Thinking of upgrading video card... any suggestions?

[Charly_Owl]

I was just thinking of buying a Nvidia GTX 980... do you think I should postpone buying it and stick with my old GTX 770 for a few more months?

 

I usually get between 20 fps and 40 fps in multiplayer. I'd like to experience that butter smooth 60 fps I see in some videos on youtube.

 

(P.S. I'm not really well-versed in computer hardware so please be patient with me as I might have more stupid questions in stock :D )

[Cnuke]

If you wait for the release EDGE it all makes more sense to see what you gain and what others have for results. From an economic point of view

 

 

It's pretty much possible to tweak your DCS and have less towns visible from far, replace some models and less high amount of textures loaded, to sit out the waiting time for EDGE with reasonable FPS.

 

Also your CPU clockspeed and related performance, memoryspeed and timings are of influence.

 

I clocked my 920 cpu to 3.7 permanently without much heat and voltage increase. But with my 5850 AMD card I can pretty much do 60 FPS most of the time, except some big towns decrease it to 40 with planes around. Although I use the resolution 1280x1024 from my 17" inch screen. The AMD card is 1Gb RAM , one fulll GB RAM :) lolz I sometimes hook it up to 1920x1080 LCD screen and frames drop to 45 (still not bad) :)

 

Well, the prices will change I think, for the GTX 970 , 980 maybe over the coming period of 1-3 months.

The 970 RAM issue surely will set something in motion, and AMD is also pushing competitiveness now.

We will see. :)

Edited January 30, 2015 by Cnuke

[KLR Rico]

I don't understand how the 980 seems like a reasonable deal to people. The 970 gets 80% of the performance at 60% of the price. If you have money to throw away like that, why not just go with 970's in SLI?

[Charly_Owl]

I don't understand how the 980 seems like a reasonable deal to people. [...] If you have money to throw away like that, why not just go with 970's in SLI?

 

What did you not understand in "I'm not really well-versed in computer hardware"? :D

 

I don't have money to throw away... that's why I'm asking for advice.

[outlawal2]

Personally I would wait given your situation.. (I too have a 770GTX and I am pretty pleased with the performance and I am running 3440x1440...)

 

Considering the fact that your existing card is pretty darn good and runs things well now, I would wait for EDGE to arrive as the equipment will continue to get better and the prices will continue to get better as well..

 

As far as the debate over 970 vs 980, I agree that the best bang for your buck by far is the 970, but currently they do have some vram issues that may be of concern... (I also believe that the issue may be overblown at this point and would probably not affect most users unless you run 4k or multiple monitors... But I don't KNOW this to be fact, just a hunch.)

 

The issue does give me pause though..

 

In a nutshell the 970 is the best buy for the money (If you can live with the aforementioned vram issue)

 

If you want the best of the best then the 980 is a solid choice albeit much more expensive.

 

As mentioned above you can also do 2x 970s in SLI, but I have found that SLI can be a pain and generally gives 30% to 40% improvement. I generally stay away from SLI as I don't think the benefits are there.. (Folks that think they can get twice the performance by adding a 2nd card in SLI are sorely mistaken.)

 

And considering you have a GTX770 now, my recommendation would be to wait for EDGE and maybe by the time it is released Nvidia may have fixed the vram issue and will bring the prices down due to bad press over the issues.

 

You may get a LOT more card for a lot less money by waiting

Edited January 30, 2015 by outlawal2

[Charly_Owl]

Thanks, that was very helpful. I will keep waiting then.

[WildBillKelsoe]

Not jacking your thread but what is a higher upgrade for GTX 650 Ti 2GB, also compatible?

[Witchking]

I would personally wait too...if I had a desktop with an earlier card. I got the 980 instead of the 970 because it was only 150$ more thwb the 970.

[doveman]

From the figures Nvidia put out it seems the 980's FPS decreases significantly when using 4GB instead of 3.5GB, just a few % less than the 970, so I'd be wary of either if you think you might actually need 4GB.

[cichlidfan]

Not jacking your thread but what is a higher upgrade for GTX 650 Ti 2GB, also compatible?

 

Compatible with what?