270X - Quiet / 2GB vs 4GB?

eddiew · 6 May 2014 at 13:40

Marine-RX179 said:
Normally I would suggest that too, but considering OP's mentioned that he would need it to be as quiet as possible for his future migration to mini-itx, it would be better to consider a lower-power consumption card such as the 270s.

Beg pardon, I meant "micro ATX" but typed "mini ATX" thus confusing the issue completely. In my head, I'll be keeping my current 600W power supply, so power draw per se isn't an issue. The big question is space and noise - if there's a 250 watt, quiet option that will fit, then I'll certainly consider it

270X was really just what I figured was most sensible given my budget (sub-£200 ideally) and a vague desire to support Mantle.

eddiew · 6 May 2014 at 18:24

stulid said:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-325-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1982

Lovely and quiet cooler.

Alas! The absolute maximum that my case is going to take is about 28cm, and that is 30-31

Even at 28 I'd have to get a longer SATA cable. Current card is a modest 26.

Wonder if I might do better looking towards a 760 instead. Mantle is a nice to have, but not really essential. Suspect my 2500K will handle Civ (6?) without it, meanwhile this Asus card is getting really low noise in reviews...

thefogo · 6 May 2014 at 19:36

Yeah all the Asus cards are very quiet.

eddiew · 6 May 2014 at 20:44

thefogo said:
Yeah all the Asus cards are very quiet.

Coolbeans, cheers, I'll shortlist that then

Marine-RX179 · 6 May 2014 at 21:37

eddiew said:
Wonder if I might do better looking towards a 760 instead. Mantle is a nice to have, but not really essential. Suspect my 2500K will handle Civ (6?) without it, meanwhile this Asus card is getting really low noise in reviews...

Seriously...if you must get a GTX760 for £200, at least wait for a 4GB version to appear on £200 deal again (The MSI Gaming Edition GTX760 did once). Also still won't recommend a 2GB card for Heavily modded Skyrim...I'm not saying 3GB or 4GB would definitely be enough (depending on the level of modding), but they WILL definitely do better than 2GB.

Also Civ6 is apparately going to support Mantle, so AMD card would help a lot in CPU limited situations as oppose to Nvidia card. Granted Mantle is not working too well on cards other than the 290s at the moment, but Civ 6 is most likely not going to be out till toward the end of 2015 at least, so plenty of time for Mantle to mature.

eddiew · 6 May 2014 at 22:52

Marine-RX179 said:
Seriously...if you must get a GTX760 for £200, at least wait for a 4GB version to appear on £200 deal again... *snip*

...but Civ 6 is most likely not going to be out till toward the end of 2015 ...*snip*

Heh, by the end of 2015 I'll probably be considering another GPU - it's amazing I've lasted 3 years on this one!

Overall I'll take quiet operation over tip-top performance, so if I can't get a 3GB or more card in the format I need, then I'll settle on 2 and dial back the details. I guess I have easily offended ears xD I liked the look of the Sapph Toxic, but I physically can't fit it in my case. Asus looks like my backup plan.

Might well give it a few weeks though and see what's on offer - Wildstar doesn't launch until the start of June, but I really do want a new GPU by then. Beta has me running in low-mediums, and that's just not acceptable for a salary man

Dougiebabe2003 · 7 May 2014 at 02:51

Just an idea (and not sure how much of a good one) but coming from a world of mining for the last few months would getting a 280/280x and undervolting/underclocking to around the same performance as a 270x work? Then you always have the option of more performance if you need it (all be it with more noise)

Not sure that you can get them in the 4gb you desire though, I believe they only come in 3gb versions? You would also need to make sure you get a voltage unlocked one for ease of setting the vote although flashing a volt molded bios is very easy.

2nd hand prices are pretty good too...

eddiew · 7 May 2014 at 10:01

Dougiebabe2003 said:
Just an idea (and not sure how much of a good one) but coming from a world of mining for the last few months would getting a 280/280x and undervolting/underclocking

It's certainly not a bad idea - I've been eyeing up the 280-non-X's, but it's near impossible to find informative reviews about them. The Sapphire Dual-X's tend to garner phrases like "overly aggressive fan profile", and the other brands just don't seem to have ever been reviewed by anyone :/

Will probably wait for the MSI 270X 4GB to come back in stock and give it a punt, since Guru 3d and others are pretty positive about it's noise profile - and it looks like it will actually fit in my (apparently cramped) case

triss · 7 May 2014 at 10:23

Try looking up 7950 reviews as its basically iirc the same thing

Marine-RX179 · 7 May 2014 at 10:57

triss said:
Try looking up 7950 reviews as its basically iirc the same thing

Just to add whilst the 280 is more or less a 7950 rebrand, but because of it's higher stock clock, it would mean the power consumption (and waste heat being generated) would lies somewhere between a 7950 and a 7970.

Edited:
The following might give a better idea on power consumption (see bottom right's chart for max power consumption):
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_760/25.html

Note that the 270x is the 7870 rebranded, so it would be more or less around the same or little higher on power consumption.

Mr Krugga · 7 May 2014 at 11:32

triss said:
Try looking up 7950 reviews as its basically iirc the same thing

You're thinking of R9 280. The 270X is a cut down design with slightly higher clocks to make up for it, but still not exactly as fast as the older R7950.

http://anandtech.com/bench/product/1043?vs=1033

triss · 7 May 2014 at 11:48

Yes he said he was having trouble finding 280 non x reviews
7950 reviews will be reasonably close in terms of power and noise

eddiew · 7 May 2014 at 15:00

Well all of them are better than a 3 year old 6870

Thanks for the thoughts guys, some good info for me to chew over. Shame I apparently can't fit all the options into my case - I didn't think it was particularly small, but live and learn.

Sadly my car decided to start making nasty noises this morning, so I shall have to see how costly that is next week before I know whether I can increase my budget a bit. Worst case, either a 4GB MSI or 2GB Asus 270X, depending which I fancy at the time or whether either was on offer

Maxing modded Skyrim would be nice, but it's not an everyday game so I could live with slightly less detail. Either card will walk Wildstar Online I'm quite sure

eddiew · 8 May 2014 at 14:46

Nuts to it, was preying on my mind so ordered an MSI 760 4GB while it's on TWO offer. I shied away from it at first because one review put it as a too-big 30cm, but every other site and the MSI official specs say it's 'only' 26.

Thanks for all the advice guys, and sorry to suddenly flip round on what I wanted, but at least a couple of you suggested a 760. Hopefully last me a year or two until the proper Maxwells come along

Now come on OCUK, let's manage a Friday delivery so's I can beast Skyrim over the weekend

triss · 8 May 2014 at 23:16

No need to apologize for what you bought

A lot of us buy what suits our needs/requirements and is cheapest on the day we buy
Enjoy your card and i hope i preforms how you want

Marine-RX179 · 8 May 2014 at 23:45

At least you didn't buy a 2GB card, that's the most important thing (regarding you playing Skyrim with heavy mods)

eddiew · 9 May 2014 at 08:37

Yeah, the info about modded Skyrim being such a beast was really good - made me go research it properly and find that it's about the only game in the world that's chewing up more than 2-3GB at normal resolutions. I'd not really expected that from an older title ^^;

And lol, just got a text, delivery at lunchtime today. Nice one again OCUK

Marine-RX179 · 9 May 2014 at 09:21

eddiew said:
Yeah, the info about modded Skyrim being such a beast was really good - made me go research it properly and find that it's about the only game in the world that's chewing up more than 2-3GB at normal resolutions. I'd not really expected that from an older title ^^;

And lol, just got a text, delivery at lunchtime today. Nice one again OCUK

If it was just a standard Skyrim it wouldn't had been any problem with 2GB...but the issue is for mods, they are developed by community or other individuals out of passion, so while they might be able to deliver the desired effects end results, what it takes to get those results might not necessarily be the most efficient, and can eat up more resources than a needed and may not be that well optimised. Also with the improvement on details of the texture etc, it's also normal for the vram usage to be increased as well comparing to the original.

eddiew · 9 May 2014 at 09:56

I guess even if the mod writers do optimise their mod perfectly, there's always the question of how many others will be installed at the same time. I have somewhere near 100 mods; high definition meshes and textures, more ground clutter, visible inventory bags, better face textures and hair, etc. Throw in ENB shaders and the game engine is running so far beyond it's original scope I'm amazed it holds together at all!

Sure does look pretty though, but my poor old 6870 was really creaking under the load ^^