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[jett]

Are there any games out there where more than 1GB of VRAM make a difference?

 

[Dennis]

Are there any games out there where more than 1GB of VRAM make a difference?

GTA IV

But any modern game can exceed 1GB. Its just a matter of turning the SSAA high enough!

 

[MustacheBandit_]

At what resolution and how much AA?

1080P and everything cranked up to Enthusiast. By the way, I am mistaken, its Crysis Warhead, not Crysis 1. Not sure if that matters though.

 

[TheExodu5]

Are there any games out there where more than 1GB of VRAM make a difference?

A few. It really depends what resolution you're playing at. At 1080p, 1GB of VRAM is enough for 99% of games. GTA IV comes to mind as a game that likes a lot of VRAM. If you're starved on VRAM, your framerate is going to be very erratic and will drop frequently as the game swaps out data in memory. Usually you can just reduce AA or a few effects to get below that 1GB threshold.

 

[Bebpo]

Last time I played Crysis 1 it was at 720p, no AA, and 20fps.

If I can replay it at 1080p, 2x AA and in the 50-60fps range I will be stoked.

 

[Corky]

GTA IV

But any modern game can exceed 1GB. Its just a matter of turning the SSAA high enough!

I only have 1gb of vram and if the game itself requires quite some amount of vram and I enable supersampling/sgssaa the fps can easily drop to the single digits still with plenty headroom on my cards, eg they won't reach 80% usage. Hopefully even the midrange solutions 660, 760 w/e will have >1.5gb vram in the foreseeable future.

 

[XAL]

Try changing your RAM slots. (e.g. if you're using 2 and 4, try using 1 and 3)

I'm using all 4 slots (16GB) >_<

I guess I'll try just using one slot?

And what are the color differences for PCI slots, I have dark blue, white, and black.
My GTX580 is in the dark blue one...

 

[iamvin22]

I am looking into going sli 580 3gb. Would that be a 20 percent increase from dual 570 or greater?

 

[ZombieSupaStar]

Prolly gonna build the 1000 dollar rig in the OP, but what about a 2600k instead of 2500k would I see any good gains in more cpu limited games my monitor only does 1080p so thats where Ill be at for the next few years.

 

[MrKnives]

Prolly gonna build the 1000 dollar rig in the OP, but what about a 2600k instead of 2500k would I see any good gains in more cpu limited games my monitor only does 1080p so thats where Ill be at for the next few years.

In games not really. At least not with the games we have right now.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/288?vs=287

http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i5-2500k-and-core-i7-2600k-review/21

 

[ZombieSupaStar]

ok, what about if i was using fraps while gaming? Would it improve that at all?

 

[luffeN]

Your monitor might have a 1:1 pixel mapping setting

It does, but it only works when you are in the game / application, where the resolution is lower than native. Then you can go into the monitor options and change it to Auto

Next question now if anyone knows this by heart: the monitor is able to run at 75htz when using 1024x768. How can I tell the monitor to use the 75 when in 1024?

EDIT: nevermind!

 

[Domcorleone]

I'm building a new rig I was thinking about getting a gtx 3gb, is that overkill? Should I just get the 1.5 one? I'm gaming on a panny gt25

 

[MrKnives]

This is a pretty accurate description of how I feel when I'm doing a new build.

I hate searching for the best parts and compromising when you have a limited budget + always something better in the horizon.

 

[Smokey]

Nope, if you want to get 60fps sustained, youre gonna need at least two or three 580's but im not really sure if you can get bf3 at 60fps with those settings.

Initially I made a comment on this, but re-reading the post notsureifserious

 

[Corky]

I highly doubt it will take 3 580s to get sustained 60fps in Battlefield 3.

Well semantically speaking if 2 580s give you lets say "only" 55~fps on the settings we're talking about, then technically one would need 3 580s . But still, semantics.

But yeah, I agree, honestly I'd be surprised if you didn't get 60 fps minimum with sli 580s. Or so I hope.

 

[Smokey]

Well semantically speaking if 2 580s give you lets say "only" 55~fps on the settings we're talking about, then technically one would need 3 580s . But still, semantics.

But yeah, I agree, honestly I'd be surprised if you didn't get 60 fps minimum with sli 580s. Or so I hope.

One 580 will get you around 50fps on Ultra according to what I've read. There's no reason to believe that $1000 worth of graphic cards will not get you 60fps on the Frostbite 2 engine.

I agree, but that's just not how I roll. I like to buy the best card and then ride with it for 3-5 years and then upgrade. I'll stick with a card while getting 20fps on the latest games before upgrading.

Plus if I had to upgrade in 2 years for whatever reason I could do one of the tradeback programs, right?

And I'd never do SLI. Not interested. Only do single cards.

I have a 580 3GB. I mentioned this in another post yesterday, but the 3GB cards are meant for gaming at 1080p+ resolutions, or on a multi-monitor setup. On a single screen I feel safe saying that you will never run into a game that requires 3GB of video RAM. Not now and not anytime soon. Even extending into your timeline of keeping this card you will not see a game that requires this much VRAM especially now that the industry is heavily console based and the PC platforms receives alot of those ports.

For reference I also have a 1.5GB 580 that I used before my current card. I didn't run into too many games that pushed the 1.5GB limit. Only two that I can think of off the top of my head are GTA IV and Crysis 2 with the Hi-res pack. With C2 it dynamically adjusts to however much VRAM you have to play with. Playing it now on my current 3GB card it tops out around 1.7GB.

You will be limited by your GPU in the long run more before you will become VRAM limited with a 3GB card.

 

[Domcorleone]

I have a 580 3GB. I mentioned this in another post yesterday, but the 3GB cards are meant for gaming at 1080p+ resolutions, or on a multi-monitor setup. On a single screen I feel safe saying that you will never run into a game that requires 3GB of video RAM. Not now and not anytime soon. Even extending into your timeline of keeping this card you will not see a game that requires this much VRAM especially now that the industry is heavily console based and the PC platforms receives alot of those ports.

For reference I also have a 1.5GB 580 that I used before my current card. I didn't run into too many games that pushed the 1.5GB limit. Only two that I can think of off the top of my head are GTA IV and Crysis 2 with the Hi-res pack. With C2 it dynamically adjusts to however much VRAM you have to play with. Playing it now on my current 3GB card it tops out around 1.7GB.

You will be limited by your GPU in the long run more before you will become VRAM limited with a 3GB card.

I plan on gaming in 3d, does VRAM have anything to do with that?

 

[Smokey]

I plan on gaming in 3d, does VRAM have anything to do with that?

Not really. 3D gaming is more taxing on the GPU itself. So whatever fps you currently get in a game half that and that's what you can expect when playing in 3D. You could get another card for SLI if you wanted to keep your current performance and gaming in 3D at the same time.

 

[MrKnives]

I plan on gaming in 3d, does VRAM have anything to do with that?

It should be more on the GPU itself. Most people I know who game in 3D have SLI or CrossFire setups

Edit: Beaten

 

[jaaz]

One 580 will get you around 50fps on Ultra according to what I've read. There's no reason to believe that $1000 worth of graphic cards will not get you 60fps on the Frostbite 2 engine.

If that's the case, then shouldn't a gtx 590 get us to 60 fps at $300 less than a 580 SLI set-up?

 

[Raoh]

anyone have an hd 4890? if so has anyone removed the stock fan and replaced it?

I have two choices, upgrading and basically storing/chucking the loud 4890

or

replace the fan with one of these
Zalman VF2000 LED Dual-purpose hybrid-cooler for VGA or CPU Cooling
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118063



I almost regret getting the hyper 212 cpu cooler since the zalman works on both the cpu and gpu and isn't as bulky, my rosewill destroyer is nice and roomy but the zalman would have provided better airflow.. I wonder if i can return my hyper 212 and just order two of these zalman's..

anyone have experience after market gpu fans?

 

[Corky]

If that's the case, then shouldn't a gtx 590 get us to 60 fps at $300 less than a 580 SLI set-up?

a 590 performs on par with 570 sli

 

[MedIC86]

anyone have experience after market gpu fans?

I would get an aftermarket GPU cooler from ARCTIC COOLING, i dont have good experience with zalman coolers. to noisy etc.

 

[Net_Wrecker]

This is a pretty accurate description of how I feel when I'm doing a new build.

I hate searching for the best parts and compromising when you have a limited budget + always something better in the horizon.

http://gifsforum.com/images/gif/rage/grand/rage_stuff101.gif

Word mang, I feel your pain. Finding a case + mobo + GPU combo I'm totally happy with is driving me crazy.

 

[Raoh]

I would get an aftermarket GPU cooler from ARCTIC COOLING, i dont have good experience with zalman coolers. to noisy etc.

glad i asked since noise is my biggest concern.

any specific artic lines your familiar with?

 

[Smokey]

If that's the case, then shouldn't a gtx 590 get us to 60 fps at $300 less than a 580 SLI set-up?

That's an alternative. I actually thought about going that route. However the 590 is really two down clocked 580 cores. Two 580s > 590. 590 is equivalent to SLI 570s, except it obviously takes one slot over the two that are needed for SLI.

I'm pretty set on a 580 though. I want a card where I can finally play Crysis at 1080p and hit 60fps.

I'm not gaming higher than 1080p in the next 3-5 years (I like my 1080p monitor and my tv-out to my 1080p tv) and I don't mind playing with no AA; I do that most of the time to get the best performance. So I feel like a 580gtx should let me play my backlog of games that have come out over the last year or two (Crysis 2, The Witcher 2, Shogun 2, Deus Ex HR) while also being good enough for games coming out in the next few years (even if I have to play them at 30fps with no AA).

Also I'm not looking at Ati alternatives because I've been using Nvidia for about 10 years now and am used to their firmware. I like their tv-out options.

I'm just figuring out which 580 to pull the trigger on atm.

Here is the 3GB 580 card that I am running. MSI Lightning Xtreme.

Here's the 580 I was using before. Asus DCII 580

Both are regarded as the best 580 variants out. You can see from the reviews that both have 5/5 eggs.

If you go the 1.5GB route, the ASUS is one of the best 580s out. The temps on it are ridiculous. One downside is that it's a 3 slot monster. This is really only a big deal if you plant to go SLI, which you said you are not so keep this one in mind.

Now if you want the best performing single 580 then you'll want the Lightning that I linked to. It comes factory clocked at 832mhz and is a OCing BEAST. Also comes with 3GB of RAM and is dual slot. As you can see you also pay a premium with pricing but if you're hanging with the big dawgs, it's the price you have to pay.

I think there are some other 3GB solutions out there, I'm just going off of what I personally own/have used.

I highly doubt it. Dual GTX 570 isn't even enough to keep up much of the time (max settings, 1080p, 4x AA). Crysis 1 is more demanding than Crysis 2, and Crysis 2 runs at about ~45fps in DX9 mode with a GTX 580.

I was averaging 55-60fps in DX9 before the DX11 patch hit and hi-res pack hit.

I'm building a new rig I was thinking about getting a gtx 3gb, is that overkill? Should I just get the 1.5 one? I'm gaming on a panny gt25

For a single screen, yes 3GB is overkill. But what's wrong with overkill?

 

[Giriath_89]

I'm almost done selecting parts for my new rig, I just need your comments on what I've chosen and recommendations on a quiet case with great airflow capabilities (I'm willing to splurge on the case!) GAF.

CPU: i5 2500k 3,3 GHz = 1.699kr = $265

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 = 649kr = $101

Motherboard: Asus P8Z68-V PRO =1.490kr = $232

GPU: Gainward GeForce GTX 570 = 2.799kr = $437

RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws 8GB (2 x 4GB) 1600MHz = 505kr = $79

HDD: 1TB Samsung SpinPoint F3 = 469kr = $73

SSD: Intel SSD 510 Series 120GB = 2.245kr = $350

PSU: Corsair HX750W = 1.175kr = $183

Optical Drive: Samsung SH-S223C = 189kr = $29

Price total: 11.220kr = $1750

 

[ACE 1991]

So how does the Newegg rebate process work? I have to fill out about 4 or 5 from parts for my rig. I visited the rebate center on their site, but it's hard to find the specific rebates for the computer parts I ordered. Also, how long do I have to send these in? Thank you!

EDIT: Nevermind, I figured it out.

 

[ColonelColon]

No one else is having this problem with flickering textures and objects in Human Revolution, right?

lol. Looks like it's time for me to RMA my video card... again.
Also, when I try to start my computer using the onboard video on my motherboard, I immediately get a 0x0000007F BSOD. :/

 

[iSurvivedTheOutage]

Sounds like you need virtu my friend

 

[Gary Whitta]

Doing a quick PC health check as we prepare to go into the game-heavy holiday season. Here are the key stats on my current rig, built about a year ago:

Intel Core i5-760 2.8ghz
ASUS Radeon HD 5870 1gb GPU
4gb RAM (soon to be upgraded to 8gb)

Is this going to hold me in good stead for a while or should I be looking to upgrade anything other than the RAM? Generally I prefer to play games at a pretty high native rez (2560x1440) as I have my PC hooked up to my 27" iMac display.

 

[AwesomeSauce]

Doing a quick PC health check as we prepare to go into the game-heavy holiday season. Here are the key stats on my current rig, built about a year ago:

Intel Core i5-760 2.8ghz
ASUS Radeon HD 5870 1gb GPU
4gb RAM (soon to be upgraded to 8gb)

Is this going to hold me in good stead for a while or should I be looking to upgrade anything other than the RAM? Generally I prefer to play games at a pretty high native rez (2560x1440) as I have my PC hooked up to my 27" iMac display.

Should be good, but keep in mind, at that high resolution gpu ram becomes a lot more important.

Also the 5870 is still a fantastic card right now.

 

[Diomedes]

First build, recent addition to PC master race. Tried to cable manage, couldn't make it as fancy as some have shown.

How did I do?
MB: ASUS P8P67 LE
CPU: Intel i5 2500k, Hyper 212+ cooler
GPU: MSI 560 Ti TwinFrozr II Factory OC880MHz
RAM: 2*4GB GSkill 1600
PSU: Corsair TX650 V2
HDDs: Corsair F115 SATAII, WD 500GB, some externals from laptop
ODD: cheapo Samsung OEM DVDR

Case: Fractal Design XL
Monitor: ASUS VE247H
KB: Filco Majestouch 2
Mouse: Deciding between Roccat Kone+ and Logitech G500

Having buyer's remorse about not spending a bit more for the P8P67 PRO board and a modular PSU might make more sense, but at least there's room for all those extra cables down there. Also the case is gigantic, was not expecting it to be so huge, but in one respect it gave me a lot of room to build/move around in, so for first time build not a poor choice. Most things were on sale at NCIX and was free shipping or were rebates on so saved some money in some places. Did everything so monitor, KB and mouse added to the price, but still cheaper and more powerful than the laptop I was looking at and old laptop can still travel around with me for notes, etc.

Very happy overall, was a fun experience and learned a ton about building a solid rig. Am confident I could do this again and for others and the researching parts was interesting.

 

[LordCanti]

Doing a quick PC health check as we prepare to go into the game-heavy holiday season. Here are the key stats on my current rig, built about a year ago:

Intel Core i5-760 2.8ghz
ASUS Radeon HD 5870 1gb GPU
4gb RAM (soon to be upgraded to 8gb)

Is this going to hold me in good stead for a while or should I be looking to upgrade anything other than the RAM? Generally I prefer to play games at a pretty high native rez (2560x1440) as I have my PC hooked up to my 27" iMac display.

RAM is so cheap, that it wouldn't hurt to throw an extra 4gb in there. For your native res though, I'd be looking at a card more along the lines of a 6970, GTX 570, or GTX 580. Even with one of those cards, you'd probably need to turn some sliders down to get a good frame rate. SLI/Crossfire is another option, if you absolutely need your eyes to bleed from the visual fidelity.

First build, recent addition to PC master race. Tried to cable manage, couldn't make it as fancy as some have shown.

How did I do?
MB: ASUS P8P67 LE
CPU: Intel i5 2500k, Hyper 212+ cooler
GPU: MSI 560 Ti TwinFrozr II Factory OC880MHz
RAM: 2*4GB GSkill 1600
PSU: Corsair TX650 V2
HDDs: Corsair F115 SATAII, WD 500GB, some externals from laptop
ODD: cheapo Samsung OEM DVDR

Case: Fractal Design XL
Monitor: ASUS VE247H
KB: Filco Majestouch 2
Mouse: Deciding between Roccat Kone+ and Logitech G500

Having buyer's remorse about not spending a bit more for the P8P67 PRO board and a modular PSU might make more sense, but at least there's room for all those extra cables down there. Also the case is gigantic, was not expecting it to be so huge, but in one respect it gave me a lot of room to build/move around in, so for first time build not a poor choice. Most things were on sale at NCIX and was free shipping or were rebates on so saved some money in some places. Did everything so monitor, KB and mouse added to the price, but still cheaper and more powerful than the laptop I was looking at and old laptop can still travel around with me for notes, etc.

Very happy overall, was a fun experience and learned a ton about building a solid rig. Am confident I could do this again and for others and the researching parts was interesting.

Looks nice. Welcome to the master race.

Others take this to heart: Full tower cases are ENORMOUS. Unless you have a lot of HDD's, or want room for a radiator, you do not need one.

 

[Bebpo]

That's an alternative. I actually thought about going that route. However the 590 is really two down clocked 580 cores. Two 580s > 590. 590 is equivalent to SLI 570s, except it obviously takes one slot over the two that are needed for SLI.



Here is the 3GB 580 card that I am running. MSI Lightning Xtreme.

Here's the 580 I was using before. Asus DCII 580

Both are regarded as the best 580 variants out. You can see from the reviews that both have 5/5 eggs.

If you go the 1.5GB route, the ASUS is one of the best 580s out. The temps on it are ridiculous. One downside is that it's a 3 slot monster. This is really only a big deal if you plant to go SLI, which you said you are not so keep this one in mind.

Now if you want the best performing single 580 then you'll want the Lightning that I linked to. It comes factory clocked at 832mhz and is a OCing BEAST. Also comes with 3GB of RAM and is dual slot. As you can see you also pay a premium with pricing but if you're hanging with the big dawgs, it's the price you have to pay.

I think there are some other 3GB solutions out there, I'm just going off of what I personally own/have used.




I was averaging 55-60fps in DX9 before the DX11 patch hit and hi-res pack hit.




For a single screen, yes 3GB is overkill. But what's wrong with overkill?

Thanks for all the info. Read all the reviews/benchmarks, thought about it long and hard and went with the 1.5gig Asus DCII. The $30 rebate basically knocks off the tax so it was about $500 even.

For my 1080p 2x AA tv-out gaming needs it should be good enough for a while And I should at least be able to get a stable 30fps in most games for a long time.

 

[Gary Whitta]

RAM is so cheap, that it wouldn't hurt to throw an extra 4gb in there. For your native res though, I'd be looking at a card more along the lines of a 6970, GTX 570, or GTX 580. Even with one of those cards, you'd probably need to turn some sliders down to get a good frame rate. SLI/Crossfire is another option, if you absolutely need your eyes to bleed from the visual fidelity.

Yeah I might just try cranking some games down to a lower (but still very high) non-native res to see how it looks. What would be some appropriate lower res settings for a 2560x1440 native display?

 

[LordCanti]

Yeah I might just try cranking some games down to a lower (but still very high) non-native res to see how it looks. What would be some appropriate lower res settings for a 2560x1440 native display?

I would stick with the same aspect ratio (16:9) so 1920x1080 (1080p). I'm not sure how it will look though.

As for game settings, it really depends on the game. I'd try some of the presets (Low/Med/High) and find which one gives you the best balance of FPS and visual quality. Then you could go in and manually raise settings that you care about (AA for instance) and lower settings you don't care about.

 

[Saren is Bad]

I am looking into going sli 580 3gb. Would that be a 20 percent increase from dual 570 or greater?

3gb is overkill unless you game at super huge res, but since you are asking about it you either do or don't give a shit and just want great performance. my friend has sli 570 and i have sli 580 and since we both lock at 60 fps there isnt that big of a difference except he runs at 1900x1200 and i run at 1080p and he has frame drops and i never

 

[bee]

upgraded my old 2nd gen samsung 64gb ssd to a crucial M4 128gb and flashed it with 009 firmware, sweet drive and seemingly much more reliable than anything sandforce based and the firmware update was simplicity itself

 

[Gary Whitta]

I would stick with the same aspect ratio (16:9) so 1920x1080 (1080p). I'm not sure how it will look though.

As for game settings, it really depends on the game. I'd try some of the presets (Low/Med/High) and find which one gives you the best balance of FPS and visual quality. Then you could go in and manually raise settings that you care about (AA for instance) and lower settings you don't care about.

I may not need to for most games, hopefully. I just checked out Deus Ex HR and it runs beautifully even at 2560x1440 on high settings. Honestly the only game that doesn't run great on this rig so far is Crysis 2.

 

[evil solrac v3.0]

I may not need to for most games, hopefully. I just checked out Deus Ex HR and it runs beautifully even at 2560x1440 on high settings. Honestly the only game that doesn't run great on this rig so far is Crysis 2.

make sure you overclock the CPU, you'll gain something there.

 

[Chinner]

okay my friend has a budget of about £300-400 for a computer (500 max including screen). he doesn't want to build the computer himself but i'm sure there must be better stuff than what you get from dell/pc world or whatever.

this is what hes seen so far:
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/hp-pavilion-g5410uk-desktop-pc-10452256-pdt.html

but again its pc world, there must be something better out there.

any recommendations?

 

[Hazaro]

First build, recent addition to PC master race. Tried to cable manage, couldn't make it as fancy as some have shown.

The LE motherboard can't BIOS overclock unless they fixed that and I really dislike that feature cut.
You have to OC in Windows using their software afaik.

okay my friend has a budget of about £300-400 for a computer (500 max including screen). he doesn't want to build the computer himself but i'm sure there must be better stuff than what you get from dell/pc world or whatever.

this is what hes seen so far:
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/hp-pavilion-g5410uk-desktop-pc-10452256-pdt.html

but again its pc world, there must be something better out there.

any recommendations?

Dell Vostro i5 Desktop

 

[Chinner]

The LE motherboard can't BIOS overclock unless they fixed that and I really dislike that feature cut.
You have to OC in Windows using their software afaik.

Dell Vostro i5 Desktop

google came up wit this:
http://configure.euro.dell.com/dell...S&cid=41148&lid=1069637&acd=23975883724507288

seems respectable!

 

[Hazaro]

google came up wit this:
http://configure.euro.dell.com/dell...S&cid=41148&lid=1069637&acd=23975883724507288

seems respectable!

There should be a model that comes with a discounted 19 or 20" Monitor as well.

 

[Clydefrog]

hey guys, guess what? i no longer need a new pc! it took me over three hours but i finally got it working (posting from it right now)! thanks to everyone who helped me; it would have been difficult without you guys.

the only thing that doesn't work are my two front panel usb 3.0 ports. i will have to figure out why...

 

[HarryDemeanor]

What case is that? I can tell it's a Corsair but what model?

 

[Omiee]

i have a question will it help to put a 120mm fan on the bottom
and one facing the videocards.

my temps on my second videocard are 30 on idle but the 1st videocard is 60 when browsing on firefox.

also recommend me a soundcard.

 

[iamvin22]

3gb is overkill unless you game at super huge res, but since you are asking about it you either do or don't give a shit and just want great performance. my friend has sli 570 and i have sli 580 and since we both lock at 60 fps there isnt that big of a difference except he runs at 1900x1200 and i run at 1080p and he has frame drops and i never

What power supply did you go with?