Graphics Card's

[Jordan4]

Hello. I understand that this is most likely a beat to death topic however I searched and found nothing recent and as we know graphics cards come out all the time and every possible card cant possibly be discussed. Anyways I just want to see what people are running and who's running max settings flawlessly on what card. At the moment I just began my search yesterday and my preliminary thoughts are going to the ATI 7950 or potentially an nvidia 660Ti however I am open to any option. Right now I am running an ATI diamond 6770 and it is substandard for A-10c. I want something thats ganna run max settings with all graphic enhancement options on. My CPU is an Intel Q9400 quad core at 2.66ghz and 6gb RAM. I would love to hear input from people who are running max settings and with what card they are doing it with. My price range is $250-$330ish. Thank you for your input.

 

P.S can anybody explain the difference between the manufactures of these card such as EVGA or ASUS or MSI? I see similar cards made by different brands and the price difference seems to be rather large so I would just like to know which companies are the most reputable.

[TheHashWeasel]

I'm going to preface this by saying I am not a fan of AMD and have not used any of their cards for years. I know quite a few people that do use them, and most of them have experienced issues at one time or another due to drivers or games that simply don't run as well (and sometimes won't run at all on initial release) with Radeon cards. I've stuck with nVidia since the 8800 generation, so I will stick to what I know here...

 

That said, the 660ti will probably do a great job. I'm currently running a 560ti and I am running at all settings on high with the exception of water. Putting water on high seems to slow things down for no good reason. Anti-Aliasing is at 4x, and I have TXAA on as well, running at 1920x1080. I always run DCS World on my primary monitor, and I have a secondary monitor as well running at 1280x1024 showing my mail client, music player and instant messenger. Frame rates hold solid at 60FPS 90% of the time, dipping to the mid-30's in heavy action.

 

The difference in manufacturer has to do primarily with cooling solutions and out-of-the-box clock speeds. For instance, MSI is the brand I've used for my past two video cards and I've been very pleased with their product. Their claim to fame is "military grade components" and "Twin Frozor" cooling solution. I've found their cooling solution works very well and is pretty quiet too. Other brands use different solutions, such as Asus' "DirectCuII" or Gigabyte's "Windforce" cooling. Honestly though, most of it is bluster unless you plan on overclocking your video card, in which case I'd do some research.

 

So due to personal experience I'll go on record and recommend a 660ti. From what manufacturer is really up to you. If overclocking or noisiness or termperatures don't mean a lot to you, you might check out EVGA. If I'm not mistaken they have a lifetime guarantee which is great. Additionally, if you ARE interested in overclocking, HardOCP recently ran an article showing the Galaxy-branded 660ti can keep up with the far more expensive GeForce 670!

[Bodo]

I'd go with EVGA. After having used ASUS and MSI (albeit MSI was a good while ago) I can't fault EVGA's service. Especially with their Step Up incentive. Not that there is anything particuarly wrong with any of the famous brands. I've used ASUS and Gigabyte mostly for Motherboards, I'm currently running an ASUS. Have done for many years. Now n then I build a Gigabyte PC and their boards are fine, too. I'm gonna try ASROCK next I think after hearing good things.

 

If it's gonna come down to buying a GPU again in the future, after so long hearing good things about them, I'd get EVGA again.

Really, or more importantly I think what it comes down to is make sure you look at reviews and see what gives you the performance you require or price performance rather

 

If I find a product that I like the look of, I keep checking for any issues that may have been talked about for a short while and compare benchmarks. With the brands and what they offer it's often more abouot the different types of clock speeds given to certain cards or differing cooling solutions so you can over-clock more or run them more quietly.

 

I run an

 

i5 3570K (ex Core 2 Quad Q9550)

ASUS P8Z77 V-Pro (Ex Gigabyte EP45 UD3)

EVGA GTX 670 (Ex EVGA 560Ti Classified - Ex Asus GTX460 DirectCU TOP) 8GB Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz RAM (Ex 4GB Corsair XMS2 800MHZ 6400) 128GB Samsung 830 SSD with Windows 7, ARMA and DCS W

 

and the difference is huge when it comes to the graphics performance. I also noticed when using the 560Ti/670 with my Quad Core that the performance was still limited. After getting the i5 3570K the feel of the sim is a lot smoother with more eye candy turned on. Running A10 in World though I think there are times when I go down to about 35-40 fps.

 

With everything set to high, TSAA, HDR, mirrors, heat blur, high civ traffic etc etc all on. This is with 1650 x1080 and cockpit res at 512 every frame. If I turn off TSSAA/MSAA civ traffic to low, heat blur off water to medium, then I still get same lowest FPS so even the i5 3570K can't seem to cope with DCS or it's lack of fine tuning ( I suppose it's a bit of both??)

 

So what this tells me is that your CPU will be a limiting factor, but even a full on upgrade isn't gonna do wonders. A Nice GPU, like a 560Ti or 670 like mine will give you great graphics but the main thing about this sim is the CPU.

 

Maybe it's not optimized enough? My i5 is running one core near flat out and another about 30%. Two cores just sitting there doing nowt. It's a shame coz I think it could probably work/perform nicely on Quad cores from about 2.5 GHz upwards if it wasn't for the fact it can't use more than two cores.??

 

What you may really need, though, is a CPU that's capable of high GHz speeds, anything from 3.4GHz upwards. I OC'd my Q9550 from 2.8 to 3.4, a simple OC that worked wonders and really could still hold its own when it comes to DCS.

 

I wonder if ED are going to improve the way the code runs on 3rd gen i5s etc or is it just that i5/i7s aren't the upgrade we had expected? Sorry that's probably best left for another thread.

 

EDIT: sorry if I repeated what the guy who posted before me said...Took me ages to type this between phone calls and a very late dinner...

Edited August 29, 2012 by Bodo

[cichlidfan]

Since everyone has explained things so well, I will just add that I have been happy with ASUS/Nvidia.

 

Unfortunately, with your CPU it is not possible to run DCS maxxed out with any card on the market. A decent card will get you decent performance but maxxed out is not going to happen without a CPU upgrade.

[Jordan4]

EVGA GTX 670 (Ex EVGA 560Ti Classified - Ex Asus GTX460 DirectCU TOP)

 

Im confused... is the GTX 670 the same chipset as the 560Ti? If so how does the 660Ti stack up against your setup?

 

A decent card will get you decent performance but maxxed out is not going to happen without a CPU upgrade.

 

Would this do the trick? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103960

[cichlidfan]

I am not an AMD person so I know nothing at all about what performance to expect. Personally, these days I think you get more bang for your buck with Intel.

[Jordan4]

Any input on which would be a good one for about $150-$200?

[Jordan4]

I saw a video that newegg posted on the 660TI that said that it is good except that its 196 bit is not suitable for some of the graphic features such as msaa and tssaa and such. I'm am so utterly confused because for the same price range the ATI 7950 offers 384 bit what am I missing? I want to make a purchase A.S.A.P.

[cichlidfan]

Any input on which would be a good one for about $150-$200?

 

 

If you are talking CPU, there won't be anything in that price range because you will need a new motherboard, and memory, as well and the mobo alone is going to be most of your budget.

[Madman777]

I had a GTX 670 that worked perfect all settings max. I recently sold that card for other reasons and just picked up a MSI 660ti. Basically it's performing identical to the 670.

 

For $300 it's worth it. I have everything maxed out, including the clutter and tree distance..etc.

 

I'm running on a 27" monitor at 1920 x 1080. I can't speak for any other higher resolution.

[Spetz]

I've recently switched over from nVidia to AMD, stepping up from a GTX 260 to an AMD HD 7970 that in included in my Alienware build. From what I have thrown at it, nothing slows it down. In DCS World I have everything maxed out, 1900x1200, some vis mods etc and I get a minimum 30 FPS. With custom settings I was over 90+. In FSX, same res I vary from 50-100 FPS running all Orbx mods and others.

 

That said, I do like it, but there are complaints. The biggest being the Catalyst Control Centre. It sucks. It has very basic settings and you WILL have to install a program called RadeonPro. It is in my opinion the only way to actually do anything with the card settings wise. The last complaint isn't really a complaint. I'm new to AMD cards, so it's just different and taking me some time to dial everything in properly.

 

I'm using this with a 3930k Hexa core CPU as well and 16Gb of RAM.

[Bodo]

JOrdan, what's your exact set up?

 

If I were you then I'd maybe overclock the Q9400, maybe you'd need a good heat sink and fan to do this. I could recommend a Megahelems but anything around £20+ should be good. The arctic freezer pro seems to do well but it may be quite noisy, dunno.:

 

I have a Megahalems with a couple of v quiet Nexus 120mm fans and a Scythe S-flex case fan. All quieter than my GTX670, which is fairly quiet... and all doing a good job at cooling my CPU. On my Q9550 I used this set up with a decent/adequate enough overclock and only ever got temps in the late 50s.

 

On this Ivy-bridge set up I get temps around 30 idle to early 40s in DCS. I haven't OC'd my 3570K yet as I've no need at this point.

 

Once you get as much as you can out of your CPU, you'll be pushing your FSB (Front Side Bus) speed up a bit. For your CPU its bus speed is 333MHz, like my old processor. Now if you push that up to 400MHz, which shouldn't be toooo hard. you'll then be getting a speed of 3.2GHz out of your processor instead of 2.4GHz and also a FSB total of 1600MHz. This would be quite a decent gain in performance for your system.

 

(4x400MHz=1600MHz)

 

Multiply by 4 because the FSB is bus speed 'quad pumped'. So work out the Bus speed of a CPU and then times by 4 to find Front Side Bus speed.

 

Now this is a risk you could take but it's really up to whether you want to squeeze a bit more juice out of what you have. It can weaken the lifespan (although really it's not enough to worry) but if you over volt things you could do damage to the motherboard/CPU (however it's difficult to do that if you take things slowly and check temperatures...)

 

It is difficult to get right, though and I'm no expert! I didn't push my CPU as much as I could, it was a moderate over-clock from 2.8 to 3.4GHz but it allowed me to get the FSB to 1600 and working nicely with my RAM which was running 800MHz in Dual Channel mode (which I'll mention in a moment)..

 

You do need to keep testing the CPU with utilities like Intel Burn Test/Prime 95 etc but once you get there you'll notice an increase in performance/responsiveness of your PC.

 

It's always a good idea to make sure you are running your memory, as long as you have matched pairs, in Dual Channel mode, 800MHz speed if applicable.

 

This in theory gets you a memory bandwidth of around 1600MHz, matching your CPU's bandwidth, although it doesn't quite work out like that but we'll overlook that. You could also benefit from getting the higher speed DDR2 memory of 1066MHz/8500, leaving room to push your CPU's Bus and therefore Front Side Bus speed even further, or it would allow you to under-clock your RAM (lowering it to 800MHz) and tighten the latency timings that you may have heard of. (CAS latency)

 

You could also get an upgrade for your CPU by selling yours for say 50-60 GBP and upgrade to a Q9550 like I had or maybe a Q9650 depending on whether your motherboard supports them and you can grab one at a good price. Check your motheboard's CPU support list on the website.

 

Importantly, it may be that 667MHz is set as the default speed in your BIOS, even with higher spec RAM that you might have, so that's worth checking first and foremost.

 

Maybe you should find out exactly what RAM you have and then you could check how to set it in your BIOS to run at its correct specification, if it isn't already.

Memory modules have what's called SPD or Serial Presence Detect and this negotiates a specification to your BIOS for how to run the RAM and is often lower than the ability the RAM modules can achieve. Again, it depends on what you have inside your computer but it could be that you could squeeze a bit more out of the performance of your memory.

 

Now once you push as much out of your CPU/RAM you could be able to splash a bit on a GPU and get the benefits. Question being, what do you currently run?

 

I'm pleased I got the 670 over the 660Ti because of the memory bandwidth advantage but a 660Ti will give you more than enough performance and it's a great card and would probably suit me fine as well for what I need/ed. I couldn't get one as it hadn't been released by the time my EVGA step up program would have run out...Not complaining, though.....

 

It depends on what you want to achieve and how much you want to spend, you could always go back a generation to the 500 series, which is a different generation of GPU compared to the 600 series, at least the higher end 600 series, and find something that doesn't cost a huge amount now that the latest GPUs are out. The 500 series GPUs still perform really nicely, Especially the 560Ti 448 and 570 etc.

 

I used the 560Ti 448 with the slightly higher bandwidth than the 560Ti. If you could find either of those within your budget, second hand, you'd be set up quite nicely.

Even a GTX 460 and upwards could be found for a small amount. I remember I sold my 460 for about 70 pounds only 7-8 months ago it I'm sure it would still be an adequate upgrade for someone.. It certainly might give you enough power for what you want, as a step up from what you have at this point in time, anyway.

 

I'm not sure about AMD but maybe others could recommend a GPU of a gen or so ago at a reasonable price...

 

I can't really think of anything else to suggest. Just update the thread with your current set up:

Memory/Motherboard/Power Supply... and that should give people here an idea as to what is possible.

 

There is always time, if you have $150 now then work hard or be good etc and see if you can maybe double that before too long. Making the most of what you have and finding the best possible upgrade for a current set up is the best advice. I think there is also a bit of a knack to knowing when to sell a CPU/GPU and put money towards a newer generation. I sold my Q9550 recently after originally buying it for 10 pounds less a year and a half ago. It was a great CPU, but like yours, it'll slowly start falling in price now that sandy bridge i7s are competing with Ivy bridge. So, something to worth thinking about.

 

Hope that helps. Sorry if I rambled.

Edited August 30, 2012 by Bodo

[Jordan4]

I had a GTX 670 that worked perfect all settings max. I recently sold that card for other reasons and just picked up a MSI 660ti. Basically it's performing identical to the 670.

 

For $300 it's worth it. I have everything maxed out, including the clutter and tree distance..etc.

 

I'm running on a 27" monitor at 1920 x 1080. I can't speak for any other higher resolution.

 

Do you have msaa, tssaa, HDR on?

[Madman777]

Do you have msaa, tssaa, HDR on?

 

Yes sir. Everything that could be on was turned on. All slider were up to the max...etc.

 

I'm getting rock solid performance from MSI 660ti. This specific card, without any manual overclocking goes up to 1.23Ghz. Extremely fast.

 

But on any resolution higher than 1920 x 1080 I can't speak for. I know someone who said the card doesn't perform that great on higher resolutions...but that person was basing this on Metro 2033 and games like that.

[Jordan4]

Well I picked up a 670. It is able to run max settings however during missions when more stuff is there it slows down. I guess my bottleneck is my CPU.

[Bodo]

Yeh, like I and cichlidfan said. A greatd card, though so you're starting to build up the bits and pieces for a news system.

Now it's either read my post and over clock or save up and buy CPU/RAM and MOBO.

 

OCing your PC is worth it. If you do, make sure you set your PCI-E to 100 MHz and not auto.

Edited September 9, 2012 by Bodo

[cichlidfan]

. I guess my bottleneck is my CPU.

 

I wasn't guessing.

[chardly38]

I just went from an hd 5770 to a hd 7970 sapphire. What a huge difference. I also went from a asus P8H67 mb to a Asus Sabertooth to get the 3.0 pci speed but come to find out that my I7 2600k does not support it.:( Only works with Ivy Bridge. I have the gpu speed to 1050 from 900 stock. Have not over clocked the cpu because i not sure how.

 

Textures High Secnes Medium Water Low Visable Range Medium MSAD 2x

HDR off Preload 80% Im running a Res of 5292 x 1050.

 

After looking through Newegg TV if you spend 400.00 on a cpu do the same with your gpu.

 

Looks to be a Nvidia thread. At that research research research.

[Jordan4]

Everybody in real life was telling me to get Nvidia and it came down to the ATI 7970 vs the Nvidia GTX 670. All of the stats on the 7970 seemed better. Higher ram, 348 bit mem bus vs GTX's 256. I could not understand why anybody would recomend the Nvidia over the ATI given those specs. What converted me was when the salesperson told me that a CUDA core is like 4 stream proccesors. After doing the math it was determined that the NVIDIA vastly outnumberd the ATI if what he said was true ( still havent heard that from anybody else ) Well the card certainly made an improvment however in heavily produced campaign missions I am averaging an FPS of 10-16 and in one I just played I was getting 0-6 fps for a few minutes until it went up to about 6-10. Very dissapointing. So I truly hope that getting a new motherboard/cpu will allow me the super performance that I am looking for. Any suggestions?

[EtherealN]

Higher ram, 348 bit mem bus vs GTX's 256. I could not understand why anybody would recomend the Nvidia over the ATI given those specs. What converted me was when the salesperson told me that a CUDA core is like 4 stream proccesors.

 

That's an extremely simplistic way of looking at it. You really can't do such a direct comparison.

 

Regarding memory, the 670's are available in 4GB configurations. Memory bus width isn't a big deal since it is compensated for - though it does still have a lower throughput than the 7970. Pixel throughput is about the same, though the 670 has a slightly lower Texel throughput.

 

The thing that the raw stats never tell you anything about though is the driver impact, which can be significant - as well as both game-specific tweaks in the drivers and GPU-specific tweaks in the games (like those "nVidia: the way it's meant to be played" title screens...)

 

So I truly hope that getting a new motherboard/cpu will allow me the super performance that I am looking for. Any suggestions?

 

As mentioned: that CPU you're having is indeed a huge bottleneck.

I'd suggest a mid-range Z77 motherboard with an i5-3570K processor and 8GB of 1600MHz DDR3 RAM. (Going faster than 1600MHz on the RAM won't really give you much, and 1600MHz RAM DIMMs are practically free...)

 

Make sure to check if you have a 4- or 8-pin CPU connector on your current rig and PSU and compare with what you've got on the prospective Z77 mobo (most likely 8-pin).

[Bodo]

Jordan, I've given you two recommendations, 1 about overclocking and another in a post in the performance threads under DCS world about what parts you should get to make the most of your GTX670.

 

Are you reading these answers? Haven't you found any components that you want to ask about?

 

Going with what Ether has said, but maybe drop the 3570K to one less dedicated to overclocking considering you will most likely not be doing so.

Get this RAM:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-017-SA

 

and find a decent socket 1155 motherboard that has what you need. Again, if you don't want to to overclock and don't need SLi then you can find a board less expensive.Why not come back with some you've found and the rest of us here can have a look and give you some feedback.

Edited September 25, 2012 by Bodo

[blindone]

Jordan,

 

I'll chime in since I have had a similar situation to you. I formerly ran the Intel q9400, at stock 2.66 with a GTX 550 ti gpu, 8gb ram. My avg FPS were in the teens in all flying conditions, especially when free-track was on. Add ground war, extra planes etc and the FPS went down to like you said, 2-6 fps.

 

I OC'd my Q9400 to 3.2 and the fps went up to low/mid 20's and under heavy taxing 8-12fps was common. (playable)

 

About 3 weeks ago I swapped my MOBO, processor and ram out for an Intel i5 2500k, a gigabyte z68, and 8gb ram.

I spent 159 on the processor (sale), 100 on the MOBO (discount rack) and 35 on the ram. With the same settings on the game, I easily got 60-80 FPS. I have since turned up most all the settings to high or medium and still average 40fps with lows in the 25-30 range.

 

 

I'd suggest the overclock until you have a few hundred dollars, get the i5 2500k, use the 150 you save from the i7's on your mobo and you're set.