Looking to upgrade my 5 year old GPU

[M1ke10191]

What is your guys' opinions on the Nvidia GTX 780 compared to the 780 Ti? I can afford either but obviously I'd rather save the few hundred bucks if there is a negligible gain in performance. This leads into my next question. I bought this computer from TigerDirect almost 5 years ago and all that's been added is an SSD; everything else is stock from back then. 

http://www.cnet.com/products/gateway-fx6831-01/

Processor: Intel Core i7 860 2.8 ghz
Power Supply: 750W rated 80 plus
Motherboard: Gateway H57M01
Video Card: AMD Radeon HD 5850
Ram: 8 GB

I'm new to upgrading hardware and I wanted to make sure that a new video card is compatible with that motherboard. 

My main focus is gaming, with the games I play being BF4, various MMOs, ArmA III, etc. Will a straight up video card upgrade allow for max settings on ultra with 60+ FPS or am I to the point now where I should also be looking towards getting a better CPU (and presumably motherboard)? If so, what do you guys recommend? I use a 1080 monitor right now but I may have plans of setting up three monitors in the not-so-near future. I'd rather not SLI anything, either.

Like I said, I'm a novice with this stuff so if you need more info, let me know.

Thanks,

-Mike

[dragoon20005]

get the 780 normal

 

OC the CPU

[P e r s e p h o n e]

What is your guys' opinions on the Nvidia GTX 780 compared to the 780 Ti? I can afford either but obviously I'd rather save the few hundred bucks if there is a negligible gain in performance. This leads into my next question. I bought this computer from TigerDirect almost 5 years ago and all that's been added is an SSD; everything else is stock from back then. 

http://www.cnet.com/products/gateway-fx6831-01/

Processor: Intel Core i7 860 2.8 ghz

Power Supply: 750W rated 80 plus

Motherboard: Gateway FX6831 (I think)

Video Card: AMD Radeon HD 5850

Ram: 8 GB

I'm new to upgrading hardware and I wanted to make sure that a new video card is compatible with that motherboard. 

My main focus is gaming, with the games I play being BF4, various MMOs, ArmA III, etc. Will a straight up video card upgrade allow for max settings on ultra with 60+ FPS or am I to the point now where I should also be looking towards getting a better CPU (and presumably motherboard)? If so, what do you guys recommend? I use a 1080 monitor right now but I may have plans of setting up three monitors in the not-so-near future. I'd rather not SLI anything, either.

Like I said, I'm a novice with this stuff so if you need more info, let me know.

Thanks,

-Mike

That's not the motherboard that's the computer model

[P e r s e p h o n e]

get the 780 normal

 

OC the CPU

I second this.

[Jerakl]

get the 780 normal

 

OC the CPU

This.

[I/O]

Save more and get the same or better performance with the R9 290 GPU. Kinda makes the 780 redundant.

[Kiwiandapple]

@M1ke10191 

 

Welcome to the forum! 

 

A small tip when you ask for any hardware advise or just want to know what hardware a certain PC got. I recommend to download Speccy! (free version is fine!)
It's a program that lists all the hardware of a system aside from the PSU. It's impossible for software to find out wich PSU it is because it's only connected with power cables to the motherboard. No data is send. 

So this way you don't have to guess what hardware you got. Then you want to make a snapshot and post the url here. 

 

Are you 100% set to go with Nvidia. The cheapest GTX780 right now is $430, while the cheapest R9-290 is $359. 
Both of these cards perform about the  same, but the 780 only got 3GB of VRAM while the 290 got 4GB. This will be something you might notice a fair bit when going for a triple 1080p setup. 

Some games are allready getting close to the 3GB limit that a 780 got on 1440p resolution. Not sure about triple 1080. But 5760x1080 got more pixels then 2560x1440. 6220800 vs 3686400. So for the future it might be wise to consider the R9-290. 

 

NOOOO! Don't get the 780Ti. It's in my opinion never worth it to buy either that card or the R9-290X. While the 290X is even more stupid because you can almost get the same performance out of a R9-290 when overclocking it. 

It's just not worth the extra performance you get for the money.  

 

This as well would leave money to upgrade the motherboard and CPU, wich is not really needed as your current CPU will not bottleneck the GPU that much.
It is running on PCI-E 2.0, wich is older and slower then PCI-E 3.0. But the performance gain isn't that big so it's not a huge bottleneck. It's just something you could consider. 
Motherboards did improve a whole lot in the past 5 years. 

[coalminer071]

thing is he has a gateway prebuilt factory comp- i believe that mobo is bios locked therefore he cant oc at all. Dont quote me on this. just a quick google search.

[M1ke10191]

That's not the motherboard that's the computer model

 

 

I downloaded Speccy and got the right info. It's a Gateway H57M01.

 

 

@M1ke10191 

 

Welcome to the forum! 

 

A small tip when you ask for any hardware advise or just want to know what hardware a certain PC got. I recommend to download Speccy! (free version is fine!)

It's a program that lists all the hardware of a system aside from the PSU. It's impossible for software to find out wich PSU it is because it's only connected with power cables to the motherboard. No data is send. 

So this way you don't have to guess what hardware you got. Then you want to make a snapshot and post the url here. 

 

Are you 100% set to go with Nvidia. The cheapest GTX780 right now is $430, while the cheapest R9-290 is $359. 

Both of these cards perform about the  same, but the 780 only got 3GB of VRAM while the 290 got 4GB. This will be something you might notice a fair bit when going for a triple 1080p setup. 

Some games are allready getting close to the 3GB limit that a 780 got on 1440p resolution. Not sure about triple 1080. But 5760x1080 got more pixels then 2560x1440. 6220800 vs 3686400. So for the future it might be wise to consider the R9-290. 

 

NOOOO! Don't get the 780Ti. It's in my opinion never worth it to buy either that card or the R9-290X. While the 290X is even more stupid because you can almost get the same performance out of a R9-290 when overclocking it. 

It's just not worth the extra performance you get for the money.  

 

This as well would leave money to upgrade the motherboard and CPU, wich is not really needed as your current CPU will not bottleneck the GPU that much.

It is running on PCI-E 2.0, wich is older and slower then PCI-E 3.0. But the performance gain isn't that big so it's not a huge bottleneck. It's just something you could consider. 

Motherboards did improve a whole lot in the past 5 years. 

 

Very thorough response. You've made it clear that the Ti and R90x aren't worth it. I've never had an Nvidia card before and this AMD Radeon HD 5850 is the only AMD card I've had. I haven't had any bad experiences with it and have no reason to not buy from AMD again. I don't like the whole Catalyst thing and I've heard Nvidia drivers just auto update for you, which I like. One minor (very minor) nod to an AMD card is Mantle since I play BF4. Would I slightly prefer an Nvidia card just to try out the brand? Yeah. Is that worth the $100 price difference of a better card? Eh, yes and no. Assuming this card lasts me 3-5 years the $100 isn't a big deal but at the same time I do like the cost efficiency of the AMD card you mentioned.

 

thing is he has a gateway prebuilt factory comp- i believe that mobo is bios locked therefore he cant oc at all. Dont quote me on this. just a quick google search.

 

I know absolutely nothing about OCing. I know the definition but nothing as far as how to actually do it. I'd like to give it a whirl assuming I kept temperatures and everything in check but you have a good point. I wouldn't be surprised if Gateway did that.

[M1ke10191]

Here's the requested link to my specs: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/oagiY5cetZw0Fa37FtflE84

[coalminer071]

im guessing thats your idle temps?

[P e r s e p h o n e]

 

 

I downloaded Speccy and got the right info. It's a Gateway H57M01.

 

 

 

Very thorough response. You've made it clear that the Ti and R90x aren't worth it. I've never had an Nvidia card before and this AMD Radeon HD 5850 is the only AMD card I've had. I haven't had any bad experiences with it and have no reason to not buy from AMD again. I don't like the whole Catalyst thing and I've heard Nvidia drivers just auto update for you, which I like. One minor (very minor) nod to an AMD card is Mantle since I play BF4. Would I slightly prefer an Nvidia card just to try out the brand? Yeah. Is that worth the $100 price difference of a better card? Eh, yes and no. Assuming this card lasts me 3-5 years the $100 isn't a big deal but at the same time I do like the cost efficiency of the AMD card you mentioned.

 

 

I know absolutely nothing about OCing. I know the definition but nothing as far as how to actually do it. I'd like to give it a whirl assuming I kept temperatures and everything in check but you have a good point. I wouldn't be surprised if Gateway did that.

 

Huh, I was beat on the thorough response thing. Usually everyone gives short, however good, answers, I like to explain things. Well anyways the reason why I asked about your motherboard is to see if the PCIE lanes on there can actually house a 16x size card and have the bandwidth to support it. Apparently you have a single PCIE 2.0 16x which is equivocal of the PCIE 3.0 8x which will do just fine for a single card. In the future if you do choose to go with SLI you'd have to have a new build, preferably everything save the current upgrade from the ground up. Even if you don't an upgrade will likely be an order, or at least on a wish list. The difference in FPS for a 780 and a 780Ti on 1080p build is insignificant and both cards max everything out quite well with smooth frames that its trivial. Save the extra cash for your future upgrades. 

[M1ke10191]

im guessing thats your idle temps?

 

I'm assuming so. I wasn't taxing the computer when I ran the program.

 

Huh, I was beat on the thorough response thing. Usually everyone gives short, however good, answers, I like to explain things. Well anyways the reason why I asked about your motherboard is to see if the PCIE lanes on there can actually house a 16x size card and have the bandwidth to support it. Apparently you have a single PCIE 2.0 16x which is equivocal of the PCIE 3.0 8x which will do just fine for a single card. In the future if you do choose to go with SLI you'd have to have a new build, preferably everything save the current upgrade from the ground up. Even if you don't an upgrade will likely be an order, or at least on a wish list. The difference in FPS for a 780 and a 780Ti on 1080p build is insignificant and both cards max everything out quite well with smooth frames that its trivial. Save the extra cash for your future upgrades. 

 

I appreciate it since I know so insignificantly little about motherboards. I don't think I'll do SLI/Crossfire since I've heard it can be a hassle even after everything is set up. I'm more of a "buy one real good card" kind of guy. These guys have me leaning towards the R9 290 now so Nvidia may be out of the question as it is.

[Kiwiandapple]

 

I downloaded Speccy and got the right info. It's a Gateway H57M01.

 

Very thorough response. You've made it clear that the Ti and R90x aren't worth it. I've never had an Nvidia card before and this AMD Radeon HD 5850 is the only AMD card I've had. I haven't had any bad experiences with it and have no reason to not buy from AMD again. I don't like the whole Catalyst thing and I've heard Nvidia drivers just auto update for you, which I like. One minor (very minor) nod to an AMD card is Mantle since I play BF4. Would I slightly prefer an Nvidia card just to try out the brand? Yeah. Is that worth the $100 price difference of a better card? Eh, yes and no. Assuming this card lasts me 3-5 years the $100 isn't a big deal but at the same time I do like the cost efficiency of the AMD card you mentioned.

 

I know absolutely nothing about OCing. I know the definition but nothing as far as how to actually do it. I'd like to give it a whirl assuming I kept temperatures and everything in check but you have a good point. I wouldn't be surprised if Gateway did that.

 

 

No problem! Thanks for the information. 

 

As for the auto update of the GeForce drivers. It's not completely automatic. It does download the drivers, but you still have to manually install them as far as I am aware. Not 100% sure. Others with Nvidia GPUs might be able to comment further on this. 

A thing as well for the R9-290. It comes with 3 free games with the Never Settle Bundle. Wich is fucking awesome! Including.. Battlefield.. something! :]

Sadly their website isn't awesome and it's a little bit hard for some games to figure out wich they are. 

 

im guessing thats your idle temps?

 

I assume so, but this are pretty normal tempatures for that chip and the likely hood that his cooler isn't that amazing. I am guessing the intel stock one. 

But I would suggest to open up the case and clean out all the dust it might have gathered over the span of 5 years. 

[M1ke10191]

I assume so, but this are pretty normal tempatures for that chip and the likely hood that his cooler isn't that amazing. I am guessing the intel stock one. 

But I would suggest to open up the case and clean out all the dust it might have gathered over the span of 5 years. 

 

I've cleaned it out once every few months so dust isn't a huge issue. And yeah, it's the stock cooler. Never really thought about upgrading to an aftermarket one although I wouldn't be against it.

[Kiwiandapple]

I've cleaned it out once every few months so dust isn't a huge issue. And yeah, it's the stock cooler. Never really thought about upgrading to an aftermarket one although I wouldn't be against it.

 

Awesome to hear, a lot of people sadly do not clean out their PC in time and let's the dust ramp up to such a level that it can straight up kill components. 

No need to really get an aftermarket cooler. But the tempatures are slightly on the higher end side. Not sure what your ambient tempature is. But I assume quite warm as well.

 

And yeah well, I can really suggest the R9-290 again. Free games. Could make this card around the $300 or less if you sell the games! ^^ 

[SlaughterSmurf]

I would go R9 290, or R9 280.

[P e r s e p h o n e]

I'm assuming so. I wasn't taxing the computer when I ran the program.

 

 

I appreciate it since I know so insignificantly little about motherboards. I don't think I'll do SLI/Crossfire since I've heard it can be a hassle even after everything is set up. I'm more of a "buy one real good card" kind of guy. These guys have me leaning towards the R9 290 now so Nvidia may be out of the question as it is.

When choosing between the two it should be noted what the full benefit of each side is, I'll detail it and you can choose for yourself. AMD cards have a pretty good advantage on price to performance, they're usually a bit weaker than their Nvidia counter parts and much hotter and a bit less power efficient. AMD has AMD Mantle which presently only works with AMD processors, it essentially allows a more efficient leveraging of CPU cores to increase frame rates. AMD released a statement saying that it will free it as a open standard rather than proprietary, but that was a long time ago and hasn't delivered yet. Nvidia has PhysX, a particular and proprietary method of simulating real time physics, which I personally love. However due to a low amount of adoption it's only worth it if you want to either develop games or programs with PhysX or if you've got games that utilize it such as Batman (one of them I forgot which one), Borderlands 2 (quite prominent) and Metro Last Light (the heaviest user). In my case I have plenty of games that utilize PhysX, I love it, and I plan on developing with it. You can still run PhysX while having an AMD card, the problem is that it will utilize your CPU and not the GPU making it practically useless unless you have a crazy Xeon processor or one with Intel's Iris Graphics, which I don't even know if PhysX allows the utilization of integrated graphics along with the main CPU cores themselves. Nvidia also has G-Sync which is essentially perfect V-Sync. AMD has parried Nvidia's shadow play, a program that allows you record gameplay efficiently with minimal impact to performance and file size. AMD also does a better job at dual graphics by allowing you to mix any from the same architecture whereas Nvidia only allows the same exact graphics card, save the manufacturer. I'm not clear on this one but I'm sure a lot of people say AMD does a better job with multi monitor support with AMD Eyefinity.

[dragoon20005]

slight correction for Mantle

 

it will work on Intel CPUs with AMD cards

 

the API works with AMD GPUs based on GCN 1.0 and 1.1

 

and APU are the supported chips for Mantle

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantle_(API)

[coalminer071]

No problem! Thanks for the information. 

 

As for the auto update of the GeForce drivers. It's not completely automatic. It does download the drivers, but you still have to manually install them as far as I am aware. Not 100% sure. Others with Nvidia GPUs might be able to comment further on this. 

A thing as well for the R9-290. It comes with 3 free games with the Never Settle Bundle. Wich is fucking awesome! Including.. Battlefield.. something! :]

Sadly their website isn't awesome and it's a little bit hard for some games to figure out wich they are. 

 

 

I assume so, but this are pretty normal tempatures for that chip and the likely hood that his cooler isn't that amazing. I am guessing the intel stock one. 

But I would suggest to open up the case and clean out all the dust it might have gathered over the span of 5 years. 

my experience for amd crossfire is abysmal. currently using 780s sli and they work near flawless

pretty much amd great for single card configs, nvidia better multi card configs

amd also dumps more heat back into system therefore needs adequate case cooling

geforce experience is a nvidia program which cleans install all the latest drivers for you:)

[M1ke10191]

Seeing as my motherboard won't allow for OCing since it's Gateway's, it sounds like some bottlenecking will occur if i can't OC. How bad do you think any bottlenecks would be on a stock i7 860 2.8Ghz? Or is it mostly negligible? I'd rather buy a top of the line card but I also want to get everything out of it. Also, would my board prevent me from OCing the new GPU as well? It looks like my processor has an older 1156 socket so if I replaced the board to enable OCing, I'd have to switch the processor as well, right? Honestly, if my current CPU/board won't play nice with a top end card, I'd hold off upgrading anything until Christmas and give myself the gift of a whole new comp at that point (and you can bet I'll be back here haha). My current setup still works it just isn't ideal, especially with something like ArmA III. It still plays 90% of my games just fine so I can hold off till 2015 if needed.

[jessterbal]

wait to much is going to drop by q1 2015

x99, ddr4, gtx8xx to name a few

[LOST TALE]

@M1ke10191 

A small tip when you ask for any hardware advise or just want to know what hardware a certain PC got. I recommend to download Speccy! (free version is fine!)

Or he could just go . control Panel->Hardware Devices and audio -> device manager->  See everything.

IT'S faster if he's and experienced user(altough he can figure it on site) if not then I guess above is fine.

[P e r s e p h o n e]

Seeing as my motherboard won't allow for OCing since it's Gateway's, it sounds like some bottlenecking will occur if i can't OC. How bad do you think any bottlenecks would be on a stock i7 860 2.8Ghz? Or is it mostly negligible? I'd rather buy a top of the line card but I also want to get everything out of it. Also, would my board prevent me from OCing the new GPU as well? It looks like my processor has an older 1156 socket so if I replaced the board to enable OCing, I'd have to switch the processor as well, right? Honestly, if my current CPU/board won't play nice with a top end card, I'd hold off upgrading anything until Christmas and give myself the gift of a whole new comp at that point (and you can bet I'll be back here haha). My current setup still works it just isn't ideal, especially with something like ArmA III. It still plays 90% of my games just fine so I can hold off till 2015 if needed.

It wouldn't be optimal to run this processor with something the power of a GTX 780, however the bottleneck is pointless as at 1080p ultra BF4 will still run smooth and leverage enough power for it to still be optimized enough. The idea of bottleneck is sort of a pain my ass when people ask that question for a myriad of reasons. My advice is to buy a GTX 780 now and then upgrade everything else on Christmas.

[coalminer071]

It wouldn't be optimal to run this processor with something the power of a GTX 780, however the bottleneck is pointless as at 1080p ultra BF4 will still run smooth and leverage enough power for it to still be optimized enough. The idea of bottleneck is sort of a pain my ass when people ask that question for a myriad of reasons. My advice is to buy a GTX 780 now and then upgrade everything else on Christmas.

since its only 4 months away i think he should wait till christmas to upgrade everything.