It was inevitable....Advice please.
- Thread starter lazerus
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I just picked up an MSI GTX 760 TwinFrozr OC (Overclocked) edition for £155 a couple weeks ago, and I have to say it's really good.
Before this I had a Gainward GTX 260 Golden Sample, which I've replaced for no reason other than the 760 is DX11 and the 260 is only DX10.
The 260 ran ED really well and if you can get one for £25 I would say it's a great card...but watch out - some of the new games being released nowadays are DX11 only (Alien Isolation, Evolve, etc).
Before this I had a Gainward GTX 260 Golden Sample, which I've replaced for no reason other than the 760 is DX11 and the 260 is only DX10.
The 260 ran ED really well and if you can get one for £25 I would say it's a great card...but watch out - some of the new games being released nowadays are DX11 only (Alien Isolation, Evolve, etc).
That's interesting, what settings were you on? I assume not Ultra.
At least High everything. Now I'm using Ultra with the 760 and to be honest I can't tell the difference. I don't think I even tried Ultra with the 260 because it already looked good and ran well and I figured since I have the minimum recommended GPU I wouldn't bother trying.
You know that GTX 260 is a really good card. Plays everything really well...sure I see an increase in framerate now, but before it was always playable. Having a billion frames per second or whatever never bothered me...as long as it's at least 25 I don't mind. Even so...sometimes the framerate was still really high anyway on the 260. I really think that all these super expensive graphics cards are a con. About 7 years ago or so I got myself a 9800GX2 the day it was released. Cost me like £430 and I never used it's full potential before it broke just before warranty expired. Had it repaired, sold it and got myself the GTX 260 for £120. I say just stick with mid-range equipment all the time.
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This is the exact card I was using two weeks ago: http://www.nix.ru/autocatalog/graphic_cards_gainward/87900_2254_draft.jpg
As I said it ran it fine.
In fact, the biggest strain on my machine is the CPU usage. Usually between 60% -> 80% go towards running ED. (I have not updated the CPU or anything.)
CPU: Q6600 2.40GHz Quad-core overclocked to 3.00GHz
Memory: 8GB (4x2GB) DDR2
FSB: 1333MHz
OS: Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate
If you're lucky, it may just need a beefier PSU to handle the increased power draw. Unless you have loads of hard disks (or other power hungry kit) then any 500+W PSU should handle the load fine, even with a newer 900 series card.
I always overspec my power supplies so I tend to forget that power use can be a limitation ^^;
Edit: Corsair power supply calculator just put your bits in and it will tell you what PSU numbers you should be looking for. Maybe you might not need a new PSU after all?
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I'd also go for the R9 - the hardware is outstanding and the drivers will soon get another update
My current HD7950 cost me about £80 second hand and happily runs 60fps on ultra. Easy to overclock too. As far as the comments about drivers, ive never had problems and ive owned a 7850 and a 7970 and not had issues with drivers for them either. If you want Nvidia, a 760 or 770 would probably be good with the current price drops. Ive owned them too and can say they are very capable at 1080. All depends on how much you want to spend
If you're lucky, it may just need a beefier PSU to handle the increased power draw. Unless you have loads of hard disks (or other power hungry kit) then any 500+W PSU should handle the load fine, even with a newer 900 series card.
I always overspec my power supplies so I tend to forget that power use can be a limitation ^^;
Edit: Corsair power supply calculator just put your bits in and it will tell you what PSU numbers you should be looking for. Maybe you might not need a new PSU after all?
I went with an 1000W Corsair (as I had some other stuff I needed power for, and just to be safe). Worked a treat.
The card info for a GTX 770 says you only need a 600W PSU, but don't believe this. I went for a 600W initially and it wouldn't power it. Go for at least 750W+ if you can. You really want at least 150W over to help power everything else in your system.
If you're lucky, it may just need a beefier PSU to handle the increased power draw. Unless you have loads of hard disks (or other power hungry kit) then any 500+W PSU should handle the load fine, even with a newer 900 series card.
I always overspec my power supplies so I tend to forget that power use can be a limitation ^^;
Edit: Corsair power supply calculator just put your bits in and it will tell you what PSU numbers you should be looking for. Maybe you might not need a new PSU after all?
Watch carefully for the 12V rail amp ratings that the prospective card wants, and what your PSU can supply. Total wattage on the PSU is almost irrelevant. You definitely don't want to come in under or just at the amp requirement for the card on your PSU, or you'll be BSODing or worse all the time.
Hmm i have some real problems with my setup then because im getting a lot of 30-40 fps drops and I have a GTX 970 4Gb.
18Gb RAM
iCore7 2.7Ghz
Seems to have gotten worse with time - either updates for driver-updates.
I do get some stability issues sometimes / hard crash to desktop.
Possibly : Either my CPU or GPU are not well.
Thinking of re-installing my machine.
I have a 750Ti myself, MSI manufactured iirc, and after all the years spent with power-hungry, hot and ofter noisy GFX cards, I've been very happy with this one.
Oh, and I'm running ED with full detail, I think, and I don't really notice bad fps (then again I really can't notice if it stays over 30 - never understood all the elite quake players who needed 200, 300, 400 fps...
This is great news for me.... I've been planning on upgrading my video card and this was the card I was going to choose because it doesn't require a big power supply. I have an older system with only a 300W power supply. The computer meets all ED specs easily except my video card. My video card is garbage.... and only has 512MB Ram, below the 1GB recommended for ED. Even with that, the game still runs great for me as long as I have graphics settings turned down low (I still run consistently over 30FPS) and it still looks great even with lower graphics settings. I can't wait to see it with the graphics settings all cranked up... I was wondering how the 750Ti was running for people.
In Beta I had an ageing AMD Radeon HD6850 1GB which I found was fine for running ED, even with Oculus Rift. BUT, my PC kept hanging for 30-40 seconds (in all apps, not just ED) and then would continue normally. I tried all sorts of CPU temp/GPU temp monitors, memory monitors, process monitors etc, but couldn't find the problem. Then though I'd change the graphics card (it was time for a change) and picked up a Palit GTX970 on a 'Black Friday' deal. Still had the hanging issue - but things do seem a little smoother all round in ED with the GTX970.
Finally managed to fix the hanging issue by changing my Windows 7 'Power Plan' from Balanced to High Performance. Now that the OS has stopped trying to turn bits of hardware on/off from time-to-time to save power, all is working very well.
PC is AMD Phenom II X6 with 4GB RAM.
I picked up a GTX760 for £160 the other week to replace my GTS450.
I also picked up a £45 Corsair PSU just to be on the safe side for the 12V rail amps.
You'll notice a big difference in your experience from the 450. I can now play everything at top settings at good framerate and the game takes on a whole new look.
I also picked up a £45 Corsair PSU just to be on the safe side for the 12V rail amps.
You'll notice a big difference in your experience from the 450. I can now play everything at top settings at good framerate and the game takes on a whole new look.
I just picked up a evga GTX 780ti at amazon for 149 with a $20 rebate ---it doesn't need external power if that is a concern to you and you can run nvidea's shadowplay with it ----really cool to be able to record your gameplay complete with audio at 60 fps with no performance loss. I use that to review my harder combat missions to watch for areas that I might have done something better.
I used to run a Zotac 770 on an Enermax Liberty 620w quite happily. The card was overclocked to the max and so was the rest of my system (watercooled 3570k @ 4.5ghz). Ive found card manufacturers generally over estimate the required power.