Best extreme GPU (skyrim in mind). making big purchase here

[yudhi108]

EDIT: The aftermarket thread that's more recent in this forum is more relevent now. I'd rather not see this one bumped again. Thanks.

 

Hi guys,

 

I'm posting this here instead of any Skyrim forum because it's about hardware more than about Skyrim. I have a 3gb gtx 780 and was gunna SLI another one into my system when I started having problems, but Skyrim doesnt support SLI, so I've resorted to selling my 780 and buying a new card. I want an extreme card that's compatible with my system and has 6-12 gb of ram.

 

$1000 bucks is my comfortable price range, but I'm willing to consider some higher end stuff like the GTX titan Z (1600 bucks) or the new AMD r9 295x2 which goes for like 1500:

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KAE1K8W/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=2PS6CJ42MJ5HU&coliid=I1E4DXCMCX8M2H.

 

MY RIG:

 

 

ASUS MAXIMUS HERO 7 mobo

16gb Corsair Vengence pro RAM

3gb gtx780 superclocked

i7-4790k

 

 

 

Another GPU's I've condered is the 12gb GTX Titan Z.

 

Last question, what's the dif between these two GPU's:

1: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KFAG6C6/?tag=pcpapi-20

2: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JVKWNQY/?tag=pcpapi-20

 

I really can't tell the difference. If a few of you guys tell me there's no difference, I'm going to pull the trigger on that 1000 r9 right now. Spending 1000-1500 bucks is a big deal for me, so I really appreciate any and all input.

 

thanks!

[Vagrant0]

With videocards, going with the top-end cards are usually a huge waste that will always leave you wanting. You should really be asking yourself some important questions...

 

1). Is >45 fps on normal Ultra settings that important to me?

2). Is >45 fps on ultra-modded settings really that important to me?

3). Do I plan on overclocking this?

4). Am I running a fishtank build or similar where I MUST have liquid cooling on all components?

 

For question 1, if yes, you're looking at cards above the $150 range, with main points being a GPU above 800mhz, 2gb or more DDR5 RAM.

For question 2, if yes, you're looking at cards above the $300 range, with main points being a GPU above 1000mhz, 3gb or more DDR5 Ram.

For question 3, if yes, you're looking at two or more cards in the $300 range, or a single $800 card, while also taking a fairly large risk of failure.

For question 4, if yes, reconsider your sanity or your wallet.

 

Realistically speaking, you shouldn't be using Skyrim as a benchmark for performance. It was made for last generation cards, not the current one... Meaning that for each step above the $300 range you're gaining less and less of a performance boost. When you're getting up to those $1000 cards with built-in liquid cooling, the only thing you're really paying for is bragging rights and quieter running conditions.

 

A better benchmark would be to look at the requirements of some of the games just coming out, then try to do a step above for the sake of futureproofing.

[yudhi108]

>45 fps on ultra modded ultra 4k is important to me, and I don't think the 780 is cutting it for me. i think 8gb or vram would be incredible.

[Vagrant0]

>45 fps on ultra modded ultra 4k is important to me, and I don't think the 780 is cutting it for me. i think 8gb or vram would be incredible.

Define "not cutting it".

 

More VRAM will not necessarily make things smoother, load faster, or have noticeably higher framerates. The only thing it will allow will be in preparing more data (textures) at a time. While this will decrease load times slightly, you likely still have a bottleneck as far as processing power (shaders, transitions, ect) is concerned, either by means of the videocard not being able to handle what is thrown at it, other hardware not being able to send data fast enough, or just the programming not being designed for such a system.

 

Don't buy into the elitist gaming culture, most of it is BS or runs into a similar thread of owning a street-legal race car in the middle of suburbia. In most cases, you're paying through the nose for little more than bragging rights. Given that many games are hard capped at 60 fps due to being a console port, most of that power will go to waste.

[ZeroKing]

I don't know where you got the idea that SLI isn't supported on Skyrim, I'm using a 2x GTX 780 SLI setup just fine. The microstutter is the problem (which is rather common on multi-GPU setups in most games, in any case). Drivers since the days when SLI wasn't supported for Skyrim have improved quite a bit (back in early 2012, SLI and CrossFire sucked on Skyrim).

[yudhi108]

 

>45 fps on ultra modded ultra 4k is important to me, and I don't think the 780 is cutting it for me. i think 8gb or vram would be incredible.

Define "not cutting it".

 

More VRAM will not necessarily make things smoother, load faster, or have noticeably higher framerates. The only thing it will allow will be in preparing more data (textures) at a time. While this will decrease load times slightly, you likely still have a bottleneck as far as processing power (shaders, transitions, ect) is concerned, either by means of the videocard not being able to handle what is thrown at it, other hardware not being able to send data fast enough, or just the programming not being designed for such a system.

 

Don't buy into the elitist gaming culture, most of it is BS or runs into a similar thread of owning a street-legal race car in the middle of suburbia. In most cases, you're paying through the nose for little more than bragging rights. Given that many games are hard capped at 60 fps due to being a console port, most of that power will go to waste.

 

Perhaps I don't quite need 8gb of VRAM, but I have noticed CTD issues before with too many texture mods etc. Pretty sure I was just running out of vram.

[yudhi108]

I don't know where you got the idea that SLI isn't supported on Skyrim, I'm using a 2x GTX 780 SLI setup just fine. The microstutter is the problem (which is rather common on multi-GPU setups in most games, in any case). Drivers since the days when SLI wasn't supported for Skyrim have improved quite a bit (back in early 2012, SLI and CrossFire sucked on Skyrim).

Well I've read many places to disable one card if you have SLI and that there's lots of problems with SLI in Skyrim.

[FMod]

SLI doesn't double your VRAM and even if you had a single 8GB VRAM card, Skyrim wouldn't be able to use more than half of it even in theory and more than 2-3 GB out of it without crashing.

Perhaps I don't quite need 8gb of VRAM, but I have noticed CTD issues before with too many texture mods etc. Pretty sure I was just running out of vram.

It would've been very funny game design if they were made to crash once they "ran out" of VRAM.

 

"Load this city... Exited city, load next city... Another city... Oh, that's all the VRAM we've got, PLAYTIME OVER!"

 

No.

VRAM isn't consumed, most of it in DX9 simply mirrors items loaded into the game's system RAM, for faster rendering.

You can't quite run out of it with a DX9 engine - it will simply keep using your system RAM, as it normally does.

 

It's perfectly possible to play Skyrim with a 512MB video card like GT710 or an older one. It's slow and not great fun, but it runs and it doesn't say "oops, out of VRAM, playtime over" once it fills the whole 512MB, which would be about right after the loading screen.

 

There's plenty of reason Skyrim crashes, and texture mod related ones have to do with how Skyrim manages its 4GB of 32-bit system memory, not with what DX does in VRAM - which again has to be mirrored into these 4GB anyway.

It's this 4GB - if you used the enabler, else even less - that it "runs out of" when it crashes.

[yudhi108]

SLI doesn't double your VRAM and even if you had a single 8GB VRAM card, Skyrim wouldn't be able to use more than half of it even in theory and more than 2-3 GB out of it without crashing.

Perhaps I don't quite need 8gb of VRAM, but I have noticed CTD issues before with too many texture mods etc. Pretty sure I was just running out of vram.

It would've been very funny game design if they were made to crash once they "ran out" of VRAM.

 

"Load this city... Exited city, load next city... Another city... Oh, that's all the VRAM we've got, PLAYTIME OVER!"

 

No.

VRAM isn't consumed, most of it in DX9 simply mirrors items loaded into the game's system RAM, for faster rendering.

You can't quite run out of it with a DX9 engine - it will simply keep using your system RAM, as it normally does.

 

It's perfectly possible to play Skyrim with a 512MB video card like GT710 or an older one. It's slow and not great fun, but it runs and it doesn't say "oops, out of VRAM, playtime over" once it fills the whole 512MB, which would be about right after the loading screen.

 

There's plenty of reason Skyrim crashes, and texture mod related ones have to do with how Skyrim manages its 4GB of 32-bit system memory, not with what DX does in VRAM - which again has to be mirrored into these 4GB anyway.

It's this 4GB - if you used the enabler, else even less - that it "runs out of" when it crashes.

 

Thanks a lot for so much thoughtful information. This may have saved me from making a really bad purchase. I'm stepping back for a bit to reconsider, though I do still want to upgrade my graphics card some time in the next 2-6 months or so.