they have not as recently demonstrated with the new Crimson. Or ask anyone with a 390 and W10 here. Finally it works as expected in GTA. Was one of the longest running bugs on the tracker and right now ED is #1 or 2. AMD needs forever to fix even massive problems in AAA titles. As I said. NVidia has its fair share of issues as well. But those are usually sorted out significantly faster.

The extra 512MB the GTX 980 has to offer over the 970 will not really matter imo. Nvidia already made the 970 driver use 3.5GB max so by the time 512MB matters, both the GTX 970 and 980 will be irrelevant.

The AMD Crimson Driver problems are very insignificant and do not affect many users. Those who disabled Auto Fan on the first Crimson release got a rude surprise about clockspeed throttling but other than that everything was very minor. I would argue that AMD releasing the Crimson driver then going on their holiday break was incredibly unprofessional and caused bad publicity. I could say a lot of similar things for NVIDIA though... I think it is really bad to say all Win10 AMD users who play GTA V or Elite had problems though. That is untrue. The vast majority had zero issues and remained quiet. For the past 2 years, AMD's driver performance has vastly improved and has better frametime performance (the good stuff) than NVIDIA overall. The big frametime fiasco was a huge blow for AMD multiGPU users and they now finally fixed it. These large performance gains are the main driver improvements I have been hinting at. AMD users don't have to worry about bad performance relative to their NVIDIA counterpart unless the GameWorks features remain on.

My point is that recommending a very overpriced mid range graphics card near the middle of a GPU cycle is bad advice. I am also adamant that siding with one tech company and disparaging another is bad for us the consumer. We must remain brand agnostic to have the best value for the consumer!

Both AMD and NVIDIA are purely profit driven and have been in the game for a long time. Every GPU cycle AMD and NVIDIA release have a different winner. Every 1-2 years one is better and the other is worse. We cannot say one is better unless we specify the generation. I would argue that this generation the GTX 980 ti is the clear winner over the Fury X, but the mid-range value favors AMD slightly. This is one long game that isn't ending anytime soon (hopefully).

 

[wigwam12]

Interesting thread and good timing.
I recently upgraded my machine nd have as Asus z170 gaming mobo with the Intel 530HD GFx on board - which is an upgrade to the HD2600 radeon pro I used to play Elite on.
As this is the only game I run and I like my machines quiet, I was assuming the GTX750TI was the ideal card for low cost, performance, low power usage and essentially silent running?
Which I guess takes us back to the OP

I've heard recommendations for the 970 but it costs a shed load more - not really justfiable to some of us for a single-use purchase.
What else fits the bill to challenge the 750TI at that level?

Oh and is there a For Sale section of this forum?
If so when you guys and gals have a shiny new card I might see if anyone wants to dispatch a cool quiet 750TI

 

[shadragon]

GTX970. Don't buy what you need today. Buy what you'll need for a few years to come.

 

[mossfoot]

Interesting thread and good timing.
I recently upgraded my machine nd have as Asus z170 gaming mobo with the Intel 530HD GFx on board - which is an upgrade to the HD2600 radeon pro I used to play Elite on.
As this is the only game I run and I like my machines quiet, I was assuming the GTX750TI was the ideal card for low cost, performance, low power usage and essentially silent running?
Which I guess takes us back to the OP

I've heard recommendations for the 970 but it costs a shed load more - not really justfiable to some of us for a single-use purchase.
What else fits the bill to challenge the 750TI at that level?

Oh and is there a For Sale section of this forum?
If so when you guys and gals have a shiny new card I might see if anyone wants to dispatch a cool quiet 750TI

I have to admit, having the 750TI that it's a "good enough" card, especially at the price point. But I'm hoping to find something that will run Elite "perfectly" for the forseeable future on my rig and it seems the 970 is shaping up to be that... just a shame about the price.

 

[thesnowdog]

It's never the right time to buy a graphics card. There will always be something better come along later, which will either push the price of older but still desireable kit downwards, or up as they become more rare, or bring new shiny stuff that people want NAOW!

Of course, when some new cards are released, they are simply old ones with new badges. That annoys me immensely

Depends on how much money you have going spare. DX12 and VR are great reasons to wait until later this year to get a Pascal or Arctic Islands GPU, and if that wasn't enough you've also got to remember that both lines are almost certainly going to be using HBM2 VRAM which is going to give them a ridiculous amount of memory bandwidth compared to GDDR5.

These new GPU lines from both companies should see the biggest performance increase seen in years.

 

[drholliday]

The extra 512MB the GTX 980 has to offer over the 970 will not really matter imo. Nvidia already made the 970 driver use 3.5GB max so by the time 512MB matters, both the GTX 970 and 980 will be irrelevant.

GTA V scrapes at the 3.5G mark for me. It doesn't matter ATM because hardly any game is closing in on 4G. If that happens I really would NOT want a 970.

 

[Kingston@#]

Looking to the future I'm wondering what kind of graphics card I should upgrade to. I've currently got (I think, I'm not at home) a NVIDIA 750ti and it works pretty well.

I know I could just look at benchmark performances and compare it to price, but I'm interested in people's own research as well. And maybe certain models perform better specifically with ED than others? (Hey, I dunno, I'm a noob)

My setup is a single 46 inch screen running at 1920x1080, and using IR clip based head tracking, and I'd like to find a card that will let me have decent 60fps on a planet's surface (I'm currently running around 40 or so I think) on high to ultra settings.

What might be the cheapest card that can achieve that kind of quality?

if you can wait and afford it when it comes out. get the next generation gpu from NVidia, check it out here
http://wccftech.com/nvidia-generatio...-tbs-bandwith

 

[mossfoot]

if you can wait and afford it when it comes out. get the next generation gpu from http://wccftech.com/nvidia-generatio...-tbs-bandwith

I believe the last line of my question was "What might be the cheapest card that can achieve that kind of quality"?

As excited as these advancements are, I doubt it'll be affordable to someone like me for quite some time. Heck, getting the 750ti was an investment!

I mean, all info is appreciated, but the whole idea was balancing performance and price.