Upgrading Graphics Card

[Null0000]

Current: http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-SuperCloc.../dp/B007Z3HZLM
Looking at this for a replacement: http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GTX980-Su.../dp/B00NI5DA2E

The only thing I am concerned about is it only has 4GB of VRAM. I know that is more than enough for any game that is out now, but I normal only buy every other generation of graphics cards. Watchdogs has been the only game I haven't been about to play at max settings with my current card, and I would like my replacement to be in a similar position when I replace it. Should I wait for the 8GB version to come out?

[Mokona512]

4GB is a good amount and no game at the moment seems to use that much memory, even at 4K resolution, so it should be good for a while. The only issue is moving to a 980 now will be very expensive.

I am not sure if they will release an 8GB version, though there is a chance that we may see a 6GB version to make a next gen GTX titan.

For current cards that are not workstation cards, when you see them release a card with well above the normal amount of memory for that model, it is often due to the company wanting to increase profit margins by charging a large price premium for extra memory, that often ran slower. Other than that, it is a good card if you feel that you must have the fastest card on the market.

[WarMaker132]

I would make your PC ram to 8-10 to run the that card

[xX1Rick1Xx]

Nicxe card , here is a really good review of it look like it edges out the r9 290x which is the same price point ... what resolution do you plan to game at ? im at 1080 and i have a r9 290 and it BFE on ultra at 100+ fps all dayhttp://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...well,3941.html

[Null0000]

Currently gaming at 1080p, probably 4k in the near future. Currently have 32 GB of RAM so that's not a problem.

Definitely agree that games generally don't use that much VRAM. Unfortunately, there's Watch Dogs as a counter example; which uses 4 GB on ultra. Which is kind of stupid considering Crysis 3 uses ~1.5 GB. My biggest fear is that shitty ports like Watch Dogs are going to be much more common. As for price, it probably won't go down much, if at all, since it's about 100-200 dollars cheaper than its predecessor.

Anyway the 8 GB version simply comes from rumors and inside leaks. Not sure if it will actually happen. Supposed to come out Nov/Dec. http://videocardz.com/52122/overcloc...s-also-planned Also, completely agree that they will raise the price ridiculously on the higher memory version, although I had complete forgotten about that fact, stupidly. Makes me wish someone would make a card with removable memory. Might just get the 4 GB version because of the price.

[ModJPB]

High amounts of VRAM are only useful. when running games that have many addon texture packs such as Skyrim. 4GB of VRAM is overkill for now and will be for along time. Games nowadays barely go over 1gb of vram. Most of the data is stored in system ram. Anyway even if by chance you run out of vram ,windows redirects it to system ram. Most games for the next 5years will probably not need so much vram because they will all need to be compatible with xbox one and ps4 which uses slower shared system ram as the vram.

Moral of the story, amount of vram is a poor judgement of determing graphics card speed. Frequency is another poor factor since some cards are higher clocked but have less cores and bus width. The greatest affect on graphics card speed is the memory bus width, example 256bit, and the core count.

[Null0000]

High amounts of VRAM are only useful. when running games that have many addon texture packs such as Skyrim. 4GB of VRAM is overkill for now and will be for along time. Games nowadays barely go over 1gb of vram. Most of the data is stored in system ram. Anyway even if by chance you run out of vram ,windows redirects it to system ram. Most games for the next 5years will probably not need so much vram because they will all need to be compatible with xbox one and ps4 which uses slower shared system ram as the vram.

Moral of the story, amount of vram is a poor judgement of determing graphics card speed. Frequency is another poor factor since some cards are higher clocked but have less cores and bus width. The greatest affect on graphics card speed is the memory bus width, example 256bit, and the core count.

Yeah, I'm aware of that. The only two games I have that need 4 GB of VRAM are Skyrim and Watchdogs. I am just afraid that crappy ports like Watch Dogs are going to be a lot more common in the future. The amount of VRAM you have will usually never effect the speed of the card, unless you run out of space. If the amount of video memory being used exceeds the physical VRAM then the system memory acts as a cache. You never want your graphics memory pool to exceed your physical VRAM because your DDR3 RAM generally has half the bandwidth and a much longer transmission time than the GDDR5 VRAM that's integrated into the card, which will kill your FPS. That said, as previously state, you probably won't see games use more than 4 GB right now. The PS4/XBONE are a special case. The PS4 uses GDDR5 which is the same as VRAM (it will most likely just have a longer transmission time than your graphics card. The XBONE does use the much slower DDR3 but tries to make up for it with the 32 MB of eSRAM. Either way their unified memory is something that windows will not allow.

Basically, what it comes down to is Watch Dogs has scared the shit out of me, and I'm probably being a little to paranoid about my hardware specs.

[Mokona512]

watchdogs is pretty inefficient with its memory usage while also failing to use multiple cores Pretty much everything relating to the environment in the same is handled by a single thread, and vehicles, AI, and other interactions is handled by 1 other thread. After that, you have a direct 3D render thread (which is common in many games, even single threaded, and that thread is always separate and uses a different core when possible).

There are other threads that it launches but the others consistently use less than 1% CPU usage and do not seem to change their usage usage in response to what you are doing in game.

There is then an additional thread that becomes very active when loading into the game world or loading a new level, other than that, it is largely idle.

Since watch dogs largely relies on 2 threads, when one hits a full core worth of CPU usage (in the case of my Phemon II 6 core, 16.6% CPU usage, then the framerates begin to drop a little and the game will not use the full GPU power. (with further updates (and beofre official updates, some of the DRM relates community patches ;) stopped that activity and also stopped the huge lag spikes that I was having while driving around (where during those lag spikes, GPU usage would drop significantly.

In earlier versions before many of the patches came out, there was one additional thread that periodically became highly active and then went back to being idle. The activity of that extra MSVCR100.dll thread seemed to have no correlation to what you did in the game (I assume that was the games DRM designed to kick you from the game if it detected a hacked uplay client since they started scanning for that when they noticed hacked clients being able to download games directly from uplay for free and play them as if they were legally purchased.

PS, modern game engines are often designed to take more memory when more memory is present, for example if you move from a 2GB card, to a 3GB card, you will often see games that previously used less than 1.5GB of video memory,suddenly take closer to 2GB of memory, not sure while it happens with some games, but lots of software does this. including windows, it will use more RAM at start up if you install more RAM.

[Null0000]

Thanks for the information. The way they designed Watch Dogs seems pretty stupid considering the PS4, PS3, and XBONE (not sure about 360) do fairly well with parallel computing. The operating system and games using more memory when available makes sense, since paging from disk is such an expensive process (especially if you have an HDD).

You guys definitely assuaged my worries about the VRAM space. Unfortunately, I find amazon has raised the price by $108 and newegg is still sold out with no restock date. I should have bought it earlier; will probably wait now.

[Mokona512]

yep, it seems that when a game is ported, they focus on making it single threaded to probably reduce their workload when porting the game. On the consoles they have threading limitations also, but there is a better spread as developers will put more thought on figuring out which tasks should be assigned to which cores in order to best utilize the available CPU power.

Other than that, no game has really been able to truly take full advantage of a multicore CPU. They will segment the workload, but you never see a situation where more than 1 core can work on the same thing, for example if a game has a very complex physics engine, that physics thread will only be on 1 core and thus if something takes place that causes the physics engine to saturate a core worth of CPU time, then every other thread will slow down while they wait on the physics calculations. (you can spot this on games like portal, crysis and many others that use CPU bound physics)

So while there are some games that will even make use of 4+ cores, the issue is that the tasks that each core is doing, is not equal. For well made games, they will balance out the workload and combine lesser workloads, e.g., 1 core handling audio and asset management, we do not reach points where for example if you decide to spawn 500 barrels and have them roll around or fall, the physics engine will not suddenly call on other cores to share that work load, instead the game will slow as the physics engine chokes and the overall CPU and GPU usage drops.

This issue has been solved on the GPU side though where each of the thousands of cores in a GPU can work on separate things, or work on the same exact thing.

[coldice97]

Current: http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-SuperCloc.../dp/B007Z3HZLM
Looking at this for a replacement: http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GTX980-Su.../dp/B00NI5DA2E

The only thing I am concerned about is it only has 4GB of VRAM. I know that is more than enough for any game that is out now, but I normal only buy every other generation of graphics cards. Watchdogs has been the only game I haven't been about to play at max settings with my current card, and I would like my replacement to be in a similar position when I replace it. Should I wait for the 8GB version to come out?

Hey my current graphics card broke for some reason a few weeks ago. Would you be interested in selling me that card for a good price so I can get back to gaming ? :)

[Null0000]

Hey my current graphics card broke for some reason a few weeks ago. Would you be interested in selling me that card for a good price so I can get back to gaming ? :)

Certainly. Unfortunately, I'm still waiting for the card I want to be restocked at hopefully the same price listed ($569.99). Don't know when that will happen.

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GTX980-Su.../dp/B00NI5DA2E

You could also try Ebay or Craiglist if you don't want to wait.

[coldice97]

No problem I can deal with the wait. About how much would you want for the card?

[Null0000]

No problem I can deal with the wait. About how much would you want for the card?

$100 plus shipping sound reasonable? Anyway, it's looking like it may be awhile before they restock.

[dennisph]

Null how much are you looking to spend on the card ... they have the same card just built differently for fans at different prices
http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GTX980-Su.../dp/B00NT9UT3M for the double fan ... same card 2 fans
http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GV-N9...ref=pd_cp_pc_2 and the same card windforce(3 fans better cooling for higher OC)
I have built pc's with the windforce builds and they are great
and Tigerdirect(my personal choice for my buying needs) http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...863&CatId=7387

[Null0000]

Yeah, I just saw that 2 fan card. My only worry about that one is dust build up. I am constantly cleaning my case out as it is. My 670 with a single fan never got much higher than mid fifties (it looks like the 670 has a slightly higher TPD than the 980 as well). I have a lot of airflow through my case being generated by 4 200 mm fans and 2 140 mm fans. I'm not sure if the extra fan would be useful?

[dennisph]

Yeah, I just saw that 2 fan card. My only worry about that one is dust build up. I am constantly cleaning my case out as it is. My 670 with a single fan never got much higher than mid fifties (it looks like the 670 has a slightly higher TPD than the 980 as well). I have a lot of airflow through my case being generated by 4 200 mm fans and 2 140 mm fans. I'm not sure if the extra fan would be useful?

are all the fans blowing air into the case only? ... if so i would take a few and reverse them to be sucking hot air and dust out of the case instead of just blowing it around in the case ... the windforce generates a major amount of cooling they usually dont get over 40.. as long as u keep your case generally clean and have some decent exhaust fans running it shouldnt be a issue ... and the extra fan is very good specially if you like to play around with OC and see how much u can do beyond the OC it comes with

[Null0000]

2 of the 200mm fans are blowing in, 2 are blowing out. One of the 140 mm fan is blowing in and one out. Air comes in the front and side and goes out the top on back. Definitely will look more into those cards.

[dennisph]

ahh ok so sounds like you got it set up nicely ... just trying to help man :)

[EpicBlob]

Get the 970 and overclock it. That card is seriously a game changer; equal performance to cards like the 290x, titan, 780 ti, all for $330. Overclock it and it gives the same FPS as the 980. Save the $200