• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Graphics card to drive 2560x1440 display

immy

immy

immy

Associate
Joined
28 Nov 2002
Posts
465
Building a new PC system and hoping to use a 3 monitor setup.

Main usage is general day to day browsing, programming, movies,light gaming.

Main display will be 27" Crossover 2560x1440 (to be purchased)
Either side will be a Dell E196FP 19" 1280x1024

System will have a
Ivybridge i5 processor
Z77 Processor
8gb ram

Needing advice on graphics card ? I am assuming i should be able to drive the 19" dells with the onboard ivy graphics(can it handle 2 displays?), so that leaves me needing something that will handle the main crossover display and able to play the odd game at a reasonable frame rate with majority of textures turned on.
 
Well, I play most games maxed (occasionally drop AA down to 2x) with a heavily overclocked 5850. Even BF3 runs fine at nearly all high settings. So basically anything better than that should be fine for light gaming. Hell, I use it for heavy gaming. Just don't expect to apply loads of AA or run Metro 2033 with full DX11 features on.
 
well currently i play no games on my pc but thats probably due to my aging pc set up(8600GT gpu). Most of my gaming is done on ps3 n 360 downstairs on the big telly.

Hoping to change that with the new rig setup. Id wanna play need for speed type games and Battlefield/Call of duty type games.
 
I'd recommend the GTX 670. It will allow you to max out many modern games and if you turn down the settings a bit you should get decent performance with most games out there. It's not cheap but 1440p is a very demanding resolution and a lot of games aren't well optimised for it. The HD7870 is a bit cheaper but you lose quite a lot of performance, particularly in games like Battlefield 3.

At the end of the day it comes down to how much money you're willing to spend. What's your budget and how flexible is it?
 
oggiet said:
People running 2GB cards have you run into lack of VRAM during gaming at high res ?
Click to expand...

Well according to a professional review the answer to that is no. Here a GTX670 2gb vs a 7950 3gb at 2560x1600 your going to hit computation bottleneck first before you run out VRAM, if he did hit a VRAM bottleneck you expect to see a massive drop in performance for the 2Gb card. Just because some benchmark app is reporting your using more VRAM then what the card has doesn't mean there's a bottleneck. I guess the speed of system RAM may have a bearing on this as well.
 
smogsy said:
Max Payne 3 - that res - all maxed 3.2GB used

BF3 - that res - all maxed - 2.8GB
Click to expand...

So from this, it would be ideal to get a 4GB 680 and add another for the grunt that would be needed. I do question that amount of vram being used but I am not arguing.
 
Smogsy, thanks for that mate. Quick question if you don't mind. I read somewhere that afterburner adds up VRAM from each card in sli setup, does that mean that in your setup non of the cards use more than 2GB each. Seems like it to me which means that there will be no need for 4gb cards with one monitor at that resolution.
 
2gb card is fine for that Res at the moment as long as you don't need MSAA. More vram is obviously better for the future but for now 2gb is plenty.
 
With 4xmsaa and very high tessellation Max Payne uses 2.7GB ram! As reported by MSI AB, in game settings its says 1.7GB. AB does fluctuate between 1.7 and 2.7gb though so i think AB is giving a correct reading.
 
oggiet said:
Smogsy, thanks for that mate. Quick question if you don't mind. I read somewhere that afterburner adds up VRAM from each card in sli setup, does that mean that in your setup non of the cards use more than 2GB each. Seems like it to me which means that there will be no need for 4gb cards with one monitor at that resolution.
Click to expand...

i believe thats only for ATI nvidia cards display the correct memory usage.

plus max payne in options state 3GB when setting up quality etc
 
Budget.....tough one....

I like a bargain, but willing to pay to get something that gives more bang for buck

I'd ideally wanna pay approx £200 or under
 
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18413005

If you look at the link above it might help you decide.
I tried loads of different setups to run this res and what i've found is vram is not a major player as certain games will use it if its there.
Nearly all well known reviews sites seem to come to this conclusion.

When i first joined this site i was one of those people spouting you need 4gb Vram,lesson learned you don't unless you must play every games maxed out.So be aware if you really want to max everything out be prepared to go 4gb tri sli to also have the grunt to power it.

I chose BF3 as its the most demanding Vram game that I have and what most people play.
If you disable Aero your vram usage will only just go over 2gb(BF3 when maxed out 2011mb) and this was on 5760 x 1080.
If you use a single card or sli I found virtually no difference in vram usage and if you only use 2x MSAA its about 1750mb usage no AA and it drops to 1570 ish.

However 1 card v's Sli at your res changes the games from just about playable to enjoyable.

Remember this is what I found on my setup,so depending if you chose 1 x 670/680 or Sli them vram is not going to be a issue on most games today.

Sorry this post is so long,just don't want people to make the same mistakes I've made trying to fully max games out.
However future games who knows,just my 2 cents
 
Last edited:
oggiet said:
People running 2GB cards have you run into lack of VRAM during gaming at high res ?
Click to expand...
I haven't come across any issues yet, though obviously it is a concern going into the future. Ideally you'd want a 4GB card. However, most - if not all - the games I've tried work fine with MSAA 8X. And most games support FXAA which offers similar quality yet with much better performance. The GPU performance is more likely to become the bottleneck before VRAM.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom