Best graphics card to run heavily modded skyrim?

[Boombro]

The norm these days is 4 vram. If you can't get a strong card, get more vram.

[Namasteji]

concerning your question if a R9 390 would do as good as a GTX 970 you maybe would like to read this here as well: http://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/3bibka/help_gtx_970_or_r9_390_for_heavy_modding/

 

I'm in the same situation as you are/were, OK I'm not considering a used 980 and not a 970, but in the end I think I'll go for the R9 390. Even if there are disadvantages when using ENB Series I think it is the better choice for me, especially when looking at the price-performance ratio. And I guess there will be many new options next year with Pascal and ArcticIslands anyway :D

Edited July 30, 2015 by Namasteji

[praxis22]

concerning your question if a R9 390 would do as good as a GTX 970 you maybe would like to read this here as well: http://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/3bibka/help_gtx_970_or_r9_390_for_heavy_modding/

 

I'm in the same situation as you are/were, OK I'm not considering a used 980 and not a 970, but in the end I think I'll go for the R9 390. Even if there are disadvantages when using ENB Series I think it is the better choice for me, especially when looking at the price-performance ratio. And I guess there will be many new options next year with Pascal and ArcticIslands anyway :D

 

That was really useful, cheers!

[praxis22]

Well I pulled the trigger and bought a Sapphire R9 390 8GB. It is a monster of a card. I had to take the upper drive cage out (Antec P180) to fit it. and it requires two dedicated 8Pin 150W PCIE fly leads to power it. This is fitted in an MSI Z77A-GD55, (a socket 1155 board), and I had to flash the latest BIOS (1.11) before it would work, otherwise it appeared DOA, no output on any port. The key it appears, is if the little blue logo near the front of the card lights up, with that it works, without it doesn't. Other than that, it was a smooth build experience.

 

This is a good review of what you're getting from Eurogamer who do more grown up reviews if nothing else:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-amd-radeon-r9-390-8gb-review

 

This is directly releveant as they're benchmarking the R9 380 in Skyrim. It is in German however, so you'll likely need Google Translate. Though it will give you peg to compare the R9 390 to:

http://www.hardwareluxx.de/index.php/artikel/hardware/grafikkarten/35903-drei-modelle-der-radeon-r9-380-im-test.html?start=9

 

By way of a bookend, this is the same site benching the R9 390X in Skyrim:

http://www.hardwareluxx.de/index.php/artikel/hardware/grafikkarten/35979-drei-modelle-der-radeon-r9-390x-im-test.html?start=12

 

This is a hierarchy chart from Tom's Hardware for 2015:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html

 

Tom has long done Graphics Card comparisons, and the R9 390 is in the company of the GTX 970 and the original 4GB Titan. He recommends the R9 380 at $200 and the GTX 970 and the R9 390 at $330 I paid 355 Euro delivered.

 

Spec & Benchmark wise It appears than in general the R9 390 beats the GTX970 in a blended average of tests, the R9 390 gets better the higher you pump the resolution. It's not really a 4K card, there seems to be general agreement that there is no single GPU 4K card out there. Some games performing better than others. Just about every review says that 8GB is pointless unless you Run CrossFire, (which requires 16GB RAM minimum) but none of them are running modded Skyrim :smile:

 

I gave it only a cursory shakedown run last night, this is at 1080P on a Viewsonic VP2365wb with 450+ Mods loaded into Mod Organiser and 244 ish active plugins, 2K textures, it had a few micro stutters coming out of the Bannered Mare for the first time, (where I loaded from) but I figure it was loading textures at that point. It was a smooth expeience from then on. I'm guessing if I wanted it to be really smooth, I'd need to put my Skrim install onto an SSD or at least defrag my disk :smile:

 

I'm running the latest ENB binary & the latest Phinix ENB preset. No issues. Looked just like it did with my GTX 660 Ti 2GB, but it was smoother, I have it locked at 60fps in enblocal.ini.

 

For gaming at 1080P the card is definately overkill, but then I'm going to have to re-engineer my game. Put in high poly models, bump all the textures out to 4K with a few 8K here and there, see what happens. I've also got to get PhysX working again, since that now belongs to Nvidia, but there are patches, however that does require you install Nvidia drivers and the Nvidia PhysX driver, then a few patches. There are videos on Youtube.

 

Things to watch out for is your sound going missing, as the Sapphire R9 390 has a HDMI port, for which it installs and configures Surround Sound, but this means you have to reselect your own drivers if not using HDMI output.

 

Basically, this is a "no brainer" if you run Skyrim, especially if you run it higher than 1080P, the VRAM is useless to anyone but us, but for us, it means you can probably get screen archer fidelity in a playable game. More on that once I've rebuild my mods.

 

Time for Breakfast :tongue:

Edited August 8, 2015 by praxis22

[LeddBate]

I have to agree with the bulk of the commenters above. You really need 4GB of memory buffer in your GPU these days. That said, the GTX 970 is well within your stated budget (current street at $349 give-or-take a little depending on your area.) And you can probably find it on sale at one of the major online suppliers at nearly any given time.

 

Now you may have heard about Nvidia's little PR problem with the 970 concerning the fact that it's 4GB of speedy mem is actually only 3.5GB and that the remaining 512MB is a lower speed. And that's true. You can read some details here. But the lower speed memory buffer doesn't kick in until the 3.5GB of speedier mem is filled up. And even then the performance hit is minimal. See the chart in the article I linked. So I still think the 970 is worthwhile at the price point.

 

However, the new 980Ti just hit the market. And the next-gen of cards is just around the corner. So if you can hold off for a few months, I believe you will see the GTX980 fall down to within your budget. Of course, if you can find a bit of extra scratch, that 980Ti is pure awesome sauce. It's like having a mini-me GTX Titan.

[Jeenine]

those are some awesome advice, thanks a lot, I'm going to take what you said (@LeddBate) and wait until the prices drop to get that extra power

[praxis22]

On it's own, this page is worth a read: http://arstechnica.co.uk/gaming/2015/08/directx-12-tested-an-early-win-for-amd-and-disappointment-for-nvidia/4/

 

But the real story is the benchmarks, where a 980Ti is bested in places by a R9 280X under DX12 looks like Nvidia optimised for DX11 via hardware. The underlying changes of DX12 may upset that.

[jones177]

Nice read.

 

A video card on my system lasts about a year or less. This year alone I replaced my 970 with a 980 & the 980 with a 980 ti. I bought the 980 to play at 1440 with ENB & the 980 ti to run at 60fps at 1440 with ENB. My goal for next year will be to run at 60fps with ENB at 4k. I really don't care who make the card as long as it can meet my goals.

 

Later

[Moksha8088]

The R9 380 seems to be the sweet spot for the price vs. performance ratio. It performs better than the GTX 960 but less than the GTX 970.