Choosing a Graphics Card

[Besidilo]

I just bought a 670 4GB for $476 from Best Buy online: I think my motherboard fits it-but I might be wrong. The only problem might be the 'additional requirement' of a particular 'pin count' regarding an adaptor off the power supply. However' date=' I'm not too savvy, do there might be complications I don't know see, yet.[/quote']

 

That's bloody expensive. By the time 4GB VRAM becomes a requirement, you would be better off investing that $120 towards a new card.

[Besidilo]

Alright, I went to Microcenter, I big computer store here near Cincinnati and I grabbed a Zotac 660 Ti. This is my first Zotac. I have only ever owned EVGA and PNY so we will see. All of the 660 Ti's were roughly similarly priced at about 299. The superclocked ones were a little higher and I think the EVGA card was 329 it had a few extra Hertz on the clock but wasn't worth 30 bucks to me. I put the 30 into the extended warranty. Cool thing about the warranty is I can take this card back for store value and do an even swap or put the price I paid toward another card so when the higher cards come down to the 400 range I can take this in, give them 100 bucks and walk out with the next beast card. 

 

Results are night and day. I fresh installed Skyrim, used all hi resolution stuff, put every step mod in, got Countervibe ENB in there it is rock solid at 60 and drops to 59 here and there. I am set at 4xAA, 16 AF at 1920 x 1080. I play on a home theater pc. The only thing difeerent I am trying versus against the 560 Ti is Adaptive Sync in the Nvidia console. Fraps has never went above 60 which is my refresh rate so to be honest, I am not sure if the Adaptive Sync is doing its thing or not. 

 

My verdict: this was money well spent. 

Extended warranties are useless if you're going to upgrade your graphics card within the next 3 years (which most gamers do). I see what you mean with the upgrade path, it may be useful.

 

Adaptive Sync will lock your framerate to 60 (vsync) when you're above that rate. My advice is force vsync on and use 58 fps limiter in Nvidia Inspector to reduce input lag, since like you said, your fps isn't really dropping anyway.

 

Also, force the AF from the drivers, disable in-game AA/AF, unless you're using some form of transparency AA as well. Otherwise use SMAA, looks almost as good as 4xMSAA and reduces the jaggies on transparent textures as well, at almost no performance cost. The extra power you can invest in a beefy ENB config with SSAO and DoF.

[vile83r]

Where is the smaa setting? In the Nvidia control panel?

[frihyland]

Standalone SMAA  Make sure you disable AA in game and in your driver. Check the ENB guide in the wiki if you want to use it together with ENB.

[SmegmusMagnus]

...okay-I have news germane to my specific earlier participation w/in this thread; there may be some use to the overall topic as well...

 

...anyhoo: I finally got my Galaxy GTX 670 GC 4GB DDR5 from Best Buy's online site; please note-this ain't no plug for the corporate/franchise modality---I have a credit card w/this store, which I felt would help me when rationalizing the purchase to my wife---for $476.

---(before going further I would like to thank the person who linked me the address where to get adapters, though what I needed shipped w/my purchase)---

 

...so, having got through the prelude, the rest of this will be fairly short.

 

Amazing! It's smoother than playing Morrowind on its lowest settings ever was for me.

 

...please note: I am using Windows 7 64-bit, 4-core 2.9 GHz, w/ 4GB RAM; fairly modest system!

 

It must be admitted that I can no longer say w/certainty which iteration of STEP I tested this on-because I have been away too long, and am not good enough at labeling my back-ups; however, I believe my test-version was an augmented STEP 2.1 w/ saves from when that version was current.

 

Even if I am slightly incorrect about the version, I can tell you that I just played for almost 2 hours w/ absolutely 0-lag, and 0-CTDs! I tested by riding/running around/into Whiterun; running/riding through full 24hr. cycles in the wilderness, as well as in the Giant cave east of Riften, and picking a fight in Riften castle(in God mode, so as to survive long enough to get large numbers of combatants); again I say-Huzzah!!!

 

...anyway, I'm tired and going to bed: I just wanted to say that this card seems, preliminarily, awesome: I think that I will be able to maximize STEPpy Skyrim most fully...

 

...though I will let you all know whichever way it goes.

 

 

Thank you.