GPU guide

[Guest]

Does there exist a guide of sorts for selecting appropriate GPUs for certain monitor setups and tasks? I have the following situations:

2 21:9 1440p monitors, low GPU load, very little gaming, most GPU intensive thing is going to be Minecraft.

Same monitors, med-high GPU load, mid-range gaming rig. (current idea is a GTX 1060)

Same monitors, high GPU load, high-end gaming rig. (current idea is a GTX 1080)

 

Are these two appropriate GPUs? What would be an appropriate one for the first situation? They all need 2 displayport sockets.

 

Thanks for any help.

[Zyndo]

31 minutes ago, OTheB said:

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To be clear, you're talking about 3440x1440 monitors and asking if a 1060 is okay to run it for a mid-rage gaming rig? which game and settings/FPS do you intend to run at? also do you intend to run them simultaneously for gaming in a 6880x1440 setup or individually?

[Guest]

19 hours ago, Zyndo said:

To be clear, you're talking about 3440x1440 monitors and asking if a 1060 is okay to run it for a mid-rage gaming rig? which game and settings/FPS do you intend to run at? also do you intend to run them simultaneously for gaming in a 6880x1440 setup or individually?

Yes. Games are going to vary a lot. Generally around the Minecraft region as my brother does a lot of that, but he does sometimes play bigger games. Nothing high-end though. The most intensive stuff I expect he'll try and play are some Blizzard games like HotS and maybe some light video editing. High settings (not necessarily max, but very high) and to stay at 60fps as much as possible if say he were to use VSync. Just individual monitors. Nothing will be run across both of them. A lot of it will be game on one monitor with a web browser or similar on the other.

 

The 1080 situation would be high-end gaming, max settings on most games, again with a comfortable 60fps. No AAA games though as that's not really our thing. This one'll be similar games but with the odd higher-demand game or program. This one may be subject to video editing too, but again nothing very heavy. The most intensive thing I can expect this to try and run are games like Rift or Neverwinter at max settings.

 

For the first situation, a GTX 750Ti was recommended. Is this appropriate? This won't be a gaming rig and the focus for this one is on the CPU. The GPU just needs to stay solid running stuff like Sibelius with the odd Minecraft session as my dad's rather into that.

[Zyndo]

1 hour ago, OTheB said:

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a 750ti would be okay-ish.... but with the recent 1050ti out and available for quite cheap, there isn't a whole lot of a reason to go for a 750ti. Its also worth noting that I don't know if the 2GB of VRAM on the 750ti is going to be enough at a ultrawide 1440p resolution (there are 2.5x as many pixels in that kind of a monitor vs a standard 1080p monitor)... the 4GB available on the 1050ti should be plenty though. Running low caliber games like MOBA's, Minecraft (depending on mods), and so on you would probably be able to get away with a 1060 6GB on an ultrawide with high/max settings and still get your desired fps without issue.... but if you start stepping up your games, then the 1060 6GB is just not going to be enough. a gtx 1080 would be able to max out any game (AAA's included) at pretty much any settings and still give you your desired 60 fps so it may be overkill for your needs. I don't have first hand experience with Rift or Neverwinter so I don't know how heavy its requirements are.... but a 1070 would probably be all you could need, you shouldn't need to consider a 1080, and if your games aren't too crazy, a 1060 will likely do just fine. but with how affordable the 1050ti is, there isn't really any reason to consider going below that card IMO.

 

You may wish to consider the RX 470 4GB card if you can get it for a decent price. It will land between a 1050ti and 1060 6GB in terms of performance. Also, the RX 480 8GB's larger and faster VRAM may make it perform more closely/better than the 1060 6GB at this higher resolution in DX 11 and pull ahead in DX12/vulkan (although that is mere speculation on my part, I have no real idea how exactly these cards will scale comparatively at this resolution)

 

TL:DR... a 1060 6GB would be a fine investment to make. For your needs, I wouldn't recommend going higher than a 1070 (honestly even the 1060 6GB will likely do pretty well for you). on the low end of the spectrum I would recommend a 1050ti or RX 470 depending on how low you want to go... but I wouldn't recommend going lower than that since they're both pretty affordable and should be quite a bit better than anything a little bit cheaper.

[Guest]

Would your recommendations change if I were to say that the first situation (low GPU load, little gaming) were only to have one of such monitors?

What about if situation 2 (mid-range gaming) were to use 2 16:9 1440p monitors instead of Ultrawide ones (assuming they are used in the same way with games only on one monitor)?

[Zyndo]

2 hours ago, OTheB said:

Would your recommendations change if I were to say that the first situation (low GPU load, little gaming) were only to have one of such monitors?

What about if situation 2 (mid-range gaming) were to use 2 16:9 1440p monitors instead of Ultrawide ones (assuming they are used in the same way with games only on one monitor)?

My recommendations would still be the same in the first situation but with 1 monitor.... the reason for that is the requirements of a monitor displaying light programs and desktop materials is quite minimal. essentially all you need is a GPU with compatible connectors (for example a GPU with HDMI 1.0 doesn't have the bandwidth to use 3440x1440, no matter how weak/powerful the GPU itself is) so its very minimally taxing for something as powerful as a gaming oriented GPU (even a "low end" model like an RX 460 or GTX 1050 would have no problems with it). so having an extra monitor in the background shouldn't affect your performance all that much (maybe a couple of fps and introduce a few more ms of input lag, but nothing noticeable).

 

However if you were to step down to 16:9 monitors instead of ultrawide ones... then for your workload I would still recommend 1050ti, RX 470, or 1060 6GB... but 1060 6GB is probably the highest I would go for your needs instead of the previous recommendation of a 1070. 1440p @ 60 hz is pretty doable for a 1060 6GB on high-ish settings (but not ultra/max) even in the heaviest current AAA games... so you should be fine with a 1060 6GB for your moderate gaming needs.