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New card for modded Skyrim

foxrocks

foxrocks

foxrocks

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Joined
16 Sep 2011
Posts
134
I am trying to decide on a new video card for my wife. Primarily she is playing Skyrim, modded with hi-res textures from the Texture Pack Combiner etc, with various performance tweaks from the STEP/Nvidia guides. The options are the 660 Ti, and the 7950. The 670 is sadly out of budget.

I have heard that Skyrim favours Nvidia cards, but whether that's really true or not I don't know. I know the 7950 is more powerful than the 660 Ti at 2560x, but AFAIK they tend to be quite similar at 1920x. However would the hi-res textures also lend themselves to the 7950 in the same way that higher resolutions seem to? Obviously the 7950 has an extra 1GB VRAM, and higher memory bandwidth. Does anyone know if Skyrim w/ texture packs can exceed 2GB VRAM use at 1080p?

If all else were equal I would get the 660 Ti as it is slightly cheaper and I have had better experience with Nvidia (had some annoyances with my own 7950). However if there will be a tangible performance increase with the 7950, given her situation, then I am happy to go for that.

In terms of individual cards, the MSI Naughty Overvolting Edition at £240 and the HIS IceQ Boost at £252 look good.
 
I can hit 2.4GB of vram with my modded skyrim, lots of HD packs, armour mods, city textures etc added though. Thats not to say it wouldnt run on a 2GB card though. I am at 1080p with 4XMSAA by the way.
 
gregster said:
Sorry I was at work and struggle to link on my phone. It isn't on offer but a great price :)

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7950 Twin Frozr III OC V2 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE Sleeping Dogs PC Game £249.95
Total : £260.75 (includes shipping : £9.00).

Click to expand...

That's the same one I have then. Is that a better buy than the HIS IceQ Boost model? I notice the HIS comes with a couple of extra games but wasn't sure what the cooler was like, and what they're like for warranty.
 
foxrocks said:
That's the same one I have then. Is that a better buy than the HIS IceQ Boost model? I notice the HIS comes with a couple of extra games but wasn't sure what the cooler was like, and what they're like for warranty.
Click to expand...

In terms of warranty problems, Yes. HIS have a poor record of RMA and if you do have problems at some stage, we don't want to be without our computers for weeks and weeks.
 
The problem is that nobody actually reviews / benches Skyrim with tons of mods (AFAIK).

About the closest is Computerbase.de who have what the call the 'Skyrim + ENB-Grafikmod'. The results show the 7950 leading even when running at the base 800MHz default setting. Clocking it to something modest like 1000MHz should see it being 10%+ faster than the 680. For lots of mods and textures, Kepler generally suffers from not enough memory bandwidth.
 
tommybhoy said:
Been playing around with Skyrim mods and all was good until I installed the Texture Pack Combiner, some stuttering started.

Low and behold I fired up Afterburner and was shocked to see my Vram usage sitting @3995Mb@1080p which of course is 1997Mb each gpu.

The cards in question are 6950>70 CrossFire running 950MHz/1300MHz, these are plenty fast at anything I have thrown at them@1080p, including Skyrim until the texture pack combiner was installed.

I swapped in a 7970 Wind Force and fired up Skyrim again, no stuttering but the vram is now hitting ~2750Mb.:eek:

As imo, the 7970 I used is slower than my CrossFire setup@1080p, it's definitely not gpu grunt at fault, they ran out of Vram!

83d0d473ac3d90b9f1023d2f70198843.jpg


At this point I should add that this is all being done in 3D via Tridef.


Mods used along with the Texture Combiner(and required files) are:

f7182c13e4f6439ffeb0fe567bf59a30.jpg


In game settings:

b299bded83d315a8d2dfef003b071ab8.jpg


Not advocating/advising anyone rips out gpu's to replace a 2Gb gpu at all for 1080p gaming, the aim of the post is to be informative and let anyone know that a modded Skyrim can breach 2Gb vram@1080p.

Texture Combiner available here:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/20801/#content
Click to expand...
 
Cheers for that tommy. Interesting stuff!

Just logged on to her PC via Splashtop to check. Seems she has...quite a lot of mods...

1cuVfl.jpg


Note that the 'Data' folder contains every texture mod mentioned in the Texture Pack Combiner, including all the optional ones. So basically that's a **** load of mods, plus the official hi-res pack from Bethesda.

Guess that 3GB is the way forward then! Cheers guys.

edit: Does anyone know if OCUK will handle HIS RMAs in the way they do with XFX and some other companies? Otherwise it seems like they have an Asian RMA base so **** that!
 
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foxrocks said:
Cheers for that tommy. Interesting stuff!

Just logged on to her PC via Splashtop to check. Seems she has...quite a lot of mods...

1cuVfl.jpg


Note that the 'Data' folder contains every texture mod mentioned in the Texture Pack Combiner, including all the optional ones. So basically that's a **** load of mods, plus the official hi-res pack from Bethesda.

Guess that 3GB is the way forward then! Cheers guys.
Click to expand...

I'd say so. :)
 
ICEx21 said:
Foxrocks isn't a chef by any chance is she?
Click to expand...

:confused::confused::confused:

Anyway, anyone know if OCUK will be getting the Gigabyte Windforce 3x 7950s back in? I'd prefer one of them if poss but they don't seem to have been on here for ages now. Still knocking about at some other retailers though.
 
foxrocks said:
:confused::confused::confused:

Anyway, anyone know if OCUK will be getting the Gigabyte Windforce 3x 7950s back in? I'd prefer one of them if poss but they don't seem to have been on here for ages now. Still knocking about at some other retailers though.
Click to expand...

Having used a 7950 IceQ and a 7970 WF, the WF is quieter at stock but much louder under load, if that's any help, the IceQ went back purely because I'm too anal about noise for my own good, it was a cracking card.

Afaik, OcUK deal directly with HIS rma's too, but double check first before buying.

7970 isn't worth the premium over the 7950.
 
Originally Posted by tommybhoy View Post
Been playing around with Skyrim mods and all was good until I installed the Texture Pack Combiner, some stuttering started.

Low and behold I fired up Afterburner and was shocked to see my Vram usage sitting @3995Mb@1080p which of course is 1997Mb each gpu.

The cards in question are 6950>70 CrossFire running 950MHz/1300MHz, these are plenty fast at anything I have thrown at them@1080p, including Skyrim until the texture pack combiner was installed.

I swapped in a 7970 Wind Force and fired up Skyrim again, no stuttering but the vram is now hitting ~2750Mb.

As imo, the 7970 I used is slower than my CrossFire setup@1080p, it's definitely not gpu grunt at fault, they ran out of Vram!
Click to expand...

Isn't there no point overclocking 6950's / 6970's ? I overclocked my 6970 and barely saw a 1-2 fps boost just doesn't seem worth bothering with on a 6970 ?
 
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