I started playing GTA V on my PC last night and I find that I can’t even play at 1920x1080 since my graphics card has “only” 1 GB. So, I’m looking at maybe buying a new card. I want to make sure it’s worth it, though, and I’m looking for that sweet spot – great performance and great value. Wish me luck.
Here’s my current set up:
Core i7-920 with 6GB memory (I have another 6GB, but it’s not quite as fast, so I figure I’d lose performance by adding it)
I have dual monitors, but I’m fine with only using one when playing the game. So, given my CPU and motherboard, is it worth upgrading the GPU? What would be a good value that would allow me to use full resolution and maybe even let me turn on some video effects?
I’ve always had AMD cards, so I think I’d rather stick with that – I know that they work OK with everything I have so far. I’m not interested in over-clocking the CPU or GPU – I’ve never been able to do that reliably. Any other details that I’ve missed?
For AMD either of these will suffice. Just be sure to double-check the power requirements. AMD cards tend to be power hungry (and hot). Be sure your cooling and power supply can cope (along with having the right power connectors from your PSU to the card).
Personally I think the 290 is worth the extra cost but that’s just me.
It also looks like you have the necessary connectors available for the card too (you might want to double check but seems to me you do as can be seen in one of these pictures…it is those 6+2 plugs).
The only other thing to consider is that your PC has good ventilation (fans). Your old card peaked around 250 watts. These cards can go north of 325 watts under load. You need to be able to get rid of that heat.
I cannot say for sure but I have an i7 930 and there still is no AAA title I can’t run and run with most graphical goodies turned on (I have a GTX 980 but previously had a HD 7970).
I will say even if you decide it is time to upgrade your mobo/CPU having the new graphics card will be a boon. That 1GB of VRAM on your old card is highly limiting in today’s modern games.
So, bottom line, I think the new video card will be a good investment for you and you will be happy with it. Just my $0.02 though.
I wouldn’t recommend an AMD card. They just cannot compete in terms of game performance and stability with Nvidia right now.
I’d recommend a gTX 960 or, if you can swing it, a 970.
Now, have you actually tried running the game? You can turn off the option that blocks higher memory usage. Just make sure you lower memory intensive things like texture quality, shadow quality and the distance view slider, also don’t enable MSAA.
I played for about 30 minutes yesterday. Man, am I bad at the driving part – I might have to try that with a controller, instead of the keyboard. Holy smokes, there’s a lot of cursing in that game, though.
I didn’t try turning off that option, though. I’ll have more time tonight to play around with it.
Plus they are more power hungry and thus run hotter which can be an issue.
That said I recently moved from an HD 7970 to a 980 and while the 980 is certainly faster I have noticed the Nvidia card has more little graphical quirks (like in some Google Docs the page flickers when scrolling). AMD just seemed a lot more…refined…in many ways.
That said I recommended those AMD cards cuz the OP requested AMD.
What about the GTX 780ti? I have heard many good things about that card.
OK, I got it working with the higher resolution by turning off that warning about using too much memory. It’s a bit glitchy – there are some visual artifacts, but it looks way better at the monitor’s native resolution.
However, the game looks gorgeous with the settings turned up, from what I’ve seen online. I’m amazed they can do all that in real time – we’ve come a long way from the computer animation demos on laser disc. Bottom line is that I’m still tempted to get a new card.
So, I have a few questions remaining.
If I switch to NVIDIA, is there any chance that I’ll have problems with existing games or other types of software? Do they have something similar to Catalyst? Would I manually uninstall Catalyst?
Whichever way I go, does the card manufacturer matter much? XFX vs MSI vs Gigabyte, etc? Does it make sense to just go with the lowest price?
For AMD cards, if you had to choose one for best sweet spot (prices, performance), which would it be? What about for NVIDIA? I’m interested in one that would be able to play GTA V at very good settings, not necessarily everything set to high or whatever.
Not really. Both companies have varying degrees of relationships with developers, and varying levels of manpower going into driver support for new games (Nvidia does both of these best right now, IMHO). This means some games might perform better in one or the other GPU, or feature some proprietary tech, but for the most part, everything should be fairly similar. Nvidia has the (MUCH better, IMHO) Geforce experience. It should auto download and install any updates to the drivers for you. You should probably uninstall catalyst drivers before plopping in your Nvidia card.
Not really. You’re probably looking for a mix of a good warranty and RMA support (though usually RMA is mostly about where you purchase the card), maybe bundle deals with games or other hardware, and price. EVGA for example has a step up program that lets you upgrade to another GPU within I think, 6 months, by simply paying the difference, others might offer better game bundles.
Can’t help you with AMD. Don’t really keep up with their stuff, though I am looking forward to their next release, hopefully they step up their game. For Nvidia, the best price to performance card at the mid-high end, I think remains the GTX 970. The GTX 960 is a mid-low end GPU and a 750ti remains the king of value, providing better than PS4 performance in most games at a $100 price point (the low memory places a lot of limits on it though, so I wouldn’t recommend it for someone looking to go beyond what you currently have)…
Tom’s HArdware does a “Best GPU for the money” article they update each month, which should help. IT breaks down the best cards available at various price ranges.
While the AMD equivalent has its shortcomings (their points program for discounts is laughable and pathetic all around) I liked it better than GeForce Experience.
GeForce experience offers up inexplicably low recommendations for some game settings (as in wants to run EVERYTHING on low settings). I have a 980 and I run on high to very high and ultra with no issue. It also does not register some games I have in my library at all (they just never show in the list).
AMD was far superior in this respect.
In the end though I would not base my decision off of the frills. I got an Nvidia card specifically for G-Sync (since I got a G-Sync capable monitor). I also like the lower power requirements and cooler running of the Nvidia card.
That said though I only had one long lasting driver issue with my AMD card with a Total War game and that was due to the very particular combination of my video card and CPU and was caused by the developer and an update from them rather than from AMD breaking anything (and note there are also cases where Nvidia does not work well or at all…happens to them both).
Beyond that, having used both AMD and Nvidia in my PC relatively recently, I can say both work fine on pretty much everything with no issues and overall I have/am enjoying both. I agree Nvidia has the current speed crown but you cannot go too far wrong either way. Get what meets your needs and your budget.
Is it a one shot thing or can you keep updating every 6 months?
Any idea on what settings give the best graphics trade off vs performance? I’m on a Phenom X4 955 (3.2GhZ) and Radeon 6850 (1GB) with 8GB of ram.
Zeroth: Make sure you have the most recent drivers installed. Both Nvidia and AMD released updated drivers specifically with optimizations for GTA-V when it was released a few days ago.
First you might consider using the AMD Gaming Evolved client. In my experience it does a pretty good job of recommending the best settings for your hardware to optimize the visuals (it will apply the settings for you if you want). I am not sure if it works with a 6850 but I do not see why not.
Second, if you want to use anti-aliasing choose FXAA since it is the “cheapest” in terms of computing power needed. It does a good job of reducing jaggies but can have the downside of slightly blurring textures.
Third, shadows tend to be a big hit on graphics performance. Turning down shadow details is a good bang for the buck tweak.
Fourth, turn down draw distances. This makes it so the card is expending less power drawing things far away.
Fifth, turn down anisotropic filtering to something less than 16x.
Different people have different tolerances for these things so play around with them to see what you like. This page has some good pictures with a nifty slider you can drag to see what various settings do.
Geforce experience does allow “optimized” settings for SOME games that you can set at the click of a button. I’ve never had any being set to anything that off though.
Anyway, you can tweak other driver level settings for ANY game via the regular control panel, just like with AMD.
Here is an example from my GeForce Experience screen. In particular note the Cities Skylines settings. Way, way, way off. I checked and it is identifying my hardware correctly.