Still rocking the 2-series lol... Gfx Upgrade Advice please

[Stilton]

Merry christmas )
To save you reading the below wall of text (its mostly shite)
In summary/edit:
I have an fx9590 8-core 5ghz cpu... and 16gb of ram -- and an old pair of GTX 275's in SLI with th2go, at 5040*1050 resolution.
So i use the SLI and triple monitors with these old cards.

However dispite what you might immediately think, those cards comfortably run all the latest games.. Like battlefield 4, arma3, dayz.. cs:go. etc.

I'm not really interested in anti-aliasing or other pp effects, just something that has a lot of raw-poly-pushing-power.. So i'd like, to increase object details or more texture detail, or bigger viewdistances, or just flat out more FPS, etc...

I have no interest in buying something that offers a minor performance increase... Or something that is more 'energy efficient'.
I'm also very open to consider older gen cards that have been reduced because the newer shinier versions are out.

If anyone can offer any alternatives, especially if it comes from a similar setup/requirements, it would be really appreciated.


I run SLI into a triplehead2go box.. so i can get the benefits of SLI on one monitor at 5040*1050 resolution... So, my only wish is to play games at that resolution. Therefore i need a graphics card that can rock that.

I want to upgrade but the 275's in SLI still run most stuff comfortably at 5040*1050...
They were hella good when i bought them... and strangely they seem to hold their own still 7 years later.


I've been looking but i still can't seem to work out what would be my best option for upgrading for something that will simply push more pixels... It seems i could get a 970, but on some cheesey benchmark site it says it's as-good-as a gtx295 (which is a dual card, so comparable to my SLI setup)

...and i don't really fancy dropping a few hundred quid for something that is 'as good' as my current setup from 2008.


I'm not too bothered about things like antialiasing, or fxaa or any kind of post processing... Ideally i'd just like to be able to up the ingame detail and play at the same resolution with more frames...
I'd also like to try and spend no more than £200, but am considering just waiting because it currently seems like a waste to spend that for no gain...

Although maybe not a complete waste if i can get comparable performance on a single cooler card that i can later upgrade with SLI...




Anyone care to weigh in would be appreciated!

[anteronoid]

Merry christmas )

I'd also like to try and spend no more than £200, but am considering just waiting because it currently seems like a waste to spend that for no gain...

Although maybe not a complete waste if i can get comparable performance on a single cooler card that i can later upgrade with SLI...




Anyone care to weigh in would be appreciated!

Merry X-mas!

Spend your Santa Money wisely!

With that budget I would look at a Nvidia 960 that is to be released in january. It also makes it a decent upgrade path to Sli.
Be sure to select a card with a minimum of 3GB of VRAM. Do not even consider the other ones. Even if you don't like AA the high res textures of most new games easily eats more then 3GB vram at 5760 resolution and textures set to max. Which i believe you wanna do when saying " Ideally i'd just like to be able to up the ingame detail"

Cheers!

[Stilton]

Hmm, thanks, Would it actually be an upgrade though?


So a GTX 960 will outperform 2x275's in SLI
Do you have any experience with nvidia, SLI, or the 2-series cards. I mean you said the card's not out yet..
So whats the basis for that advice



I'm not trying to cause offence but i tend to only get an upgrade if it's going to be a definite noticable leap in performance... which is why i bypassed the 4 and 5 series entirely...
I have always, in the past, gone for the best version of the series i can afford, but obviously not trying to buy an obsolete series... Still i would rather do that than tried to keep-up with nvidia for no reason and buy the 'value' card in the latest series...


I was considering getting a 680 for SLI, because... well then it might actually be worth it in the long run...

...But a 960 is something i wouldn't have considered really, it seems like terrible advice for anyone considering it will be, in my experience of nvidias history, the weakest in the series and probably actually worse performance-wise than the upper-echelon of cards from the previous generation.

But i'd love to hear different...

[anteronoid]

Hmm, thanks, Would it actually be an upgrade though?


So a GTX 960 will outperform 2x275's in SLI
Do you have any experience with nvidia, SLI, or the 2-series cards. I mean you said the card's not out yet..
So whats the basis for that advice



I'm not trying to cause offence but i tend to only get an upgrade if it's going to be a definite noticable leap in performance... which is why i bypassed the 4 and 5 series entirely...
I have always, in the past, gone for the best version of the series i can afford, but obviously not trying to buy an obsolete series... Still i would rather do that than tried to keep-up with nvidia for no reason and buy the 'value' card in the latest series...


I was considering getting a 680 for SLI, because... well then it might actually be worth it in the long run...

...But a 960 is something i wouldn't have considered really, it seems like terrible advice for anyone considering it will be, in my experience of nvidias history, the weakest in the series and probably actually worse performance-wise than the upper-echelon of cards from the previous generation.

But i'd love to hear different...

Uh, thanks for the bashing, i won't respond to you any more since you seems very fucked up with your old cards...
well you're suggested budget was 200£, go figure.. If you haven't mentioned it i would have suggested other stuff.
And above all, the 2xx series are not supported for surround any more, or DX11, so just based on that i would upgrade.
Also other technologies are available from 6xx and onwards.
Yes, im experienced in the 2** series, had them before.. And no, the x60 are are considered "middle".. if you want high end then pay for it and don't expect someone to give you the best nvidia card for 200£.

[Stilton]

What 'bashing' lol? I'm obviously not a mind reader... Just a person trying to get some information.
I don't know you, you don't have 2-series, you said the card isn't out yet... so why would i just accept your musings/advice as gospel.
Do you just accept things without any follow up questions? Where did i 'bash' anyone.

e-Draaaaamaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!1 -- Please don't continue to engage in drama, i have no interest in it, your feelings, or imagined slights. You have made a mistake, i wasn't giving you attitude, or being rude, just trying to work out where you're coming from.


My follow up question was going to be... 'what was your upgrade from the 2-series in SLI, and how did you find the performance boost'
but clearly you said in your response that you're not responding to me anymore so... wait. huh.



But.. You basically answered my most important question which was 'why are you suggesting this' and, 'will this actually be an upgrade' and our survey says:

"Because 2-series isn't supported anymore for surround"

Oh.. compatability, wait what?
But i dont use nvidia surround, i use a triplehead2go box... Like i said already. So i you're not even advocating a performance increase and you're advising me....

Kind of wish i was bashing you now j/k

[anteronoid]

What 'bashing' lol? I'm obviously not a mind reader... Just a person trying to get some information.
I don't know you, you don't have 2-series, you said the card isn't out yet... so why would i just accept your musings/advice as gospel.
Do you just accept things without any follow up questions? Where did i 'bash' anyone.

e-Draaaaamaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!1 -- Please don't continue to engage in drama, i have no interest in it, your feelings, or imagined slights. You have made a mistake, i wasn't giving you attitude, or being rude, just trying to work out where you're coming from.


My follow up question was going to be... 'what was your upgrade from the 2-series in SLI, and how did you find the performance boost'
but clearly you said in your response that you're not responding to me anymore so... wait. huh.



But.. You basically answered my most important question which was 'why are you suggesting this' and, 'will this actually be an upgrade' and our survey says:

"Because 2-series isn't supported anymore for surround"

Oh.. compatability, wait what?
But i dont use nvidia surround, i use a triplehead2go box... Like i said already. So i you're not even advocating a performance increase and you're advising me....

Kind of wish i was bashing you now j/k

Not responding.. just thinking..
Stick with your cards its the best ever, but you cant do dx11 or nvidia surround or use large textures because of memory limitations.
You wont need it in your Pong game.

[Stilton]

wow you're bitter if someone asks questions
like i said... imagined slights.

Believe it or not, i appreciated the time taken to reply...
...I just wanted to know the reasoning for your advice ... But you're right i could've just dismissed your advice out of hand



also, nvidia have only recently stopped supporting the 8000-series... That's 2 generations older..

also, i can run
- cs:go with 100+fps,
- Arma3 with 40+ fps...
- Arma2 used to run the same but with 5k view distance, textures on high with some minimal texture popping but it looked gorgeous.


Now that might not be ultra, i dont have 16x aa on or anything... but it works and it's at 5040*1050 res.

Hardly pong.


And yes, i can do dx11... yet again something else you're wrong about mate...
You dont get hardware support, but the cards still support it via drivers... I'd be happy to provide a screenshot of my dxdiag where it clearly shows what version i'm running on Vista.. Yea.. Vista...

..But you're clearly one of these guys who would rather just upgrade because you're seeing bigger numbers.

[anteronoid]

I like you .. yes im grumpy, but thats me when hanged over. Sorry for that.
And i like to stick with stuff that works, se my sig.. its 4y old stuff m8.

I upgraded from 4 years ago and mainly because of memory limitations (had about 800 if i remember correctly) and the limitations of the gpu performance of the games at that time. That Sli setup did not keep up at 5560*1080 resolution back then.
Also keep in mind that a powerful sli setup needs a powerful cpu.. so a potential bottleneck is your cpu even if upgrading your gpu.

[Stilton]

thank god for that i felt this conversation was deteriorating rapidly and i couldnt see where i was going wrong...
Again, i appreciate the replies, i am not bashing you...


I'm just very reluctant to waste money and time testing out new setups for marginal increases in pixel pushing power...
Especially when my only main concern is, keeping the res, maybe upping the texture details... some more fps's.

The reason i postulated your advice was 'bad' in the first post was because i have never, in my experience... seen a good 'value' card from nvidia...
When i got the 2-series... The 250 was shite... the 9800 beat it..
When i got a 9800... the 8500 was probably shite and beaten by the 7950... Infact, i dont even know if there was an 8500 but i know i only upgraded when i had enough for the 8800 because that series 'value' card was shite...
[when i say beat it, i mean.. 'beat it for my specific purposes', as in.. high resolution gaming without too much pp]


So i had assumed that it had continued in that fashion...
So i imagine, the 450 is shite, the 550 is shite, the 650 is shite... all the way up to the 950...

Soo.... using that logic i realise somewhere in here, the 'shite value card' will eclipse my cards on the basis that they have made rendering optimizations, etc ... But when the new series comes out, the previous series drops in price. You know, basic graphics card/market economics... When that happens, usually you can get the 'next version up' of the previous series which actually performs better for less.. But doesn't have all the latest bells and whistles on it (that most games probably wont support anyway and if the optimizations pertain to antialiasing or post-processing then it's not a concern for me)

That was my basis on dismissing your advice mate, not just 'oh i'm going to act like a dick today'
Like i said.. believe it or not, i'd be happy to find out i'm horribly wrong and can save myself some money...

..failing that i'm looking at AMD cards (r9 280/290 to be specific) as they seem to be the best value for performance in my price range...
I guess i should try and find a comparison of them to your suggestion... But reviews are kind of inconsistant because for it to be relevant to me personally, i need it to be aroound my desired resolution and not negatively affected by either developers implementation of their releveant triple-monitor technology... (such as it is with something called micro-stuttering with ATI? [no personal experience with ATI in years, just what ive read], and i'm sure there are kinks with nvidia surround that affect performance... )

[anteronoid]

thank god for that i felt this conversation was deteriorating rapidly and i couldnt see where i was going wrong...
Again, i appreciate the replies, i am not bashing you...


I'm just very reluctant to waste money and time testing out new setups for marginal increases in pixel pushing power...
Especially when my only main concern is, keeping the res, maybe upping the texture details... some more fps's.

The reason i postulated your advice was 'bad' in the first post was because i have never, in my experience... seen a good 'value' card from nvidia...
When i got the 2-series... The 250 was shite... the 9800 beat it..
When i got a 9800... the 8500 was probably shite and beaten by the 7950... Infact, i dont even know if there was an 8500 but i know i only upgraded when i had enough for the 8800 because that series 'value' card was shite...
[when i say beat it, i mean.. 'beat it for my specific purposes', as in.. high resolution gaming without too much pp]


So i had assumed that it had continued in that fashion...
So i imagine, the 450 is shite, the 550 is shite, the 650 is shite... all the way up to the 950...

Soo.... using that logic i realise somewhere in here, the 'shite value card' will eclipse my cards on the basis that they have made rendering optimizations, etc ... But when the new series comes out, the previous series drops in price. You know, basic graphics card/market economics... When that happens, usually you can get the 'next version up' of the previous series which actually performs better for less.. But doesn't have all the latest bells and whistles on it (that most games probably wont support anyway and if the optimizations pertain to antialiasing or post-processing then it's not a concern for me)

That was my basis on dismissing your advice mate, not just 'oh i'm going to act like a dick today'
Like i said.. believe it or not, i'd be happy to find out i'm horribly wrong and can save myself some money...

..failing that i'm looking at AMD cards (r9 280/290 to be specific) as they seem to be the best value for performance in my price range...
I guess i should try and find a comparison of them to your suggestion... But reviews are kind of inconsistant because for it to be relevant to me personally, i need it to be aroound my desired resolution and not negatively affected by either developers implementation of their releveant triple-monitor technology... (such as it is with something called micro-stuttering with ATI? [no personal experience with ATI in years, just what ive read], and i'm sure there are kinks with nvidia surround that affect performance... )

I'm pissed drunk right now, but will reply with a more sober mind later on.

But yes, nvidia range of cards have always been.. < x50 Low End, >x60 Middle >x80 High End.
You cant compare a high end card with a low end.. its not fair.

[Stilton]

You cant compare a high end card with a low end.. its not fair.

Actually you can, on the basis they're both graphics cards... and reviewers often do, when they advise people to not buy the value cards
If they're both anywhere near the same price.. it would be silly not to compare them... from a consumer standpoint.

I understand what you're saying but i agree maybe the alcohol is actually making you overthink it...
...this isn't a boxing-match [weight classes], i'm asking for consumer advice It's not helpful to me to compare two equally shite or equally expensive cards that hold no relevance to my setup or question


But it might explain why i maybe come across as a 'techo-hipster' with my old 275's...
Really it comes down to the fact that yes, i am still happy with them, they still perform. There's no point in getting something new if it doesn't really improve my current setup...
Which yea, handles Arma3.. battlefield 4... etc.. etc... And you can pick a 275 up for what... starting price a tenner on ebay?

Now you can ridicule and say 'Oh you're only spending £200' but *shakes fist* there was a time when that was considered a lot of money... i still think it's a fairly decent amount.. and just because nvidia decide that '£500 is now our opening price for enthusiasts even though we've not actually improved much except slapped a bigger number on it' doesn't mean i'm going to buy into it...
Nvidia can procreate with themselves ..which is why i'm reluctantly considering ATI, dispite nightmarish memories of their first CCC.


..call me old, but I'm also of the mind that, if i'm spending £500 on a card, it should be a shit-ton of an improvement on what i spent £500 on back in 2008.
2-series to 9-series... and there's not a remarkable increase in performance, in terms of pixel-pushing power... But i'm taking that from benchmarks (so id LOVE if someone said 'your wrong' and showed me otherwise )

Quite funny really considering how old the 275's are now... (and how unoptimized that game is)

[cybereality]

Sorry bro, but if you think there have been no performance improvements since the GTX 275 you are DEAD WRONG. Hell, it wasn't even the top dog in it's day.

GeForce GTX 275 = 1,213
GeForce GTX 980 = 9,733

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

That's over an 8 fold increase in performance going from the 275 to a 980.

Also, the 200 series did NOT support DirectX 11. Dx11 came with the 400 series. While you might be able in install the Dx11 software on your computer, games cannot take advantage of any newer Dx11 features. They use what are called "feature levels" to support older cards but will be missing newer, cooler stuff.

Honestly, almost anything modern you buy will be better. I'd recommend to just get the most expensive GPU you can afford, that is the one to buy (always my advice).

[Stilton]

I got a 780...
..and it is an increase in performance...

Not astonishing, considering its 4 series' up... [ 50 fps increase on average ]
But i guess it is replacing 2 cards, and at least it didn't go down in performance.



Finally not trying to one-up you but...
I did not say anywhere that the 200 series, or more specifically my card, supported directx11 on a hardware level.. I said [ i could get ] dx11, countering what was originally stated [ you cant do dx11 ].
You can do dx11, clearly.. the games run in directX 11 mode..

Not supporting it on a hardware level is different to not being capable of producing it at all, because my directx dialog and games clearly shows otherwise...

[Stilton]

Actually i'm going to say i'm possibly wrong on the directX stuff...
..Because i'm not even sure if i was using the directx11 option in total war shogun2...
Maybe it was directx10.


Although i'm pretty certain i had the option in other games too, like bf4.. and assassins creed 2 i think and... some others.

But to be fair, i can't be sure (as i didnt have something to test against) whether i was seeing different running games in my 'pseudo-dx11' mode, compared to people who apparently had 'real dx11 mode'.




Still i am amazed that in games where i was obviously being bottlenecked by the GPU.. such as batman arkham city... I'm getting, without changing graphics settings, only 50 fps increase -- and that's the most impressive increase...


...I got an 8fps increase in arma3. But then that's not really that surprising...