Upgrading PC

[Asimov]

Hi guys, not sure if you remember me. I disappeared due to work and real life, but here I am again and I have a question for you. 

 

I had been running STEP on my computer with these current parts:

[CORSAIR HX Series HX750 750W Power Supply]

[GIGABYTE Super Overclock Series GeForce GTX 470 1280MB x 2 in SLI]

[intel Core i7-930 2.8GHz]

[Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case with Upgraded USB 3.0]

[Western Digital WD Black 1TB 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive]

[G.SKILL 6GB 3 x 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 PC3 12800]

[ASUS P6T LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard]

[ARCTIC Freezer 7 Pro Rev. 2, CPU Cooler 92mm PWM Fan]

120G Intel SSD Hard Drive

 

And I wanted to upgrade a bit to try to run extreme STEP. My question is this, can I just buy the new GTX 770 or do I need to replace the processor, board, and ram. My budget isn't unlimited so I'd rather just spend it all on the graphics card, but I was hoping for some input. I have built my pc before, but I am not great at figuring out what I really should go with. Any help is appreciated. 

 

PS. Looks like you guys have put together a terrific set up here!

[rootsrat]

You know what I'm actually considering upgrading to a 660 GTX soon myself (thanks to Aiyen for the recommendation). Specifiaclly, a EVGA model that has 3 GB VRAM. The only thing I'm debaiting myself is if I should get that or get the Nexus 7 (or similiar), which is simillary priced. Any opinions on the matter?

I have factory oc'd ASUS GTX 660 Direct Cu II TOP and I am extremly happy with it. It runs every single game on maxed out settings without any problems - apart from heavily modded Skyrim, but that's due to 2GB VRAM and only 4GB of system RAM. See my thread here.

 

As for Nexus 7 I do own one and I would highly recommend it likewise. It's a brilliant little device that run very smoothly, and the display quality is awesome. I'd strongly disagree with Bes - mine is not slow for gaming at all, as for media - yeah, the screen may be not massive, but the resolution and quality is excellent. You can also get nice Bluetooth keyboard for it, which makes using it even easier :) Defo recommend. In fact, 4 people apart from me from my department own N7 and all are really happy. They're all proper geeks and tech-savvy, so judge by yourself :)

[Besidilo]

Hey, don't get me wrong, I love my Nexus 7. It does have a terrible I/O performance, though, and it's visible in many games.

 

I'm not just making stuff up, it's easy to see in a number of games which run a lot better on non-Tegra devices. Try playing Order and Chaos on your Nexus, for example. Unfortunately, Nvidia dropped the ball on that one and have since improved their SoC with Tegra 4 towards achieving balanced I/O performance.

 

Besides, you could always go on XDA dev forums and see the multitude of complaints with regards to how it handles newer games. It also gets awfully laggy very quickly when multitasking. Just saying that you have a few geeky friends who like the Nexus doesn't make my statement any less valid. :)

 

It's an excellent device for the money, but it's quite dated by today's standards when it comes to performance. It will still handle mostly everything, but not as well as I'd like it to.

[Aiyen]

I would always recommend EVGA if you are going Nvidia. They are the only company I ever dealt with that accepted they had sold me a card with faulty memory and as a "sorry" they sendt back a more powerful card. That sort of treatment means I am willing to throw the extra money their way!

Also their Factory OC models have some very nice cooling solutions. I only have small regrets that I did not get the 3Gb model... but alas circumstances was so that I could not!

 

I know nothing about tablets or ebookreaders so I am sure what other people are saying is not entirely wrong! :)

[DoYouEvenModBro]

I would always recommend EVGA if you are going Nvidia. They are the only company I ever dealt with that accepted they had sold me a card with faulty memory and as a "sorry" they sendt back a more powerful card. That sort of treatment means I am willing to throw the extra money their way!

Also their Factory OC models have some very nice cooling solutions. I only have small regrets that I did not get the 3Gb model... but alas circumstances was so that I could not!

 

I know nothing about tablets or ebookreaders so I am sure what other people are saying is not entirely wrong! :)

I've had the best customer experience with EVGA as well. For AMD, I like Sapphire. 

[WilliamImm]

Right. So, right now, it looks like getting the GTX 660 is the best option. I found a factory overclocked version of the card that, after the rebate price, costs about the same as the non-OC'd version. And since EVGA has reliable support and good cooling - I'd go for that model.

 

I'll see if I can put up the Radeon (from Sapphire, no less) on Ebay or Cragslist and see what happens.

[MontyMM]

I'd say 2 GB of VRAM is probably fine for most games out there. When you start getting into Skyrim and modding, 3 GB would be better. Anything over 3 I think is unnecessary unless you go into resolutions higher than 1080p or multi-monitors, etc. 

 

The problem with thinking about the question in terms of resolution and multiple monitors, is that is doesn't consider the possibility game engines simply generating larger and more complex worlds, with a greater amount of more detailed objects displayed. It assumes that the amount of texture data required will remain fairly static in coming games, and that only increasing the size of the scene displayed in two dimensions will increase the demand.

The vram that is required to simply display the pixels of a given display size is only part of the consideration.

 

More powerful engines that render 'deeper' and more complex spaces will include more objects requiring texture data, and yet more to be cached, if you want to avoid the stuttering of texture loads as the scene changes. You can demonstrate this even in Skyrim (a pretty dated engine) by jacking up the ugrids and watching the vram demand climb as the world space grows. You can also see this with mods that add variety to flora and fauna, for example - more varied objects in the scene boost the vram requirement, even if their resolution is at the lower end. With boosted ugrids and a good card, you can also see how vram use can increase significantly, while still retaining solid framerates on current gpus.

 

The size of textures, like any digital images, is also not determined only by its X x Y size. It is also determined by the detail and complexity of the image, and the amount of degradation that is tolerated in the level of compression; there is scope for texture sizes to increase in ways other than sheer resolution.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

 

I'd say 2 GB of VRAM is probably fine for most games out there. When you start getting into Skyrim and modding 3 GB would be better. Anything over 3 I think is unnecessary unless you go into resolutions higher than 1080p or multi-monitors, etc.

The problem with thinking about the question in terms of resolution and multiple monitors, is that is doesn't consider the possibility game engines simply generating larger and more complex worlds, with a greater amount of more detailed objects displayed. It assumes that the amount of texture data required will remain fairly static in coming games, and that only increasing the size of the scene displayed in two dimensions will increase the demand.

The vram that is required to simply display the pixels of a given display size is only part of the consideration.

 

More powerful engines that render 'deeper' and more complex spaces will include more objects requiring texture data, and yet more to be cached, if you want to avoid the stuttering of texture loads as the scene changes. You can demonstrate this even in Skyrim (a pretty dated engine) by jacking up the ugrids and watching the vram demand climb as the world space grows. You can also see this with mods that add variety to flora and fauna, for example - more varied objects in the scene boost the vram requirement, even if their resolution is at the lower end. With boosted ugrids and a good card, you can also see how vram use can increase significantly, while still retaining solid framerates on current gpus.

 

The size of textures, like any digital images, is also not determined only by its X x Y size. It is also determined by the detail and complexity of the image, and the amount of degradation that is tolerated in the level of compression; there is scope for texture sizes to increase in ways other than sheer resolution.

 

Yup, I think you're absolutely right. I'm interested to see how much VRAM the upcoming "Witcher 3" game will use. I'd say at least 2.

[rootsrat]

Right. So, right now, it looks like getting the GTX 660 is the best option. I found a factory overclocked version of the card that, after the rebate price, costs about the same as the non-OC'd version. And since EVGA has reliable support and good cooling - I'd go for that model.

 

I'll see if I can put up the Radeon (from Sapphire, no less) on Ebay or Cragslist and see what happens.

 

The only downside to 660 model is the 192-bit bus.

[MontyMM]

 I'm interested to see how much VRAM the upcoming "Witcher 3" game will use. I'd say at least 2. 

 

I should say so.  Here is one of the first "next-gen" games to declare its recommended specs.  This only the beginning, of course, and it wants ">2gb" vram, 8GB ram.

 

Also note the much lower minimum specs.  I would expect to see this trend continue, as publishers won't want to alienate the huge market of lower spec PCs. But, as I've said, I assume we're talking about a fairly "enthusiast" audience here at STEP.

[Besidilo]

Recommended and minimum specifications are almost always a joke. They never reflect what kind of experience you're going to get with said hardware or what settings they are tested at. They tell you exactly nothing.

[Besidilo]

Right. So' date=' right now, it looks like getting the GTX 660 is the best option. I found a factory overclocked version of the card that, after the rebate price, costs about the same as the non-OC'd version. And since EVGA has reliable support and good cooling - I'd go for that model.

 

I'll see if I can put up the Radeon (from Sapphire, no less) on Ebay or Cragslist and see what happens.

The only downside to 660 model is the 192-bit bus.

I'd say the main downside to the GTX 660 3GB is that it's more expensive than the significantly faster Radeon 7870 XT (which is a cut down version of Radeon 7970, with smaller bus).

[Aiyen]

I'd say the main downside to the GTX 660 3GB is that it's more expensive than the significantly faster Radeon 7870 XT (which is a cut down version of Radeon 7970, with smaller bus).

There is the difference between Nvidia and AMD on the driver and feature side that is worth considering. It depends on what you want it for. For Skyrim Nvidia is just more optimized. For ENB Nvidia is just more optimized. 

Last I checked then CUDA was also superior to the AMD alternative. 

 

So yeah the price tag is a bit higher. Even more so when you get brands like EVGA.. but I find it is worth it! Especially since some brands (Both AMD and Nvidia) offer OC tools, but do not offer a good cooling solution. 

That said then the Radeon 7870 XT would most likely be my choice if going for an AMD card! 

[DoYouEvenModBro]

I'd say the main downside to the GTX 660 3GB is that it's more expensive than the significantly faster Radeon 7870 XT (which is a cut down version of Radeon 7970, with smaller bus).

There is the difference between Nvidia and AMD on the driver and feature side that is worth considering. It depends on what you want it for. For Skyrim Nvidia is just more optimized. For ENB Nvidia is just more optimized. 

Last I checked then CUDA was also superior to the AMD alternative. 

 

So yeah the price tag is a bit higher. Even more so when you get brands like EVGA.. but I find it is worth it! Especially since some brands (Both AMD and Nvidia) offer OC tools, but do not offer a good cooling solution. 

That said then the Radeon 7870 XT would most likely be my choice if going for an AMD card! 

I agree. The reason I like AMD is because it is usually like $50-100 cheaper compared to the equivalent Nvidia card. I think that AMD drivers have definitely gotten better and responded quicker to new releases and I'm hoping that that improvement will only continue as PC gaming picks up speed again. The only thing that has pissed me off recently is that AMD does not support Nvidia physx. I recently played Metro: Last Light and was unable to use the awesome physx physics effects. This fault could also be attributed to the developers for only optimizing their games for nvidia but regardless it was definitely a letdown as I felt  I didn't get the full metro last light experience. 

[WilliamImm]

Well, I've used AMD for a while for the same reason as DYEMB: it's cheaper. I use them for processors, and I used them for GPUs. But, with major price drops on the 660GTX, better support for ENB and Skyrim, my pretty small amount of VRAM, and CUDA (which is important for me as a supporter of distrubited computing), I'm going to make the switch to Nvidia. PhysX is a nice bonus - in fact, I'm getting Metro automatically by getting the new graphics card. So, it should all work out. And I don't have to worry as much about getting over the VRAM cap...

[DoYouEvenModBro]

Well I've used AMD for a while for the same reason as DYEMB: it's cheaper. I use them for processors, and I used them for GPUs. But, with major price drops on the 660GTX, better support for ENB and Skyrim, my pretty small amount of VRAM, and CUDA (which is important for me as a supporter of distrubited computing), I'm going to make the switch to Nvidia. PhysX is a nice bonus - in fact, I'm getting Metro automatically by getting the new graphics card. So, it should all work out. And I don't have to worry as much about getting over the VRAM cap...

I guess I was also talking more along the high-end models for both companies. I got the 7970 ghz, which was about $400, since the equivalent, the 680, was around $500. I don't know if one card is slightly better than the other but for arguments sake I am just assuming that they are basically the same in terms of performance. I think the 680 has 4gb of VRAM whereas the 7970 ghz only has 3 GB I think. You can also get a 6gb 7970 but that was just unnecessary. 

 

What exactly is CUDA?