Suggestion on Upgrade

[Guest endgameaddiction]

Hey guys and gals I need advice.

 

I'm looking to build a new rig later on, but to be honest there is no ETA on that so I've been thinking about taking a big step on upgrading my graphics card on my current rig to something that will potentially give me a pretty good step up. My current card is a GeForce GTX 260 (weak sauce) and I researched online and I was thinking maybe going for something in the GTX 7 series like a GTX 760. I mean right now with 2k hires textures, vanilla weather and performance ENB I'm getting 30fps tops. With ENBoost. Some other performance ENBs drop me down to the 20s and even down to 17-19fps as they are pretty heavily bloomated and if I tweak that it just defeats the purpose of the preset. This is no bueno.

 

These are my specs... (don't laugh i know )

 

 

 

 

 

 

OS: Win7 Home Premium

PSU: 750w output

 

I've read for an upgrade 500w PSU should be the minimum but that's depending what you are shooting for.  I mean I'm not looking to spend an arm and leg on something that's only going to give me 10 more frames. And since this is going to be the first time I upgrade my card, any advice or would be very helpful. If not just let me know if I'm better off just waiting to build a new rig from the ground up. But I'm talking about maybe late this year or a year from now so my mind is set on upgrading my card instead.

[windpl]

I would advise avoid nvidia cards they have some shit up drivers recently - just look on thier forum it is awful (support is even more awful).

If you aren't sure what to pick look at site like this http://www.passmark.com find something interesting and then goggle it for more detailed info.

But again avoid nvidia cards atm.

[zzz72w3r]

Building a gaming rig is all about getting the right balance within a given budget.  Without telling people a rough $amount you will get all kinds of different advices, some useful, some wrong but mostly conflicting.  My 0.02 based on what you've got.

 

1. 760 will not make your current CPU a constraint but 780 or 760 SLI might.

2. You current 750watt PSU, assuming it's a decent brand, should be more than enough for whatever CPU and GPU you plan on upgrading to.

 

I went from a 1GB 4870 oriented rig to a 2GB 660 oriented rig so your jump will be similar and trust me the improvement is huge.  One thing you might want to consider might be deciding a 2GB or 4GB version (single card not SLI).  The only game that will matter is with loading a huge amount of high res texture mods in Skyrim.  No other game in existence will use more than 2GB before 760 chokes.

[prideslayer]

I have a 760 myself, very happy with it. No problems with the drivers (332.21 -- I don't update all that often). You can still download the old drivers from them if there are indeed issues with newer ones.

[Guest endgameaddiction]

I've been reading about the PCIe versions and I've removed my card to see if I can find what version I have (1.0, 2.0, 3.0) My PC is 5 years old so I doubt it would be a 3.0. Is there a program that can tell me this? CPU-Z doesn't list it. I've searching under Device Manager > System Devices, but there is nothing for PCI Express. I researched and read that any PCIe x16 slot are all backwards compatible, but if I were to use a 3.0 on a 2.0 i will be limited to the 2.0 bandwidth. So I do know as far as picking a PCIe to fit won't be a problem.

[SquallPT]

Never seen the difference between pcie 2.0 and 3.0, in terms of game graphics and performance.

[Rayblue]

^

Puget did a comparative test, and discovered that despite claims of larger 3.0 bandwidth, there was actually no significant change in performance, or a massive jump in speed.

[Guest endgameaddiction]

That's good to know. I found out I got a PCIe 2.0, I'm finally almost done and ready to find a good deal.

 

I really appreciate all the advice and info given.

[prideslayer]

^

Puget did a comparative test, and discovered that despite claims of larger 3.0 bandwidth, there was actually no significant change in performance, or a massive jump in speed.

There shouldn't be. The pci bandwidth is only used for blasting things into the card; textures, shader programs, etc. Other than lazy loaded textures, most of this stuff is only loaded once per game, or on 'zone change'. Once it's there, the memory bandwidth on the card matters, but the pci bandwidth is hardly being used.