Replacement graphics card for Skyrim?

[calranthe]

Why do I say skyrim because most of my other games play fine with whatever I have in system.

 

Currently I have an Nvidia 660ti 2gb which is a great card but my skyrim with all the 4096 hd textures is pushing this card, the 660 will go in the media pc replacing a 460ti so it will not go to waste.

 

I am limited to around £330, I definetly want to go for a 4gb card ddr5 for the extra texture memory

 

The rest of my system is fine

i5 2500k cpu

8gb ddr3

1tb drive + sdd

Resolution I play at 1920*1080.

 

Will be ordering in a couple of weeks so any suggestions or ideas are welcome.

 

[Rayblue]

4k textures and high-polycount meshes are murdering overkill unless you do a lot of screencapping most of the time than playing. Of course you'll have to take the latest Kepler from nVidia with 4gb of DDR5 and jack up the amount of system memory to 16gb if you insist on using 4k textures.

 

If I were you I'll keep 4k only for body textures and the rest at 2k.

[crusher]

wait a month, Nvidia's Maxwell will be releasing its next salvo. I'm waiting for Maxwell with the performance range of the 770. It should be a cheaper card than current 770s by a bit, and will likely run at half the wattage. Maxwell is the new gold standard for data mining as well. The available 750ti Maxwells are currently the performance equivalent of what I am currently running: amd 7850 -- about 20fps with max mods/ENB etc. Tried the AMD's R9 280X, (which 2.5 times FPS) but it was not a great card for Skyrim, 770s are much better for the price. Sent the R9 card back to NewEgg as the GPU was crashing constantly while running skyrim, 10 second black screen, even with ample PSU. Likely a driver issue. Go Nvidia for Skyrim if you have the option ENB is optimized for Nvidia, per author. Follow the 'card of the month' trends at Tom's Hardware, Nvidia still at top of the price/performance ratio. 

[Emberheart]

You won't notice much of a difference between what you have and what you can get for that price I'm afraid. Rayblue has the right of it, lower the non-body texture res, or safe up and get a very high end graphics card.

[...0...]

Why do I say skyrim because most of my other games play fine with whatever I have in system.

 

Currently I have an Nvidia 660ti 2gb which is a great card but my skyrim with all the 4096 hd textures is pushing this card, the 660 will go in the media pc replacing a 460ti so it will not go to waste.

 

I am limited to around £330, I definetly want to go for a 4gb card ddr5 for the extra texture memory

 

The rest of my system is fine

i5 2500k cpu

8gb ddr3

1tb drive + sdd

Resolution I play at 1920*1080.

 

Will be ordering in a couple of weeks so any suggestions or ideas are welcome.

 

MSI 290 GAMING 4g top notch card for fair price its as fast as the titan card but just under 290x and 780ti and that for low price.

 

Or over priced nvidia's its what you prefer offcorse

[calranthe]

One thing I didn't mention is my pc is liquid cooled I built it when I had a Q6600 and 2 3870x2's, that same system is now barely ticking over with a cpu and northbridge block,

 

I think it is more I want to be able to push things and skyrim seems to be the best to try this

My cpu can go to 4.9ghz stable but I leave it at stock because no need to go any higher, 8gb seemed fine according to my hardware performance monitor (case mod) I have never gone above 6gb usage total otherwise I would have gone 16gb.

 

I will wait a month see what the next Maxwell has, all the house computers now run nvidia, I just have had bad luck with ati/amd.

 

I do feel the limitation on my system is the 2gb card but I may be wrong, hell if I could find a 660ti 4gb then I would slap a waterblock on it.

 

[...0...]

Skyrim realy heavy modded and i mean real heavy with only 4k textures-2560x1440 at 45-55 fps.

 

Run Thief/Metro last light Ultra settings and 2560x1440 50fps

 

This a 290x but 290 can also almost play with these numbers.

 

Price is alot cheaper then Nvidia your choice

 

 

[Spartan 363]

I can get GTX 680 performance out of a GTX 760 4GB that I had with a mild OC.  Having 2 GTX 760's in SLI is faster than a Titan as well and cheaper than the GTX 780.  For $500, you can have the performance beyond a single GTX Titan when you OC and such.  Don't believe me? look at this review done by guys that know their PC hardware, the GTX 760 is THE card to get in it's price range.  In most games, these 2 cards shame even the AMD 290 being $100 cheaper for both cards.  I do however have a GTX 770 4GB now and gave my GTX 760 4GB to my GF in order for her to play Skyrim and such with all the nice eye candy mods.

 

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_760_sli_review,1.html

[calranthe]

I can get GTX 680 performance out of a GTX 760 4GB that I had with a mild OC.  Having 2 GTX 760's in SLI is faster than a Titan as well and cheaper than the GTX 780.  For $500, you can have the performance beyond a single GTX Titan when you OC and such.  Don't believe me? look at this review done by guys that know their PC hardware, the GTX 760 is THE card to get in it's price range.  In most games, these 2 cards shame even the AMD 290 being $100 cheaper for both cards.  I do however have a GTX 770 4GB now and gave my GTX 760 4GB to my GF in order for her to play Skyrim and such with all the nice eye candy mods.

 

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_760_sli_review,1.html

 

How does skyrim handle sli ?

 

I like the idea of sticking two 760's in my case.

[Emberheart]

 

I can get GTX 680 performance out of a GTX 760 4GB that I had with a mild OC.  Having 2 GTX 760's in SLI is faster than a Titan as well and cheaper than the GTX 780.  For $500, you can have the performance beyond a single GTX Titan when you OC and such.  Don't believe me? look at this review done by guys that know their PC hardware, the GTX 760 is THE card to get in it's price range.  In most games, these 2 cards shame even the AMD 290 being $100 cheaper for both cards.  I do however have a GTX 770 4GB now and gave my GTX 760 4GB to my GF in order for her to play Skyrim and such with all the nice eye candy mods.

 

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_760_sli_review,1.html

 

How does skyrim handle sli ?

 

I like the idea of sticking two 760's in my case.

 

 

I know it didn't like ATi/AMD's Crossfire, causing complete chaos with ENB's etc. I'm not sure if combining two vidcards through SLI does the same.

[Spartan 363]

 

I can get GTX 680 performance out of a GTX 760 4GB that I had with a mild OC.  Having 2 GTX 760's in SLI is faster than a Titan as well and cheaper than the GTX 780.  For $500, you can have the performance beyond a single GTX Titan when you OC and such.  Don't believe me? look at this review done by guys that know their PC hardware, the GTX 760 is THE card to get in it's price range.  In most games, these 2 cards shame even the AMD 290 being $100 cheaper for both cards.  I do however have a GTX 770 4GB now and gave my GTX 760 4GB to my GF in order for her to play Skyrim and such with all the nice eye candy mods.

 

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_760_sli_review,1.html

 

How does skyrim handle sli ?

 

I like the idea of sticking two 760's in my case.

 

SLI works with ENB and Skyrim for the most part, AMD does have a bit of an edge for single cards (Just in Skyrim, Nvidia for nearly all other games beats the same class of AMD cards), but when it comes to multiple cards, SLI hands down beats Xfire.  I used to have SLI EVGA GTX 670 4GB FTW's last year (I had to sell the cards for a major car repair bill this past Autumn though ) and it worked great with ENB.  Now, I game on a single GTX 770 4GB as having more VRAM helps a lot since the settings and such I use for ENB along with the HD (4K) textures pushes my VRAM usage to nearly 3GB and even at times, beyond it.

 

For now, I would suggest getting a single GTX 760 4GB as the VRAM will make a bigger difference compared to the 2GB version as the 2GB card will begin to choke because of the lack of VRAM.  If you are gaming at 1080 HD resolution, a single GTX 760 4GB would be great on it's own for now.  With an average overclock, you can have GTX 680 performance in Skyrim along with the VRAM to handle the large textures and ENB presets and such.

 

Here is my old setup, well at least one card, the other, I had already took it out and sold at the time, I also sold that old GTX 560 Ti for PhysX duty, I now have a GTX 650 Ti 2GB for PhysX duty now that I have a GTX 770 4GB.

 

 

I have good experience with SLI throughout the years ever since the 7900 GTX/8800 GTX days with Oblivion and when ENB first came out too.

[Dutchbat]

Best solution : R9 280X OC or R9 270X if you're on a budget

290 is too expensive for its performance.

 

I dont really agree with that one.

 

Prices vary alot for each continent but here in Europe a new stock R9 290 is for sale for abit over 300 euro's and its performance is faster than Nvidia's 770 while that card is way more expansive. And on top of that, if you buy a Artic Accelero Xtreme 3 for less than 30 euros and clock the card abit it will become faster than Nvidia's Titan and almost equal performance to Nvidia's 780 Ti

 

http://tweakers.net/reviews/3303/10/amd-r9-290-het-kleine-broertje-van-overklokken-sneller-dan-een-290x.html

 

It's dutch but the chart speaks for itself.

[...0...]

Best solution : R9 280X OC or R9 270X if you're on a budget

290 is too expensive for its performance.

 

Lol your kidding me right?

 

Not only will 290 out perform 280x by large margin plus fact is complete new architecture and for skyrim it have a 4gb vram which helps alot also its also close to titan(850 euro's) performance for 350 euro's it's not even close to expensive lol

 

If there is a brand thats expensive and way over priced it's nvidia cards.

 

But maybe you think it's to expensive for you and you rather spent only max around 200 euros for card but thats a complete different story then its about budget you can affort.

 

@Spartan,

 

Ok im not gonne discus this in great lenght becouse your obvious Nvidia fan(thats fine by me im AMD fan) but your assumption nvidia beats AMD in every other game is FALSE i would almost ask if your from a other planet?

 

AMD scores BANG for BUCK not only alot better then Nvidia in almost every game it beats in many major games even 780 ti which is 150 euros more then my 290x

 

But most games are made with Nvidia in mind so yes they perform good but AMD for less money performs very well in those games and even in some better.

 

AMD SAPPHIRE 270 4gb is 200 euros is alot better BANG for BUCK then Nvidia counter parts which are over priced.

 

Oh and about SLI vs Xfire your behind on latest Xfire is improved ALOT with no need for a bridge anymore its now all handled through PCIExpress and performs and scales even alot better these days then Nvidia.

[...0...]

 

I can get GTX 680 performance out of a GTX 760 4GB that I had with a mild OC.  Having 2 GTX 760's in SLI is faster than a Titan as well and cheaper than the GTX 780.  For $500, you can have the performance beyond a single GTX Titan when you OC and such.  Don't believe me? look at this review done by guys that know their PC hardware, the GTX 760 is THE card to get in it's price range.  In most games, these 2 cards shame even the AMD 290 being $100 cheaper for both cards.  I do however have a GTX 770 4GB now and gave my GTX 760 4GB to my GF in order for her to play Skyrim and such with all the nice eye candy mods.

 

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_760_sli_review,1.html

 

How does skyrim handle sli ?

 

I like the idea of sticking two 760's in my case.

 

 

Same site:

 

 

Mind you 290x cost 495 euros customcard(MSI)

The 780 ti cost you custom made 635 euros

 

290 cost you 350 euros  which beats 760 in sli by large marchin with tombraider as example a game developed with nvidia in mind.

 

i can show you more of these from same site where AMD give bang for buck and beat the mighty nvidia 780 ti on several games not to mention  how cheap they are compare to nvidia.

 

[...0...]

 

Best solution : R9 280X OC or R9 270X if you're on a budget

290 is too expensive for its performance.

 

I dont really agree with that one.

 

Prices vary alot for each continent but here in Europe a new stock R9 290 is for sale for abit over 300 euro's and its performance is faster than Nvidia's 770 while that card is way more expansive. And on top of that, if you buy a Artic Accelero Xtreme 3 for less than 30 euros and clock the card abit it will become faster than Nvidia's Titan and almost equal performance to Nvidia's 780 Ti

 

http://tweakers.net/reviews/3303/10/amd-r9-290-het-kleine-broertje-van-overklokken-sneller-dan-een-290x.html

 

It's dutch but the chart speaks for itself.

 

 

Many chart's speak for themselfs only 780 ti can compete with 290's but you pay alot more rest stay behind even the very expensive titan card loses on 290's most charts.

 

 

[Spartan 363]

First of, try and reply in 1 post, triple posting is usually frowned upon in organized forums, it's like those that type in all caps.  Now, second, I'm not into silly fanboy wars like you and jumping all over me is not the way to debate this when you're wrong.   Your very picture says that 2 GTX 760's in SLI beats even the GTX Titan in Tomb Raider, where did you come with that ludicrous statement that the 290X, much less the 290 far surpasses the SLI GTX 760?  You need to look at the picture again and see your mistake.

 

Also, the 290X cost 495 Euros right?  That's $680.33 in US dollars, mind you that buying 2 GTX 760's for an SLI setup cost you only $289.99 each card, these are also the 4GB cards too.  This model is good at overclocking because of the aftermarket cooling over reference designs.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125494

 

Buying 2 of these cards will cost you $580.98  US dollars which translates to 422.72 Euros, that's still cheaper than the 290X that these cards beat along with the Titan.

 

Try again and try to post the real facts, not silly fanboy trash talk.  I'm not looking to get into fanboy wars because that's for children, not grown men like myself.  Also, buying these 2 cards cost $100 less than the 290X while beating that card too.

 

Here, I even highlighted your error so that you can see that you're wrong on the same chart you tried using to disprove me, the GTX 760 IS the card to buy in it's price range and you have extra things like better multi card stability, better driver support, even for older cards many generations ago have better support and also having things like PhysX and more games being optimized for Nvidia cards in general as a bonus.  You also have Geforce Experience that can optimize games for you (I prefer to do it myself) and also having nvidia Shadow that's free that these cards such as streaming games online, take videos for free without paying for Fraps for example and many other things that come with the program.  Also, last but not least, these are the previous generation of Nvidia cards, the GTX 750 Ti is wrecking havoc in it's price range with the Maxwell architecture and wait until the new generation mid end and high end cards come out from Nvidia by Spring (Northern hemisphere) and trounce the AMD cards like they have been doing for the last decade or so nearly now.  If you wish to debate more, I welcome it, but try and be organized into 1 post and also post truthful facts too, I never said AMD cards are trash, many are good for your money, but I just prefer the stability and larger optimization Nvidia cards enjoy across the board, that's my opinion and I respect your loyalty to AMD, I never shun it because we need the competition and us consumers win with choice, now Intel jumping into the game would be interesting in the future.

 

[Rayblue]

Although I use AMD GPUs and satisfied with their performance, I'll be frank about what GPU to buy: get the card that floats your boat -- that is, if you're been comfortable with nVidias for years and never had a problem with them, then buy the latest but know your manufacturers (some makers have better quality than others) and user reports.

 

[...0...]

First of, try and reply in 1 post, triple posting is usually frowned upon in organized forums, it's like those that type in all caps.  Now, second, I'm not into silly fanboy wars like you and jumping all over me is not the way to debate this when you're wrong.   Your very picture says that 2 GTX 760's in SLI beats even the GTX Titan in Tomb Raider, where did you come with that ludicrous statement that the 290X, much less the 290 far surpasses the SLI GTX 760?  You need to look at the picture again and see your mistake.

 

Also, the 290X cost 495 Euros right?  That's $680.33 in US dollars, mind you that buying 2 GTX 760's for an SLI setup cost you only $289.99 each card, these are also the 4GB cards too.  This model is good at overclocking because of the aftermarket cooling over reference designs.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125494

 

Buying 2 of these cards will cost you $580.98  US dollars which translates to 422.72 Euros, that's still cheaper than the 290X that these cards beat along with the Titan.

 

Try again and try to post the real facts, not silly fanboy trash talk.  I'm not looking to get into fanboy wars because that's for children, not grown men like myself.  Also, buying these 2 cards cost $100 less than the 290X while beating that card too.

 

Here, I even highlighted your error so that you can see that you're wrong on the same chart you tried using to disprove me, the GTX 760 IS the card to buy in it's price range and you have extra things like better multi card stability, better driver support, even for older cards many generations ago have better support and also having things like PhysX and more games being optimized for Nvidia cards in general as a bonus.  You also have Geforce Experience that can optimize games for you (I prefer to do it myself) and also having nvidia Shadow that's free that these cards such as streaming games online, take videos for free without paying for Fraps for example and many other things that come with the program.  Also, last but not least, these are the previous generation of Nvidia cards, the GTX 750 Ti is wrecking havoc in it's price range with the Maxwell architecture and wait until the new generation mid end and high end cards come out from Nvidia by Spring (Northern hemisphere) and trounce the AMD cards like they have been doing for the last decade or so nearly now.  If you wish to debate more, I welcome it, but try and be organized into 1 post and also post truthful facts too, I never said AMD cards are trash, many are good for your money, but I just prefer the stability and larger optimization Nvidia cards enjoy across the board, that's my opinion and I respect your loyalty to AMD, I never shun it because we need the competition and us consumers win with choice, now Intel jumping into the game would be interesting in the future.

 

post-232301-0-68878600-1394111778.jpg

My mistake about comparison thought you ment 2x sli vs 2x xfire my mistake.

One card that can perform almost what 2 cards can seem better choice also less watt it needs plus sli or xfire is not always good in every game.

 

Again AMD performance very well in most games or even better for much cheaper price.

 

But as you said your grown men and dont wanne.... well if i see those sentence you wrote there and i look at mine say enough.

 

If i just point out some thing s you don't like maybe count to 10 show its not true but dont go with childish or thats for children or silly fan boy trahs talk your grown man for god sake and you even said it yourself don't lower yourself you get back at me ok.

 

Have nice day and your NvidiA happy for you.

 

Don't bother won't reply anymore no use.

 

 

[Guest]

I deleted my previous comment because it seems like my personal opinion has caused a fanboy war in this thread. My most sincere apology to the original poster.

[CrimsonOmegaLance]

I use a 770 GTX 4gb.  Since I'm running 3000 npc spawners and 5 companions, I can't use more than 2k grahpics on a 1900x1080 and mods like Lush Grass/Trees cause my FPS to drop below 30.  Usually, I'm around 40-50.

 

 

 

If I was running a standard game with one companion and normal npc spawns, I'd be able to use all the texture packs, an ENB, and still get 40+fps.

[Spartan 363]

 

 

Have nice day and your NvidiA happy for you.

 

Don't bother won't reply anymore no use.

 

 

 

 

I'm sorry if i sounded like an asshole, but all I ask is for you to post truthful facts to back up your claims.  I know AMD makes good cards, but I have used Nvidia for years and like PhysX in the batman games I play, it makes a big difference.  

 

Now, I do admit, AMD shines when it comes to bitcoin mining if you're into that stuff and shames the Nvidia Kepler architecture, now, Maxwell should be able to go head to head with AMD's latest like Nvidia's Fermi architecture did 3 generations ago.

[blabba]

Meh,

 

I'm a huge fan of Nvidia currently. I think their support and drivers are better overall than AMD. (Completely personal opinion, please do not mistake this for me stating it as a fact)

 

That being said, for the record Physx works fine on AMD cards as well, less performance because the engine is completely run off the CPU, but still works for the AMD/ATI folks.

 

Overall though, I hate the current state of affairs between hardware manufacturers and how they 'sponsor' different games. Really annoying crap for us end users to deal with.

 

My personal opinion, do some really through research, target the graphics card to what game your most likely gonna play the most or what Game Dev your gonna buy games from the most. Check and see which company sponsors them and you'll most likely want to get that company's hardware as well because it will have the most optimization for that game dev/game.

[Rayblue]

Oh, man... B.O.H.I.C.A.

 

*facepalm*

 

I tend to avoid x is better than y situations such as this.

[pinky6225]

I've had ATI cards lately, currently have the ATI R9 270X 4 GB version and before that i had the ATI 6870 1 GB that I upgraded to from a crappy ATI 4450 ( i think) that came with the PC.

 

I've had Nvidea cards in the past as well my previous PC was a off-the shelf model that came with a custom Nvidea card which worked really well (believe it was a GT 430 2 GB) until it overheated and wasted the motherboard and cpu along with the graphics cards which did sort of sour my nvidea experience.

 

Personnally I'll usually buy an off the shelf PC and then upgrade it rather than totally build from scratch (current PC is a HP 7100 MT which I've changed/upgraded the PSU, RAM, GPU and added a extra HD to) so I'll stick with the brand of card that the PC originally came with

 

 

[calranthe]

Okay, I personally had bad experience with ATI cards including the sapphire x3870's I think they were called, also the 2900 and the 6790 (not sure on the numbers) and I felt that AMD catalyst center + drivers was getting a little bloatware.

BUT I have had friends who love ati.

 

I am still deciding on my future upgrade still going to wait a couple of weeks at least, my motherboard unfortunately is crossfire only so if I want to go the dual cards way I would go 2*270x

IF I stick with nvidia, I don't really do brand loyalty it all depends on the hardware and software, I hope to get the new 760ti or whatever they will be calling the new maxwell card.