In a world run dry of graphics cards, what's the best way to improve graphics performance?

[treeroy]

My trusty GTX 1080 has been struggling for a while running some games on my 4k TV, struggling to keep a decent 60fps. Graphics card shortage is going to continue well into next year if not longer. What is the best solution for improving my performance?

 

SLI?
Overclocking?

 

Anything else?

Always felt hesitant about SLI since so many games don't utilise it.

[whispous]

Definitely not SLI. Overclocking will yield incredibly small results for the cost of stressed thermals and time.

 

What games aren't running well?

 

Have you considered running at 1080p (I know, I know!)

[adarw]

i wouldnt overclock tbh (people may disagree), you wont gain much fps and it will degrade it quicker.

 

 

why dont you do a cpu upgrade?

[treeroy]

5 minutes ago, adarw said:

i wouldnt overclock tbh (people may disagree), you wont gain much fps and it will degrade it quicker.

 

 

why dont you do a cpu upgrade?

I upgraded my CPU last year, got a Ryzen 5600X, it unlocked a huge amount of performance in many games!

 

But soon after, I got a 4k TV in my room and for any controller games, I like sitting in my armchair and using the TV.

 

Yeah I guess I could just lower the resolution but that sort of defeats the purpose of a 4k TV.

 

Its mainly Project Cars and Forza that are struggling with 4k. New Forza is coming out next month and that will also struggle at 4k I imagine.

But even a game like Spyro Remastered I've been playing recently and it can't keep stable 60fps (metric ton of screen tearing in that game and when I use vsync, it just sits at 30fps )

[adarw]

1 minute ago, treeroy said:

I upgraded my CPU last year, got a Ryzen 5600X, it unlocked a huge amount of performance in many games!

 

But soon after, I got a 4k TV in my room and for any controller games, I like sitting in my armchair and using the TV.

 

Yeah I guess I could just lower the resolution but that sort of defeats the purpose of a 4k TV.

 

Its mainly Project Cars and Forza that are struggling with 4k. New Forza is coming out next month and that will also struggle at 4k I imagine.

might want to update your signature then lol

 

you wont see any real preformace without a better gpu.

 

so if you value fps more than image quality maybe put it at 1440p?

[narrdarr]

What games are you playing? 

[Jurrunio]

Not much to do if your GPU is the limiting factor. Cutting visual quality will be the only way out if you want more frames.

[Guest]

Run 4K but lower some graphics qualities like Shade or Fog. turn down AA maybe. There's tons of tweaking you can do to the game settings to increase FPS.

Got ninja'ed!

[Helpful Tech Witch]

12 minutes ago, adarw said:

might want to update your signature then lol

 

you wont see any real preformace without a better gpu.

 

so if you value fps more than image quality maybe put it at 1440p?

1440p will be a pita and require good gpu side scaling to work, as 1440p doesn’t split evenly into 4k like 1080p does. One 1080p pixel is exactly equle to 4 4k ones, so you don’t have to use scaling really

[adarw]

4 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

1440p will be a pita and require good gpu side scaling to work, as 1440p doesn’t split evenly into 4k like 1080p does. One 1080p pixel is exactly equle to 4 4k ones, so you don’t have to use scaling really

oh right i forgot, was it you that wrote blog about that?

[Somerandomtechyboi]

33 minutes ago, treeroy said:

My trusty GTX 1080 has been struggling for a while running some games on my 4k TV, struggling to keep a decent 60fps. Graphics card shortage is going to continue well into next year if not longer. What is the best solution for improving my performance?

 

SLI?
Overclocking?

 

Anything else?

Always felt hesitant about SLI since so many games don't utilise it.

I think its vram thats limiting you so overclock the sht out of your vram, core wise im not sure, try overclocking it but if theres not much gain then just leave it alone or undervolt it for better temps (pretty sure you wont gain much since high res depends on vram)

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Just now, adarw said:

oh right i forgot, was it you that wrote blog about that?

No. I don’t think I’ve written any blog posts in the forum

[InstantNewt]

I say try dropping the resolution to 1080p. You might be surprised how it looks. If you think it looks like crap back up until it doesn’t, or you run out of room lol. 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Overclocking can lead some nice resaults in the 10% ish range if you have a decent enough card.

Plus, you can run cooler if you want, undervolting the core

 

 

download MSI AfterBurner, install it

thw first thing to do with Maiab would be tk check the current fan curve, and if it’s terrible, fix it, it should be a curved line, with 0c is 0% at the bottom and 95c is 100%, the rest being a curve tk get to there

then use that new fan curve on and off in a game benchmark of your choice (preferably a gpu bound game benchmark), write down average fps for both

Then go back to Msiab, then increase core by 150mhz, lower voltage by 150mv, and increase mem clock by 200mhz

benchmark, write down.

then start increasing mem by 20mhz, core by 10, and keep volt the same, benchmarking, writing down fps, until the benchmark crashes, then lower core and mem by 50mhz, benchmark multiple times to check stability

 

this is usually how I overclock

 

[narrdarr]

Have you thought about using a nvidia shield...?

[treeroy]

1 hour ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

1440p will be a pita and require good gpu side scaling to work, as 1440p doesn’t split evenly into 4k like 1080p does. One 1080p pixel is exactly equle to 4 4k ones, so you don’t have to use scaling really

Oh man, you can't downscale to 1440p from 4K?

[tikker]

4 hours ago, treeroy said:

Oh man, you can't downscale to 1440p from 4K?

You're talking upscaling here, not downscaling. Your game will be rendered at 1080p or 1440p and the image then upscaled to 2160p. It's perfectly possible and fine to do this, except because as said 1440p doesn't fit properly into 2160p there will be some blurring as it needs to be interpolated. 3840x2160 = (1.5 x 2560)x(1.5 x 1440) and fractional pixels aren't a thing. However, 3840x2160 = (2 x 1920)x(2 x 1080) so 1 pixel on a 1080p image will be exactly 4 pixels on a 2160p monitor no fancy scaling or interpolation required.

 

Just try out both and see which one you prefer.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

10 hours ago, treeroy said:

Oh man, you can't downscale to 1440p from 4K?

You can upscale, but it loses fidelity an sometimes look's worse than 1080p while losing fps

[Falkentyne]

Many 4k TV's can downscale natively from 4k to 1080p without affecting the quality (besides larger pixels) because the ratio remains exactly the same.  Try that and see if it works.

[xg32]

play 720p windowed on a 1080p monitor (it's what i'd do with apus too) or 1080p windowed on a 1440p monitor

[Elijah Kamski]

I've read some of the top comments, I'd say you'll have to just give up on the 4K graphics and render the games at 1080p instead of native 4K.