What GPU should I buy for my setup?

[Hekkti]

I now have a 3 year old setup which needs upgrading and I don't know which gpu should I get. I'm thinking about the 970 gigabyte g1 gaming edition.

 

my current setup: 

i5-3330 (not overclocked) with air cooling

2x4 gb ddr3 1333mhz kingston ram

an overclocked sapphire hd7790 with 2 gigs of vram

all of that on a gigabyte h77 ds3h motherboard

I only use 1080p, and I won't upgrade for a while.

 

I'm willing to upgrade my psu as well (it's a 550w chieftec now).

 

[Nacho Marco Segui]

Psu? 

[Starelementpoke]

5 minutes ago, Hekkti said:

I now have a 3 year old setup which needs upgrading and I don't know which gpu should I get. I'm thinking about the 970 gigabyte g1 gaming edition.

 

my current setup: 

i5-3330 (not overclocked) with air cooling

2x4 gb ddr3 1333mhz kingston ram

an overclocked sapphire hd7790 with 2 gigs of vram

all of that on a gigabyte h77 ds3h motherboard

I only use 1080p, and I won't upgrade for a while.

 

What psu?

[don_svetlio]

What PSU?

[Hekkti]

2 minutes ago, Starelementpoke said:

What psu?

It's a chieftec 550w, but it doesn't matter. If it's necessary I can buy a corsair 650w for example or anything else. 

[CNY RMB]

11 minutes ago, Hekkti said:

It's a chieftec 550w, but it doesn't matter. If it's necessary I can buy a corsair 650w for example or anything else. 

Please, for the love of god, buy a proper brand and not some corsair CX/CS PSU. Buy Seasonic, XFX, EVGA or similar others. Also, the Chieftec is a real fire hazard. GPU wise, just go with an R9 390, as it is much more powerful, for the money, and is by far more future proof due to the fact that it has Hardware DX12 support, while the 970 can simply not compare. I can only recoomend the MSI, XFX and Sapphire Models. I am currently running the sapphire and it is working great for me. I get app. 60-80 FPS on JC3 on all settings up to the max. If you consider water cooling in the future, the XFX is better, as there is EK WB support for it.

[don_svetlio]

19 minutes ago, Hekkti said:

It's a chieftec 550w, but it doesn't matter. If it's necessary I can buy a corsair 650w for example or anything else. 

Buy a new unit.

SeaSonic, Delta, Antec, Super Flower.

[CNY RMB]

Just now, don_svetlio said:

Buy a new unit.

SeaSonic, Delta, Antec, Super Flower.

ANy SeaSonic OEM units are good. e.g. XFX. 

EVGA also makes some decent units I hear. The top of the line corsair units are also not bad and neither are the higher cooler master spectrum.

Jonny Guru has the best PSU reviews.

[don_svetlio]

Just now, CNY RMB said:

ANy SeaSonic OEM units are good. e.g. XFX. 

EVGA also makes some decent units I hear. The top of the line corsair units are also not bad and neither are the higher cooler master spectrum.

Jonny Guru has the best PSU reviews.

EVGA don't make them. They use HEC, FSP, Super Flower and a few SeaSonics.

B1, G1, NEX and W1 are bad. Rest are good.

[App4that]

With that i5 you want a 970, it's a much better match than a AMD card that will place more of a load on the CPU.

[CNY RMB]

Just now, don_svetlio said:

EVGA don't make them. They use HEC, FSP, Super Flower and a few SeaSonics.

B1, G1, NEX and W1 are bad. Rest are good.

Still, my point stands that most of them are decent. Wasn't sure about the OEM thing tho.

[CNY RMB]

1 minute ago, App4that said:

With that i5 you want a 970, it's a much better match than a AMD card that will place more of a load on the CPU.

I would disagree, the 970 is far inferior. I couldn't run most games at the settings that I am running them at on a 970. Why? They use more than 4G of VRAM. This includes JC3 and Assassins Creed Syndicate. An i5 is easily capable of doing this and the 390 would be a much more reasonable choice.

[don_svetlio]

1 minute ago, CNY RMB said:

I would disagree, the 970 is far inferior. I couldn't run most games at the settings that I am running them at on a 970. Why? They use more than 4G of VRAM. This includes JC3 and Assassins Creed Syndicate. An i5 is easily capable of doing this and the 390 would be a much more reasonable choice.

Yup. An R9 390 is a better buy

[App4that]

2 minutes ago, CNY RMB said:

I would disagree, the 970 is far inferior. I couldn't run most games at the settings that I am running them at on a 970. Why? They use more than 4G of VRAM. This includes JC3 and Assassins Creed Syndicate. An i5 is easily capable of doing this and the 390 would be a much more reasonable choice.

What 970 do you have because that's not accurate according to independent testing. JC3 is VERY CPU intensive, so if you have a i5, that's more than likely your issue. A 390 would just make that issue worse.

 

I've owned a Nitro 390 and a 4690k FYI

 

 

EDIT, Oh. And no game has a set amount of VRAM usage, that's a misnomer. Games use what's available.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, CNY RMB said:

I would disagree, the 970 is far inferior. I couldn't run most games at the settings that I am running them at on a 970. Why? They use more than 4G of VRAM. This includes JC3 and Assassins Creed Syndicate. An i5 is easily capable of doing this and the 390 would be a much more reasonable choice.

I feel like I have to put a valiant effort into seeing usage above 3.5 gigs in games with my 390. 

 

And at resolutions where the 390/970 actually makes sense, it's not really an issue. Only supersampling etc. or running settings that are probably less than desirable for the cards, in general, are going to produce this. 

 

However, there are circumstances where it does exist, but the 970 has pros that make up for it IMO. 

 

Bottom line, you can't go wrong with either unless you have a very specific use of extra vram (modding fallout/skyrim, etc.) or utilize nvidia feature set. 

[CNY RMB]

Just now, App4that said:

What 970 do you have because that's not accurate according to independent testing. JC3 is VERY CPU intensive, so if you have a i5, that's more than likely your issue. A 390 would just make that issue worse.

 

I've owned a Nitro 390 and a 4690k FYI

I actually have a 390 Nitro from Sapphire. I am just saying that I couldn't run hem if I had a 970 instead of my 390. And no, I don't have an i5. I have a i7-4790K, so that is in no way bottlenecking me. It should run easily on an i5 tho. Also, the issues you are experiencing is most likely bad optimization for AMD, which has been improved since launch.

[don_svetlio]

Just now, CNY RMB said:

I actually have a 390 Nitro from Sapphire. I am just saying that I couldn't run hem if I had a 970 instead of my 390. And no, I don't have an i5. I have a i7-4790K, so that is in no way bottlenecking me. It should run easily on an i5 tho. Also, the issues you are experiencing is most likely bad optimization for AMD, which has been improved since launch.

I have an i5 with an AMD GPU - never had issues with CPU bottlenecking. max CPU core usage was 60%

[CNY RMB]

 

2 minutes ago, Alexokan said:

I feel like I have to put a valiant effort into seeing usage above 3.5 gigs in games with my 390. 

 

And at resolutions where the 390/970 actually makes sense, it's not really an issue. Only supersampling etc. or running settings that are probably less than desirable for the cards, in general, are going to produce this. 

 

However, there are circumstances where it does exist, but the 970 has pros that make up for it IMO. 

 

Bottom line, you can't go wrong with either unless you have a very specific use of extra vram (modding fallout/skyrim, etc.) or utilize nvidia feature set. 

I maybe must clarify, that I am running it at 1440p and that for me VRAM usage is usually around 4-4.5 gigs at all settings to the max.

[App4that]

7 minutes ago, CNY RMB said:

I actually have a 390 Nitro from Sapphire. I am just saying that I couldn't run hem if I had a 970 instead of my 390. And no, I don't have an i5. I have a i7-4790K, so that is in no way bottlenecking me. It should run easily on an i5 tho. Also, the issues you are experiencing is most likely bad optimization for AMD, which has been improved since launch.

So you have a 390 and i7, a great combination. But the OP does not. They have a i5, and older i5. Nvidia has less driver overhead and that will help them in games that are CPU intensive.

 

And your comment on JC3, here it is on both. Drivers improve for both.

 

 

 

 

 

[don_svetlio]

1 minute ago, CNY RMB said:

 

I maybe must clarify, that I am running it at 1440p and that for me VRAM usage is usually around 4-4.5 gigs at all settings to the max.

I've used 4GB at 1080p on my laptop. Not impossible. Fairly easy actually

[App4that]

1 minute ago, don_svetlio said:

I've used 4GB at 1080p on my laptop. Not impossible. Fairly easy actually

Come on Don, you know better. Games use the VRAM made available to them. I have gone from a 4g card to a 8g card back to back, the amount of VRAM usage changed but not the performance.

[don_svetlio]

Just now, App4that said:

Come on Don, you know better. Games use the VRAM made available to them. I have gone from a 4g card to a 8g card back to back, the amount of VRAM usage changed but not the performance.

Explain the crashes in TitanFall with "Memory Full" when my RAM was at 6/8 but VRAM at 3.9/4

[App4that]

Just now, don_svetlio said:

Explain the crashes in TitanFall with "Memory Full" when my RAM was at 6/8 but VRAM at 3.9/4

Nuff said   But in all seriousness lets keep this to desktop please. Or do console benchmarks matter as well  

[don_svetlio]

Just now, App4that said:

Nuff said   But in all seriousness lets keep this to desktop please. Or do console benchmarks matter as well  

So laptop users suddenly don't matter? Even though I am using the same GPU core as a 750 Ti? Wow, nice logic there....

[CNY RMB]

25 minutes ago, Festive said:

[post removed]

I appreciate your very "constructive" criticism.

I may be slightly blended by my opinion about Nvidia Gameworks. As stated above, I play at 1440p VSR.

Also, here is the review of the Sapphire R9 390 from Toms hardware. Look at the actuall game performance numbers. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sapphire-nitro-r9-390-8g-d5,4245.html

I know just cause 3 still suffers from slight micro stutters, however, I have noticed that at the resolution and settings I play at, the VRAM does sometimes exceed 4G.

 

Thank you for your consideration.