Thoughts on Video Cards

[Wheatkings 245]

Ok guys I was able to finished picking up the remaining missing parts to my new pc during the boxing day sales.  I'm down to the final part, the video card.

 

I'll be honest, to this point I've been a pretty hardcore AMD (or ATI) fan for a very very long time.  I find myself leaning towards going that way again but I've heard that the Nvidia cards at this point may be better.

 

I'm open to suggestions on what to get.  I don't have a lot of cash at the moment (its amazing how a newborn sucks the life out of your wallet LOL ) so that is a factor but if I have to I'll sit back and save for a couple of months so I can get the right card instead of just a cheap card that I'll need to replace next year.

 

As long as the card can keep up with my new i7-4790K and give me enough framerates so I can stream with out stuttering all the time I'll be pretty happy.

 

Anyway, thoughts are welcome on the matter!

[wrice4 47]

Ok guys I was able to finished picking up the remaining missing parts to my new pc during the boxing day sales.  I'm down to the final part, the video card.

 

I'll be honest, to this point I've been a pretty hardcore AMD (or ATI) fan for a very very long time.  I find myself leaning towards going that way again but I've heard that the Nvidia cards at this point may be better.

 

I'm open to suggestions on what to get.  I don't have a lot of cash at the moment (its amazing how a newborn sucks the life out of your wallet LOL ) so that is a factor but if I have to I'll sit back and save for a couple of months so I can get the right card instead of just a cheap card that I'll need to replace next year.

 

As long as the card can keep up with my new i7-4790K and give me enough framerates so I can stream with out stuttering all the time I'll be pretty happy.

 

Anyway, thoughts are welcome on the matter!

My PC is a mid range pc and I can play arma 3, stream it, and record it at 20k bitrate, all at the same time with no problem. When I do this I get about 60fps playing. I will list my specs below, but you already have a way better CPU than me,and are probably looking at a way better graphics card. Anything you combine with that processor should be great. I have always been a die hard AMD fan as well. Still have the graphics card, but went with a intel processor, when I bought mine, and I love it. I still have love for the AMD cards. Like I said, my pc is just a mid range build, not too expensive but gets the job done, and it can do anything I want it to. Nice build bud.

 

Motherboard: MSI Z97 Gaming 7

Processor: I5-4690K (OC to 3.9ghz)

Graphics Card: Sapphire R9 270 2GB (OC) 

Memory: 4gb Ram (that I bought in 2009)

Hard Drive: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD

Backup Hard Drive: 500gb HDD + 2tb HDD

[Wheeler 34]

How much was yours wrice?

[Papamunski 281]

i have the i7-4820k with nividia gtx 770 4g...runs pretty sweet, havent had any issues personaly

[wrice4 47]

How much was yours wrice?

How much was my entire build?

i have the i7-4820k with nividia gtx 770 4g...runs pretty sweet, havent had any issues personaly

Wow... who would have issues with that....lol nice

[Buddha 7]

Wheat, to prevent bottlenecks in the hardware, you're gonna want an Nvidia card, one like papa's would work perfectly, intel and nvidia are built to work best together, same with amd and ati.

 

I personally run an amd build, but unfortunately do not have benchmarks at the moment, mobo is getting repaired lol

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487034

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487028

 

Either of these would work well, only difference between the 2 is vram, one has 2gb, the other has 1gb

 

the FTW edition 750 TIs are nearly identical to a 770

[DNMASTER1 1]

Gtx 980 4gb with that i7 would be great for streaming.

[Buddha 7]

just remembered lol, a friend of mine paired the 2gb 750 TI FTW with that same processor and he streams at 2k while running 70+ FPS while driving through towns

[Rich Homie Quan 228]

GTX 970's go on sale all the time from anywhere from $320-370ish, depending on what one you choose, which is a good price for that card if you're willing to pay it as it has great overclockability, decent power consumption, great avg. frames in almost all games on the highest settings in 1080p, access to shadow play, 4gb of v ram, and has plenty of power to stream. It's just the best price per performance gpu out there imo. But if you want other options I'll list others I believe are the best in their price range.

~$170 Radeon R9 270

~$200 Radeon R9 280

~$250 Radeon R9 280x

~$280 Radeon R9 290

~$330-350 GTX 970

I've seen some GTX 760's on sale for like $170 on amazon a few weeks ago, but atm I wouldn't take it over a r9 280 at $200

The r9 290 beats the 770 at the ~$300 price range as it offers more memory, higher memory bandwith, higher pixel rates, less idle power consumption, though the 770 boasts a higher clockspeed and effective memory clock speed. But part of this is off set by the r9 280's ability to overclock. Plus the 770 is overpriced imo sitting at like 320ish.

The sweet spot for me as I said above is the 970 if you can find one on sale for ~$350 but then again you're in a completely different financial situation than me, hence why I posted the other options. If you want to talk more in depth about it we can always talk in ts. 

Hope I helped homie

[Wheatkings 245]

Just for S&G's here's how the rest of the build went so far:

 

Motherboard: MSI Z97 Gaming 7
Processor: i7-4790K (4.0 GHz)
Graphics Card: TBD
Memory: 16GB Corsair Vengence RAM
Hard Drive: Samsung 850 500 GB SSD (for games), ADATA 125 GB SSD (for my OS) and WD 4TB HD (for recorded video and odds & ends)
PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 G1

[wrice4 47]

Just for S&G's here's how the rest of the build went so far:

Motherboard: MSI Z97 Gaming 7

Processor: i7-4790K (4.0 GHz)

Graphics Card: TBD

Memory: 16GB Corsair Vengence RAM

Hard Drive: Samsung 850 500 GB SSD (for games), ADATA 125 GB SSD (for my OS) and WD 4TB HD (for recorded video and odds & ends)

PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 G1

Ballin

[SKIM 28]

The servers play a huge role in limiting the maximum FPS you can achieve with your gpu. I essentially get the same FPS on my laptop and desktop when I play on any arma 3 server. I have 2 GTX 780's on my desktop and a single 780M on my laptop. All you really need to run arma 3 very well is a GTX 750 ti or a GTX 760. If you plan on streaming/recording however you may want to look into buying a GTX 970 or GTX 770.

[BENJI 1021]

I run a geforce GTX 770 2GB Super clocked with a i5-4690k and it runs perfect 

[xXItzKarlXx 28]

970 or 770 its up to you (id go with the 970 )

[Wheeler 34]

I run a Sapphire 7950 3GB boost edition, It does well.

[Jorbis 327]

If you're looking to save your money for a great gpu, I would recommend going for either the Nvidia GTX 970 or the Nvidia GTX 980. Both are great cards with similar performance that would definitely suit your needs when playing games and streaming at the same time. The 980 is $200 more expensive than the 970, but is 15%-20% better performance wise. It's up to you if an extra $200 is worth the 15%-20% performance boost.

[PO Box 79]

I have an i5-4690k with a Sapphire R9 280 and a Gigabyte Z97X Gaming 7 and I absolutely love it. The 16gb of RAM help too

[The Gent 68]

I run an AMD - r9 290 4gb which allows me to record at ultra settings

 

Around the $400 mark when I got it, but may have gone down since AMD announced their newest GPU.

[Fat Clemenza 1722]

Just for S&G's here's how the rest of the build went so far:

 

Motherboard: MSI Z97 Gaming 7

Processor: i7-4790K (4.0 GHz)

Graphics Card: TBD

Memory: 16GB Corsair Vengence RAM

Hard Drive: Samsung 850 500 GB SSD (for games), ADATA 125 GB SSD (for my OS) and WD 4TB HD (for recorded video and odds & ends)

PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 G1

Wheat, you've got a top range build at this juncture, so you'll not want to get a less-than-stellar video card if you can help it. You couldn't go wrong if you got a single EVGA Superclocked 780Ti or an EVGA Superclocked 980. Both are around the same price, but the 780Ti is the better card despite it having only 3GBs of VRAM as opposed to the 980's 4Gbs. The 780Ti has more CUDA cores and a bigger memory interface. The 980 may look like it has more horsepower, but the 780Ti can put the horsepower to the ground more efficiently than the 980. Happy hunting, sir.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487037&cm_re=EVGA_780Ti-_-14-487-037-_-Product

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487079&cm_re=EVGA_980-_-14-487-079-_-Product

[Wheatkings 245]

Wheat, you've got a top range build at this juncture, so you'll not want to get a less-than-stellar video card if you can help it. You couldn't go wrong if you got a single EVGA Superclocked 780Ti or an EVGA Superclocked 980. Both are around the same price, but the 780Ti is the better card despite it having only 3GBs of VRAM as opposed to the 980's 4Gbs. The 780Ti has more CUDA cores and a bigger memory interface. The 980 may look like it has more horsepower, but the 780Ti can put the horsepower to the ground more efficiently than the 980. Happy hunting, sir.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487037&cm_re=EVGA_780Ti-_-14-487-037-_-Product

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487079&cm_re=EVGA_980-_-14-487-079-_-Product

 

Those look like great cards... but I'll clearly have to save up some more for them.... while they are only $500 some in the US, they are apparently $889 here in Canada

[Fat Clemenza 1722]

Ouch. That's a pretty penny. If I were in your shoes, I'd wait it out and save. Due to the rate that technology advances at, especially in this market, you'd being doing yourself a favor if you decided to wait and save. You'll get your hands on a good piece of kit for a better price if you wait.

[Dustin87 864]

Wheat, to prevent bottlenecks in the hardware, you're gonna want an Nvidia card, one like papa's would work perfectly, intel and nvidia are built to work best together, same with amd and ati.

 

I personally run an amd build, but unfortunately do not have benchmarks at the moment, mobo is getting repaired lol

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487034

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487028

 

Either of these would work well, only difference between the 2 is vram, one has 2gb, the other has 1gb

 

the FTW edition 750 TIs are nearly identical to a 770

That is bullshit lololol. Amd and Nvidia and intel and AMD work fine together lol.The 770 is MUCH faster than the 750ti. lol. Wheat, i would get a 970 or 290 depending on what you want to spend. and make sure you have 8 gb of ram.

[The Gent 68]

That is bullshit lololol. Amd and Nvidia and intel and AMD work fine together lol.The 770 is MUCH faster than the 750ti. lol. Wheat, i would get a 970 or 290 depending on what you want to spend. and make sure you have 8 gb of ram.

 

Not put very nicely, but it's true - I run Intel CPU and AMD GPU seamlessly.

 

For Arma 3/DayZ (same engine) the most optimised CPU is always Intel, hands down. For basically any other game, AMD is considered more of a gaming CPU. The Arma engine is just a fickle bitch and is only fully optimised for Intel.

 

With that said, I reckon the best advice you can get is to go to the BuildaPC Reddit - http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/- and put your build up there with the correct tag - [build Help] in this case and they will not steer you wrong - there's some parts wizards on that page.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Edit: just saw the rest of your build and I'll just offer some advice in case you were unaware - If you have already bought the parts, just disregard the rest of this as there's nothing worse than second-guessing yourself! Your rig will run fine, I'm just offering a few money-saving/better value/better performance parts and techniques.

 

 

16GB RAM is great, but just make sure you get the fastest you're willing to fork out for and don't be concerned about brand for RAM - it really isn't important, the cheapest brand is fine. In my case, it was Patriot I believe. Also, as you probably know, you'll want to get 2x8GB cards rather than 1x 16GB cards and make sure to put them in the slot 1 and 3 or 2 and 4 for optimal performance - prevents bottlenecking, allows greater power.

 

The OS SSD seems like overkill to me - do you really need all that space for an OS? If you're getting Windows 8.1 (my recommendation), then that takes up roughly 20GB. Also...I personally feel the brand you're using for that SSD...you might want to upgrade to a samsung EVO - those suckers are awesome. Just putting it out there, but you may get away with fitting it on the 1st SSD along with the games, freeing up some money for the GPU if you can afford the space with the games.

 

Also, Seagate should be a cheaper HDD and I really used to expect them to fail all the time given how cheap they were, but they are damn good, never had an issue. If it's cheaper than the WD (which I have heard some bad things about failing from a pro builder) I'd highly recommend switching it out.

 

Other than that, good luck and I hope it all goes smoothly for you, brother - take it easy.

[wrice4 47]

The OS SSD seems like overkill to me - do you really need all that space for an OS? If you're getting Windows 8.1 (my recommendation), then that takes up roughly 20GB. Also...I personally feel the brand you're using for that SSD...you might want to upgrade to a samsung EVO - those suckers are awesome. Just putting it out there, but you may get away with fitting it on the 1st SSD along with the games, freeing up some money for the GPU if you can afford the space with the games.

 

Also, Seagate should be a cheaper HDD and I really used to expect them to fail all the time given how cheap they were, but they are damn good, never had an issue. If it's cheaper than the WD (which I have heard some bad things about failing from a pro builder) I'd highly recommend switching it out.

 

If you are looking to save money somewhere and achieve a better gpu then saving money on the SSD will help you do that. I agree to get the samsung EVO, I have one and its badass, but 500gb is kinda overkill, unless you have like 20 games saved on it. I only have a 250gb SSD EVO and it suits me fine, and is top notch.

 

For my actual hard drive that I use to store things. I picked up a nice $150 WD - My Book 3TB HDD from Best Buy, that is a good brand. Coupled that with my old 500gb HDD and I have 3.5tb HDD that is plenty of room for everything else besides my OS and games. My SSD runs my OS and games ONLY.

 

Just found the WD- Mybook 4TB 3.0USB on sale right now for $135. 4.7 out of 5 stars with 432 ratings, Thats a steal... http://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-my-book-4tb-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-black/1766068.p?id=1219063238074&skuId=1766068

 

Just a thought if you want to switch some money around on the build. Unless you already have it, then no biggie.

[Knives27 9]

I would suggest saving until you can afford one of the 900 series cards, I've heard TONS of positive reviews on them. If you want to finish it relatively soon though, the 700 series cards are no push overs. Overall I think Nvidia sells the better product at this point despite being mildly overpriced. Nvidia cards also seem to mesh well with Intel processors so there's always that to consider.

 

I've always been an Nvidia fan though, so grain of salt.