speck me a new card upgrade please GEN3

[janko778]

My current card is MSI R6970 Twin Frozr III.
I fear im loosing out on pcie Gen3 as i have a pretty decent rig now, the gfx card is holding me back. My Rig Speck is as follows.
Motherboard Msi Z77-gd65
crucial m4 64gb ssd + crucial m4 128gb ssd.
Memory Samsung Green 16GB DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz
Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge)
PSU XFX 650W XXX Edition Modular '80 Plus Bronze
Dell U2412M i run at 1920x1200 rez.

I only ever run one graphics, i play mmo's.
Reall just need advise on what card to get to benefit from the pcei 3

Thanks in advance

 

[Rusty0611]

You aren't missing out on anything by not having PCI-E 3.0. There's no noticeable difference in performance on a single card set-up between PCI-E 2.0 and 3.0. It only makes a difference on 3-way set up's and above.

What games do you play specifically and at what resolution? The 6970 is still a good graphics card. You probably don't need to upgrade and if you do it won't be for PCI-E 3.0 benefit (as there isn't any).

 

[chilipeppersc]

6970 is still a pretty good card, but if you have the upgrade itch it is only a matter of time lol....as most will probably admit

MMO's are not notoriously demanding games, but I do feel that having a high-end card increases the ability to cope with mass battles in games such as GW2 etc

Anyhow, what is your budget?

If it is high end you are going for then you will undoubtedly be referred to the 670, 7970 and 680 cards.

 

[MichaelM]

Quadfire or Quad SLI would benefit from it currently I think.
Single card or possibly dual card will make near enough to no difference at the resolutions the cards should be used at, assuming the card you go for is not a downgrade from 6970 performance. Even putting a gen3.0 compatible card in a 2.0 slot will do nothing of significance.

So just get a card based on it's raw performance power.


Relevant to your topic - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Ivy_Bridge_PCI-Express_Scaling/23.html

 

[janko778]

ohh though maybe im missing out on something. So i should stick with what i have?
Im will be playing gw2, and i play Diablo 3 atm.
Budget not an issue but i do lean towards AMD cards.

 

[Rusty0611]

I would stick with you've got and see how GW2 performs.

The beta isn't anything to go by though as my machine with a 680 even 'struggles'. But this is because GPU utilisation is next to 0 .

 

[janko778]

I would stick with you've got and see how GW2 performs.

The beta isn't anything to go by though as my machine with a 680 even 'struggles'. But this is because GPU utilisation is next to 0 .

Yeh i played a few beta weekends my rig run like terrible, i give up on gw2 betas and wait for final i think.

 

[straxusii]

Stick, you wont get a boost due to PCIe3.

If you overclock then consider a 7970 or 680 to get a decent boost.

 

[Rusty0611]

Yeh i played a few beta weekends my rig run like terrible, i give up on gw2 betas and wait for final i think.

As I said - ignore the beta performance at the mo. Hopefully, it'll be in a position where it uses the graphics card before it goes live to give an indicator of performance.

 

[chilipeppersc]

Just for inputs sake I was running GW2 beta and stresstest on 6950 flashed to 70 and it ran perfect, most people in the gaming community I am a part of have far less superior cards than that and ran it fine.

Maybe the issue was the integrated graphics being used primarily? i5-2500k and no issues.

 

[Rusty0611]

Just for inputs sake I was running GW2 beta and stresstest on 6950 flashed to 70 and it ran perfect, most people in the gaming community I am a part of have far less superior cards than that and ran it fine.

Maybe the issue was the integrated graphics being used primarily? i5-2500k and no issues.

Depends what you consider to be fine. 25 FPS isn't in my view - integrated GPU is disabled.

Same for one of my friends who also played and he has a 5870 or 5850.