Graphics Card for me?

[ChoiSiwon]

I just ordered the xeon e3 n im wondering which graphic suit my needs. I use photo shop, and light room. Game i play r maplestory, dota, league, unturned, far cry 4, csgo, Tf2, wow, and bf4, and maybe others in future. Can you guys give me the minimum requirement card, a mid level card, and a high end card, and a best price/performance that will suit my needs? 

[Tedster]

What's your ideal budget?

[ZetZet]

best price performance up to 200 dollars is r9 280/285. above that gtx 970.

[WoodenMarker]

Price varies.

Where are you shopping/located? Budget?

What are the rest of your specs?

[minibois]

I just ordered the xeon e3 n im wondering which graphic suit my needs. I use photo shop, and light room. Game i play r maplestory, dota, league, unturned, far cry 4, csgo, Tf2, wow, and bf4, and maybe others in future. Can you guys give me the minimum requirement card, a mid level card, and a high end card, and a best price/performance that will suit my needs? 

I would say a R9 270 minimum, a 290(X) or 970 for mid-ish and 980 for high end?

This is kind of a vague question if we don'know the rest of your system and budget

[LiamApex]

either a 980 and or wait for the titan 2 

[ChoiSiwon]

Price varies.

Where are you shopping/located? Budget?

What are the rest of your specs?

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($252.00 @ Amazon) 

Motherboard: MSI H97 Guard-Pro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($95.66 @ Newegg) 

Memory: G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory  ($80.98 @ Newegg) 

Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($89.00 @ Amazon) 

Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($54.00 @ Amazon) 

Case: NZXT Source 210 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($45.98 @ Newegg) 

Power Supply: EVGA 600B 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($49.99 @ Newegg) 

Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit)  ($122.99 @ Newegg) 

Total: $790.60

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-10 17:51 EST-0500

Archangle build this for me. Located in usa. 

[ChoiSiwon]

I would say a R9 270 minimum, a 290(X) or 970 for mid-ish and 980 for high end?

This is kind of a vague question if we don'know the rest of your system and budget

I don't really have a budget, but its somewhere around the mid range market

[minibois]

I don't really have a budget, but its somewhere around the mid range market

a GTX 970 is pretty good for you.

Even if you wanted to upgrade later on, you can just get a second GTX 970 .

[ChoiSiwon]

a GTX 970 is pretty good for you.

Even if you wanted to upgrade later on, you can just get a second GTX 970 .

i hear since graphics improve every year having sli wouldn't make a difference next year when a 1070 come out?

[minibois]

i hear since graphics improve every year having sli wouldn't make a difference next year when a 1070 come out?

What resolution are you playing at or are you planning on playing at?

970 is (and will be) plenty for 1080p for a long while.

[ChoiSiwon]

What resolution are you playing at or are you planning on playing at?

970 is (and will be) plenty for 1080p for a long while.

1080 high settings

[KamiKatze]

If youre doing more rendering than gaming, I'd say a gtx 780 would be great for its high number of cuda cores. Thats only if you can still find a gtx 780 for a reasonable price.

Otherwise a gtx 970 is probably the best, still reasonably priced gpu for you. The gtx 960 should be released soon. That would also be a good card, allthough the memory bus is quite small.

[ChoiSiwon]

If youre doing more rendering than gaming, I'd say a gtx 780 would be great for its high number of cuda cores. Thats only if you can still find a gtx 780 for a reasonable price.

Otherwise a gtx 970 is probably the best, still reasonably priced gpu for you. The gtx 960 should be released soon. That would also be a good card, allthough the memory bus is quite small.

Do the nvidia graphic still come with free ubisoft game? I found a 780 for 300

[KamiKatze]

Do the nvidia graphic still come with free ubisoft game? I found a 780 for 300

Depends on the merchant. But in principle yes, nvidia 'pick your path' is open until Jan 31st.

The codes are limited and it depends on your merchamt, if he still has some.

That price for a gtx 780 is okay.

[XDroidie626]

well look at it this way when your picking up a GPU, do you want it to make money via your photo stuff, or do you want it for games mostly, so if its Photoshop, more RAM is always better than the GPU, but the GPU never hurts, but because you have BF4, I must recommend a better card.

Now do not be fooled by this "You must have a 290x/980 in quad SLI" bullshit what ever, if you turn AA/AF off, you will find a lot of 2GB cards can play most games at ultra.

So if we shall evaluate budget plans (Using GBP)

for around £120 is the r9 270x 2GB, I used this in a system for a friend and it works great for him, he plays stuff like Rome at ultra although his CPU lets him down, for 720p/1080p gaming this will be fine with AA/AF off, and to be honest at 1080p AA is not needed, just a waste of resources.

for £170 the R9 270X 4GB is a great choice, its the same specs as the other one, but bigger buffer, which allows you to push higher resolutions and more textures, but apart from BF4, the games you play wont touch this buffer, and to be honest, BF4 wont be much over 2gb, its more "Future-Proofing" the PC, as much bullshit that sounds, I am also unsure if you can offload workload onto the GPU with LR/PS, if you can of course the bigger buffer is better as Adobe is RAM hungry.

 

For the same price you could also purchase the R9 280, now this is a better card in terms of speed but the buffer is slightly lower at 3GB, in gaming, this is not a big difference unless you wish to push 4k or have all the filters and everything turned to the max, so if you wish to stay under £200 but have some decent power, the 270x 4GB or the 280 will do fine for you.

 

If you can push the budget to around £250 things can get tricky, because your entering AMD/Nvidia battle areas, if you can afford to stretch to £300, go for the 970, no questions, it destroys anything from AMD at 1080p, but if you see a 290 at £220 area, jump for it, seriously I got mine at this price and I dont regret it, I was going Nvidia but I saw this and got it, it will perform in all the games at max easily, and if you can offload via mercury engine it will be blazing fast, may beat CUDA also, not too sure here.

 

Dont get the 290x unless its around £240, the 290 can be BIOS hacked for a little performance, it takes work but it unlocks all software tweaks on the 290.

 

If you must go Nvidia, just save the cash, get the 970 and forget the rest, its price/performance unbeaten for all classes at the moment, any card will deal with stuff like WoW at around 90fps in normal none world raid areas, with the 290 I would drop to around 30fps+ in world raids, and even then the fans did not ramp up, so the 290 is not a jet engine like people think.

[ChoiSiwon]

well look at it this way when your picking up a GPU, do you want it to make money via your photo stuff, or do you want it for games mostly, so if its Photoshop, more RAM is always better than the GPU, but the GPU never hurts, but because you have BF4, I must recommend a better card.

Now do not be fooled by this "You must have a 290x/980 in quad SLI" bullshit what ever, if you turn AA/AF off, you will find a lot of 2GB cards can play most games at ultra.

So if we shall evaluate budget plans (Using GBP)

for around £120 is the r9 270x 2GB, I used this in a system for a friend and it works great for him, he plays stuff like Rome at ultra although his CPU lets him down, for 720p/1080p gaming this will be fine with AA/AF off, and to be honest at 1080p AA is not needed, just a waste of resources.

for £170 the R9 270X 4GB is a great choice, its the same specs as the other one, but bigger buffer, which allows you to push higher resolutions and more textures, but apart from BF4, the games you play wont touch this buffer, and to be honest, BF4 wont be much over 2gb, its more "Future-Proofing" the PC, as much bullshit that sounds, I am also unsure if you can offload workload onto the GPU with LR/PS, if you can of course the bigger buffer is better as Adobe is RAM hungry.

 

For the same price you could also purchase the R9 280, now this is a better card in terms of speed but the buffer is slightly lower at 3GB, in gaming, this is not a big difference unless you wish to push 4k or have all the filters and everything turned to the max, so if you wish to stay under £200 but have some decent power, the 270x 4GB or the 280 will do fine for you.

 

If you can push the budget to around £250 things can get tricky, because your entering AMD/Nvidia battle areas, if you can afford to stretch to £300, go for the 970, no questions, it destroys anything from AMD at 1080p, but if you see a 290 at £220 area, jump for it, seriously I got mine at this price and I dont regret it, I was going Nvidia but I saw this and got it, it will perform in all the games at max easily, and if you can offload via mercury engine it will be blazing fast, may beat CUDA also, not too sure here.

 

Dont get the 290x unless its around £240, the 290 can be BIOS hacked for a little performance, it takes work but it unlocks all software tweaks on the 290.

 

If you must go Nvidia, just save the cash, get the 970 and forget the rest, its price/performance unbeaten for all classes at the moment, any card will deal with stuff like WoW at around 90fps in normal none world raid areas, with the 290 I would drop to around 30fps+ in world raids, and even then the fans did not ramp up, so the 290 is not a jet engine like people think.

i edit for shoot, and since i travel a lot. I don't edit more than playing or play more than I edit. 30% school stuff 30% editing 30% gaming 10% streaming usually

[XDroidie626]

i edit for shoot, and since i travel a lot. I don't edit more than playing or play more than I edit. 30% school stuff 30% editing 30% gaming 10% streaming usually

Okay so really a laptop would be more ideal for travel, but since you asked for GPU and you do not do much, I would suggest a r9 270x 4GB or a 280, let me explain why.

Now as Linus said for FPS once, if you playing a game at a fast pace, you do not notice the graphics as much, I decided to try this, and you dont seriously.

Now another reason I suggest these is price, for the work loads you use, its not worth purchasing a more expensive card, you wont even reach its full power half of the time, and as said before, turn down the AA/AF and you will be able to max BF4, in about a year or two, you may need to drop to 720p, but by then you will either 1 - Have money to buy a new GPU 2 - not be playing games because of work commitments.

 

So I highly suggest the 270x 4gb/280 *None X edition* for your loads, the memory buffer will serve you better.

 

Hope this helped

[WoodenMarker]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

285: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/his-video-card-h285qmc2gd

[asim1999]

i hear since graphics improve every year having sli wouldn't make a difference next year when a 1070 come out?

SLI isnt supported on his motherboard