Considering a GPU Upgrade.

[ZeroSaber39]

Hey guys, as the topic says I'm looking at upgrading my GPU, the reason that brought this about was I was recently getting a lot of crashes when running around the world space in Skyrim, using Skyrim Performance Monitor I noticed that in the areas I was crashing by Vram usage was consistently hovering around 2gigs which is the limit of my cards Vram (I currently have a GTX 670). So I began to suspect it was due to Vram running out.

 

I did some testing to try and determine the exact cause of my crashes, one of with involved removing all my high res texture packs, which left my Vram usage around 1.6gigs in the places I was crashing, I noted that I still crashed occasionally (leading to me determining that I had a mod that was causing some of the crashes) but I also took note that the frequency of the Crashes was drastically reduced so I determined that it was a combination of a mod crashing me and Vram limitations.

 

I used to be a console gamer but I made the jump to PC gaming solely for Skyrim so this is the first gaming rig I've ever owned and I'm still new to the PC gaming (soon will have been about a year since I built my system) I was hoping to not have to upgrade my PC so soon but since I built it for Skyrim and Skyrim isn't running how I want it to I find it unacceptable.

 

I gave some thought to simply upgrading to a 4GB 670 but with the potential announcement of Fallout 4 approaching I stated thinking maybe I should look a little farther into the future. Before discussing the cards I would like to clarify what I want to get from this upgrade, Bethesda games, namely TES and Fallout are the reasons I made the jump to PC gaming and they are my primary concern, Skyrim is my most immediate concern as it's a game I find myself coming back to constantly. But Fallout 4 could potentially be a game I become equally invested in so I want my new card to hopefully be able to handle the future Fallout needs. Basically I'm hoping this upgrade will handle my Bethesda gaming needs until TES6 rolls around at which point I will likely build a new machine for it so hopefully I hopes for this upgrade aren't too unrealistic.

 

Now the cards I'm looking at are the 780 and the Titan right now I'm kind of leaning toward the 780 for the higher performance and lower cost (especially since I can get one for around $500 right now) the only thing bothering me is the 3GB Vram, if it were 4GB I would be all over it but my recent "Scare" over my Skyrim possibly crashing due to lack to Vram has be concerned which make the Titan very attractive for it's 6 gigs of vram alone (But that price tag... :ermm: )

 

I know people will way 3GB is plenty for today's games but the future is my concern here, I really want this upgrade to last. If it helps I game at 1920x1080 resolution and if you're wondering I really didn't have a huge amount of texture mods in my Skyrim, I had the official High Resolution Textures, SMIM, Improved Dungeon Clutter, aMidianborn Book of Silence and various or Armor/Clothes texture mods so it wasn't that heavily modded but I was still consistently pushing the max of my Vram.

 

Alright I think that's about it, I think just a bit of advice will help me make up my mind here, I am strongly leaning toward the 780 I think it's just paranoid Vram fears that are holding me up. (I know you may be face palming but Keep in mind I'm still fairly new to the PC gaming thing :blush: )

[Thor.]

Check the next gen gpu thread, it may solve your problem, especially the last post. After market coolers are coming out for the gtx780ti.

 

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/1187854-i-am-between-2-gpu-cards-please-help-pick-the-right-one-the-best-for-mods/page-8

Edited November 18, 2013 by Thor.

[Rennn]

Keep in mind, Skyrim can crash from high VRAM use no matter how much RAM and VRAM you have.

How high does your system RAM get when you crash? If it hits about 3GB in Skyrim, upgrading your PC probably won't help.

Edited November 18, 2013 by Rennn

[screendrop]

There is a finite limit on how much of a system, no matter how powerful, can be used by Skyrim. 3.1 is the official RAM level, but the hack in the ENB boost helps divert some of the usage to GPU RAM, thus theoretically increasing this limit. The reality is that having dual GTX 690s or a single 680 won't make a difference, you just have to tell yourself you have finite resources, use them the best you can to use only the mods that you really need.

[ZeroSaber39]

I'm aware of the 3GB RAM limit but my physical RAM usage never came near that limit it stayed around 2gigs, ENBoost kept it around 700MB, which is another reason I'm looking at more Vram ENBoost really reduced physical RAM usage but forces you to use more Vram and I'm already at the limit of my cards Vram without ENBoost. I'm aware I have to be smart about how I use my system memory and I'm not one of those guys who thinks he can play Skyrim at 5760x1080 with 4K textures because I know it's simply not going to happen. I just want to be able to play the game in areas other then Whiterun without needing to spam Quick Save due to crashing every 15 minutes. (5 minutes around Dawnstar)

[Werne]

Ermm, low amount of VRAM doesn't crash games, I have 1GB VRAM on my Radeon 7770 and I don't get crashing even though I use HD textures and some other stuff, back when I had a 512MB Radeon 4350 it didn't crash either, even though I abused the thing.

 

Once you come to your VRAM limit (2GB) the card starts putting excess stuff you don't need into system RAM instead, that can cause stuttering (since RAM is slower than VRAM and transfering stuff makes stutters) but won't crash the game. When you hit 3.2GB usage on either RAM or VRAM, the game will crash, it's the limitation of the 32-bit engine used to make it.

 

If your game is crashing and you have less than 2GB VRAM usage and less than 2GB RAM usage, with a GTX 670 and (apparently) a CPU that can handle the game well, then it's not your hardware that is the problem - you made the problem yourself by adding mods and stuff that cause conflict and/or by not maintaining your load order. Wouldn't surprise me, I've seen plenty of people blaming hardware for something that's their own fault.

 

As for the card, being prepared for the future is good. Don't get a Titan, that's an overpriced piece of crap that's only good for those looking for a budget co-processor since it's a castrated Tesla, go with the GTX 780 Ti or R9 290/290X with aftermarket cooling instead, all of those perform on-par or outright outperform the Titan (depends on circumstances).

[ZeroSaber39]

I maintained my load order pretty religiously, I organized it after adding a new mod I always rebuilt my merge/bash patches and I never added new mods without doing some test runs first, problem is that the crashes never become apparent until well into a play though, by the time I've traveled from Whiterun to Falkreath, Riften, Windhelm, Winterhold and finally Dawnstar then the crashing starts hitting severely, always at Dawnstar, while If I load up my mod testing save that is right after escaping Helgan and got up to Dawnstar I can't seem to make it crash no matter what I do. I don't think it's save bloat either becuase my save sizes remain pretty small, around 8mb. I also try to keep away from using many script intensive mods, right now the only mods I can think might have been crashing me are Helgan Reborn or Dynamic Things.

 

Before I removed my high res res textures I if I tried to run a circle from Dawnstar to Mzinchaleft to Hall of the Vigilant back to Dawnstar I'd crash like 5 times before finishing 1 lap, after removing I was able to do like 9 laps before crashing. Also if I left my texture packs in and installed ENBoost and ran around manually clearing my Vram constantly to keep usage below 2gb, it never crashed. I also never crashed in dungeons, where my Vram was keeping a consistent 1.6 gigs so honestly I'm at a total loss.

 

As to my CPU is an i5-3570k, to make it more annoying I use a very similar mod load out to Gopher and my system seems pretty close to his in specs and in his currently lets play he hasn't really ran into any CTD issues, main differences are:

 

-Goper's Motherboard is an "MSI Z77 MPOWER Big Bang Motherboard" while I have a "ASRock Z77 Extreme 6"

-Gopher runs his Skyrim off a SSD, while I use a Western Digital Black HDD

-Gopher Overclocks his CPU, I don't.

-Gopher used to have a GTX 670 4GB (as opposed to my 2GB) but now has a 780.

 

Anyway what I'm trying to get at is, if it's not my Vram, then fine but I'm at a total loss for whatever else it could be. Back to the GPU, I really am leaning toward the 780, I just wish Nvidia had given it 4GB Vram, then I'd have no hesitation, I hear rumors of a 5-6GB version pending release but honestly I wonder about that because if they release a 780 with that much Vram then the main selling point for the Titan goes out the window.

[Werne]

Back to the GPU, I really am leaning toward the 780, I just wish Nvidia had given it 4GB Vram, then I'd have no hesitation, I hear rumors of a 5-6GB version pending release but honestly I wonder about that because if they release a 780 with that much Vram then the main selling point for the Titan goes out the window.

Titan's main selling point are the co-processing instructions, the large amount of VRAM is crucial to it's computing capability. It's a castrated workstation card Nvidia released to show they have a bigger willy than AMD when it comes to the high-end gaming market, now it's just a budget computing card for those who can't afford a 5000$ Tesla.

 

Regardless, Titan is being outperformed by the latest R9 series and GTX 780 Ti even though those cards have less VRAM, any you know why? Because over 3GB VRAM doesn't play a large role in games, no game today is capable of using over 3.2GB VRAM anyway, they're all still 32-bit. And I'm yet to see a game that's able to push itself to the VRAM limit without extensive modifications being done to it (like Skyrim with 8K textures for everything, 2 ENBs, crap-ton of "lush grass" mods and crap like that combined into one game).

 

You'll be fine with 3GB VRAM for a while since games are being optimized for consoles, and that means they get to use 3-4GB VRAM max from the pool. 4GB should keep you rocking until the consoles die out, but you'll need more power from the GPU side of things by then. With Bethesda's Fallout and TES series becoming nothing more than console ports, the hardware choice is fairly simple for playing those games exclusively.

 

And I said 780 Ti, not 780. Former is the most powerful out-of-the-box single GPU card ATM, latter is being outperformed by the R9 290 which is 100$ cheaper.

Edited November 18, 2013 by Werne

[Thor.]

Actually price yes, but the r290x is far from the fastest card on the market. The gtx780ti runs rings around the r290x.

Edited November 18, 2013 by Thor.

[screendrop]

Look, anything with in excess of 2gb VRAM when pertinent to Skyrim is really a gimick. Skyrim is particularly viscious on the CPU, probably because of Havok etc and so, GPU upgrades are only going to benefit GPU specific, and that is really important to realize that it must be specific (ENBs, most Textures) mods. Let me show you an example;

SIMM redoes all the meshes on static objects. However, some statics are "moveable" meaning they can be moved and interacted with, but not placed in an inventory. Now, proposing the mesh for a pot is 200 x 100 and SIMM makes the said pot into a HD version of around 520 x 260, whenever that pot falls, due to the nature of Havok physics, NEW physics calculations need to be made for about two times the amount of polygons.

I agree with Werne, the titan and pretty much every card in excess of 400 dollars is pointless due to naturally inherited limitations of the game.