Graphics card for Modded Skyrim/Fallout

[ArchangelCassiel]

I currently have a fairly good system with one exepction: the graphics card. The poor old bastard can't handle my games as I would like so I decided to upgrade.

 

Here is my current system:

 

AMD FX 8320 3.5 GHz processor

Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB 1866 MHz memory

Gigabyte 970A-UD3 motherboard

Sapphire HD6790 1GB GDDR5

Chieftec 500W PSU

Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB HDD

 

I mostly use it for modded Skyrim/Fallout as the title suggests. I have over 100 plugins for each game(about 130 for Skyrim, 110 for New Vegas and around 100 for FO3) and I am sure you can tell it stutters. I have several visual mods but no major texture overhauls or such(it would be nice to have some though). I play in 1440x900

I am thinking a Gigabyte R9 270X OC 4GB would be a decent choice but I am not completely sure. The price of the R9 270X is kind of the top of my budget but I could invest a little more if needed.

 

Let me know what you think, should I get it or dump the idea and save up some more?

[CaBaL120]

r9 270x 4g is definitely a good choice money/quality if you do not want to change psu .

there is a pretty good MSI solution for r9270x4g too

 

i'd think about an ssd too eventually

[Werne]

Well, the 270X is basically a slightly faster 7870 (some 10-15% in memory bandwidth and identical otherwise, I think) so it would be pretty damn good for FO and Skyrim. 1440x900 is a great resolution when looking at graphics performance, my 7770 @1075/1250 runs Skyrim at 45FPS on a 1440x900 monitor while it's under 30 most of the time on 1080p. 270X can run Skyrim at over 70FPS on 1080p, my guess is you should have ~90FPS on 1440x900. So yeah, a 270X should rock at that resolution.

 

By the way, I'm not sure how the prices go on the R9 series but I think they got up by quite a bit since the release (~$30 I think). Not sure how R9 270X OC performs (core is 100MHz higher than reference, memory seems the same) but you can find GTX 760 cards for the same $300 price point, and 760 is comparable to Radeon 7950 which is better than 7870 and 270X. VRAM (or graphics RAM, whatever you prefer) is not as important as people like to claim (seeing as how you're looking at a 4GB 270X model), 2-3GB is perfectly fine unless you go install 4K textures for snowflakes, VRAM usage is even lower on resolutions like 1440x900 than it is on 1080p.

 

And as a side note, that CPU could potentially make problems. It should run smooth as butter as long as you tweak Skyrim to use 4 cores, but I'd still bump the frequency up to at least 4GHz and disable turbo core, AMD FX are unlocked units after all and running them on stock is like heresy in my book.

[ArchangelCassiel]

I'm glad that my research wasn't a waste of time. I am going to get it as soon as I can. As for the GTX 760 I was considering buying that card as well but the import taxes in my country are so high it's about 20% more expensive (no idea why). The reason for the 4GB one is that it only costs more by about $3 than the 2GB one which is completely negligible(plus some HD textures would be cool :cool:). Overclocking the CPU is definitely something I will do once I get a watercooling setup. Thank you for the help.

[obobski]

HD 6970 should not be struggling with Fallout 3/New Vegas or Skyrim - not at all. Here's a TPU review of the 270X that has the 6970 included for comparison in Skyrim:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_270X/21.html

 

270X is *slightly* faster, but both are putting out very playable frame-rates (both are over 60 fps at 1600x900 - higher than your target). 68 vs 78 fps is not worth a few hundred bucks - you won't notice it, and if vsync is on it won't matter at all. If you have something going on that's dragging performance down hard enough to see stuttering/lag on the 6970, the 270X will very likely hit the same wall. I'd look at your load order, modlist, etc - there's probably something in there that's killing performance; a slightly faster graphics card is unlikely to resolve that (it may not give you any measurable benefit, depending on what's causing the hang-up, or it may give you a marginal improvement (as it would in the base game) which may or may not get you above the stuttering)).

[Rennn]

HD 6970 should not be struggling with Fallout 3/New Vegas or Skyrim - not at all. Here's a TPU review of the 270X that has the 6970 included for comparison in Skyrim:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_270X/21.html

 

 

He's running mods, and we have no idea how many.

That said, mods can easily bog down any PC. Upgrading his graphics card might give him great performance, or it might do almost nothing. Really it depends on what kinds of mods he's running and how many.

[Thor.]

Is he on a budget, you can run any mod and then some if you have a r290x, of course the prices are so high now, no thanks to bitcoin and high demand.

 

I have a gtx780ti and i have the luxury of not having to worry about fps, sense everything is maxed out at 60fps with mods and enb.

 

With the r270 and the r280's you need a special bios for it to run properly or it might not post properly, same deal with the gtx780 ti's, UEFI bios is whats it called. Comes packed with a nice mouse friendly interface.

A good example

 

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202083

 

For example i have the version one of the Sabertooth 990fx mobos, it supports UEFI. Not all motherboards have that option.

 

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131877

Edited February 10, 2014 by Thor.

[Rennn]

Is he on a budget, you can run any mod and then some if you have a r290x, of course the prices are so high now, no thanks to bitcoin and high demand.

 

 

he clearly says that a 270x is at the top of his budget. An r290x can safely be assumed to be out of the question.

[Thor.]

Okay, i understand, the r270 has also gone up in price, if you have found one. Though everywhere i have seen, they have them marked up or sold out, or discontinued do to high demand.

 

if you look on newegg.com, they have completely removed the listings for the r270's, they technically don't exist.

Edited February 10, 2014 by Thor.

[Rennn]

Okay, i understand, the r270 has also gone up in price, if you have found one. Though everywhere i have seen, they have them marked up or sold out, or discontinued do to high demand.

 

if you look on newegg.com, they have completely removed the listings for the r270's, they technically don't exist.

 

Maybe I'm wrong, but I just looked at Newegg and they have 5 or 6 versions still in stock. I'm not familiar with current-gen AMD naming conventions, but isn't this basically what he's looking at?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202063

 

I'd say they still exist in large quantities on Newegg. Not sure where you came up with the idea that they don't exist.

Edited February 10, 2014 by Rennn