New Video Card Advice

djvicious

Hi everyone,

I'm sure this topic comes up more often than not, but I am looking to upgrade my video card for rFactor 2 and would like some buying advice. My budget is about $300 CAD before taxes, and rFactor 2 is the only game I play.

The things I really need to know:

AMD or Nvidia? From what I've researched here, Nvidia cards seem to be the preferred choice for performance. So far I've been considering an AMD R9 290x or a GTX 760. What are the pros and cons of the different manufacturers?

How much video ram? Tracks like Nordschleife are pretty thirsty for memory. Will 3GB suffice?

I've been pretty happy with my current build for a while. It runs most newer games quite nicely, although rFactor 2 gets pretty choppy/ stuttered on max settings. I don't run with anti-aliasing, and generally have to drop texture settings to high or medium to get a decent framerate. I use a single screen for rFactor 2, which is usually a 1080p tv.

Current specs:

AMD Phenom II QUAD 940 Black Edition
Asus M4A78-E
Sapphire Radeon 5950 1GB
4GB DDR2 ram (@1ghz I think)

Thanks for the help!
 
I always had problems till I upgraded my Phenom965 to a Intel i5


GTX760 is a great card but you cut its balls running that processor.


Sure it will work better obviously but the processor and bus and ram won't keep up any better.


I be swayed to spend $400 on a non K i5 setup with H97 and 8GB DDR3 that would stop the stutters at very least
and put your whole desktop experience into a new world.

Then save another $300 for card :)




My Phenom and GTX460's were not good but with a 2500K they shone.
 
Like Durge said. 4690 non-K on an H97 board is unbeatable in terms of price and performance.

If you want to overclock then get the K version and a Z97 board.

If you're going to be doing other multi-threaded tasks like video and photo editing, rendering, etc. then get the 4770/4770K as it has hyper threading.

I czn keep going higher but I'll stop there.

For primarily a simracing system, and on a tight budget, get the 4960 non-k and an inexpensive H97 motherboard.

EDIT: Oops, you're asking about GPUs, lol. I see non-X R9 290s go for like $250 brand new now, 780s for mid 300s and 780 Tis for $480. I buy all my GPUs used (you're going to end up using them yourself, what's the difference?), I bet you can find some awesome deals on 780s, 780 Tis, 290s, and 290Xs right now.
 
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djvicious said:
Hi everyone,

I'm sure this topic comes up more often than not, but I am looking to upgrade my video card for rFactor 2 and would like some buying advice. My budget is about $300 CAD before taxes
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I don`t know how expensive the AMD GTX970 in your country is, but would be better than GTX760. Price in Germany is around 300 EUR.
 
Juergen-BY said:
I don`t know how expensive the AMD GTX970 in your country is, but would be better than GTX760. Price in Germany is around 300 EUR.
Click to expand...


Better true, however he would lose even more bang for buck then a GTX760 on the given system :)

I know some people like hanging onto the notion old processors, DDR2 and old chipset/bus is okay for a card upgrade.

If they drive GTR GTL Race etc I would agree but this is rFactor2.


If he can't afford a processor upgrade and he says " I run mostly 1920" I going to hazard he can't afford 3 screens so a faster card then a GTX760 and 4GB of ram is kind of pointless.


Mind you I am only basing this on what I can see, maybe he can whip out a few grand and buy a watercooled i7. :)
 
I run an AMD 955BE 8GB ram/ NVidia EVGA 660Ti 3Gb / Win 7 - 64


System RAMS usage desktop only NO Applications loaded is 2.28GB
with 16 cars system ram is at 4.5Gb.

- loaded rF2, URD MOD with 29 cars and Nordschleife track... (my System ram usage hits just over over 7.0Gb)
1900x1200 - Everything maxed out - 16 visible cars... (bottom FPS 42 max 70) (45 to 55fps 90% of the time) for me it runs smooth... no stutter...
Single Monitor for rF2 (2nd Monitor typical with browser or other apps running).

I believe you will need more System RAM.
considering all the issues people had with rF2 on AMD cards I would go with Nvidia.
 
I believe you will need more System RAM.
Click to expand...

I agree, one more reason to upgrade. ;)

I be swayed to spend $400 on a non K i5 setup with H97 and 8GB DDR3 that would stop the stutters at very least and put your whole desktop experience into a new world.
Click to expand...
 
Spinelli said:
EDIT: Oops, you're asking about GPUs, lol. I see non-X R9 290s go for like $250 brand new now, 780s for mid 300s and 780 Tis for $480. I buy all my GPUs used (you're going to end up using them yourself, what's the difference?), I bet you can find some awesome deals on 780s, 780 Tis, 290s, and 290Xs right now.
Click to expand...


Yeah he was.......... but this is my point what on earth would he buy any of those cards or a GTX970 with a Phenom940 for ? whats he going to do ?
Buy a 40 dollar heatsink and clock it to 4GHz ? :)


I just can't see the value in anything other then a midrange card without a upgrade.

8GB DDR3 would hardly be dearer then another 4GB DDR2 as well.

One thing for sure with a CPU/bus/ram upgrade everything on the PC runs faster smoother.

Then he would finally see the best from that 5850, tide him over till he saves a few 100 for the video card then :)

and rFactor 2 is the only game I play
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If he wants it to run well into the future I would buy a i5 and 8GB DDR3 while I had the money in my pocket. :)
 
Haha, oh god, ddr2 memory?? Well, hey, if he is on a super tight budget and DDR2 is the only option that his CPU can handle then I guess he has to make do with DDR2, at least he's still making an effort to play. If he has to use DDR2 and a very slow PC, then so be it. It is what it is :)

How the heck is your PC using 7 GB of ram during gameplay? Are running some crazy photoshop and video rendering while playing rF2? 7 GB? That's insane, lol.
 
Spinelli said:
Haha, oh god, ddr2 memory?? Well, hey, if he is on a super tight budget and DDR2 is the only option that his CPU can handle then I guess he has to make do with DDR2, at least he's still making an effort to play. If he has to use DDR2 and a very slow PC, then so be it. It is what it is :)

How the heck is your PC using 7 GB of ram during gameplay? Are running some crazy photoshop and video rendering while playing rF2? 7 GB? That's insane, lol.
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idle PC is just over 2GB usage... rF2 exe alone breaks the 4GB for that combo then I had Firefox(I believe using about 350MB) and Chrome(not sure the usage probably the same as FF) and MS Word.
Mind you I picked probably the heaviest mod to run but that was on purpose.
 
Spinelli said:
How the heck is your PC using 7 GB of ram during gameplay? Are running some crazy photoshop and video rendering while playing rF2? 7 GB? That's insane, lol.
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Something to do with AMD cache and memory......like redundancy and false sharing ? .... includes virtual memory maybe ?




My Sandybridge Idle: 1.2gb
Boot rF2: 1.39gb
Menu: 1.49gb
Pits 30 cars: 3.2gb
Race never moves from 3.2GB


BTW Pic is realtime in fullscreen window and task manager set " always on top" when testing.

But you better off using HWinfo and Afterburner ( Rivatuner OSD )
 
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Spinelli said:
Haha, oh god, ddr2 memory?? Well, hey, if he is on a super tight budget and DDR2 is the only option that his CPU can handle then I guess he has to make do with DDR2, at least he's still making an effort to play. If he has to use DDR2 and a very slow PC, then so be it. It is what it is :)
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I wasn't being rude honest :)

More like tough love.

1. The 5950 will run faster and smoother in rF2 ( for the time being )

2. Anything non 3D will run faster.

3. Even if another 4GB DDR2 did stop his stutters as boxer says it would almost pay for 8GB of DDR3 (DDR2 is overpriced) leaving only CPU and Motherboard to get. Not to mention the fact you would most likely have to mix and match sticks.

My point being you know yourself the sort of leap you get in desktop and apps from a Intel to your older systems.

With another 4GB of DDR2 and any real decent card even a GTX760 will be "hamstrung" opposed to bottleneck, even still is bad bang for buck.

If he intends on doing a cpu/mpbo upgrade soon......well forget everything I said. lool

Me.......... I would still do the cpu/mobo upgrade first. hehehe ;)
 
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Never mix and match RAM sticks, I don't care whaf your budget is, lol.
 
Hey guys thanks for replying and my apologies for not jumping back into the conversation sooner! I live in Canada and computer hardware is pretty expensive here. The GTX 970 isn't available in stores right now and is about $400, which is a littler over what I would like to spend. I had actually done a system upgrade recently, to an AMD fx8350 with 8gb of DDR3, and there was no qualitative improvement in performance. I promptly returned those components! Given my budget, I wanted to do the better of CPU/mobo/ram or a video card.

Ultimately I decided on the GTX 760 with 4GB of memory, which was $300 plus tax here. I'm very happy with the performance improvement! I can run everything maxed out with a single 1080p tv. I'll probably upgrade the CPU et al. down the road, just not now :)
 
DurgeDriven said:
Something to do with AMD cache and memory......like redundancy and false sharing ? .... includes virtual memory maybe ?




My Sandybridge Idle: 1.2gb
Boot rF2: 1.39gb
Menu: 1.49gb
Pits 30 cars: 3.2gb
Race never moves from 3.2GB


BTW Pic is realtime in fullscreen window and task manager set " always on top" when testing.

But you better off using HWinfo and Afterburner ( Rivatuner OSD )
Click to expand...
What do you get using the same combo? Track and mod
 
boxer said:
What do you get using the same combo? Track and mod
Click to expand...

With 8Gb I get exactly what I posted in screenshot above, right now I online room for a few hours is the same 3GB+ > 4GB usage

Track and car combo or numbers has little bearing on physical ram for me......... as far as I see anyways.

If I include Virtual memory it would be 7 - 7.5GB

You can see that much here 7GB. ( Screenshot is realtime )


If you only had 4GB physical ram it would have no where to swap out fast ........
 
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djvicious said:
Ultimately I decided on the GTX 760 with 4GB of memory, which was $300 plus tax here. I'm very happy with the performance improvement! I can run everything maxed out with a single 1080p tv. I'll probably upgrade the CPU et al. down the road, just not now :)
Click to expand...


Cool :)


Well all I can tell you is I went from a Phenom940@4GHz to a stock 2500K it was like night and day in rF2, especially in regards to lower-middle framerate. ;)


Just saying you need the other 1/2 of the formula to get the best out of the card, to me it is like having a turbo on a stock engine. :)


You won't get the same fps gain with the Intel i5 as a GPU no, it will just improve the speed of every single thing you do with a PC giving you more time to enjoy rF2.


Less then a dollar a day ( CPU/mobo/ram/cooler based on 3 year life ) .....well worth it. :)
 
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