3440x1440: GTX 970 -> R9 390 "upgrade" worthwhile?

[Haggisman]

What's the timeline for introduction of new cards... I'm not desperate to play any major titles (as an exam is coming up in april) but afterwards, I'll have all the freedom in the world.

I think "no one really knows" is probably the most accurate answer I can give to that, although I've read rumours for anywhere between "summer" and "early 2017", depending on what level card you want

 

[Calin Banc]

I figured it was at least a good place to start, if it crashes in that then it's likely to have problems gaming as well?

True, but you'd be wasting time testing twice when you can only do it once.

 

[Randall8686]

What's the timeline for introduction of new cards... I'm not desperate to play any major titles (as an exam is coming up in april) but afterwards, I'll have all the freedom in the world.

Personally i dont see anything with a boost or certainly a big boost over a 980ti until the end of this year at the earliest. Maybe matching it or close too for a little less money.

 

[JediFragger]

Personally i dont see anything with a boost or certainly a big boost over a 980ti until the end of this year at the earliest. Maybe matching it or close too for a little less money.

Agreed, a big part of Pascal will more than likely be dedicated to compute horsepower so the Ti will be matching/beating it slightly. I think the Ti is currently a really good buy, esp 2nd hand and paired with a sweet Gsync monitor

 

[jenovat]

Agreed, a big part of Pascal will more than likely be dedicated to compute horsepower so the Ti will be matching/beating it slightly. I think the Ti is currently a really good buy, esp 2nd hand and paired with a sweet Gsync monitor

Damn, well i'm not looking at the TI range personally but I was hoping that the release would drop everything else in price. I'm hoping for a sub £200 970 of a decent variety.

 

[Scania]

I'm impressed.

Do you play other games on that res, and if so, is the performance generally okay?

It still impresses me tbh, I bought my second 580 as I fancied trying SLI and GTA V struggled a bit with just one and it spread from there, I like to buy from the MM, the monitors all came from car boot sales(!) very much a what can I build for buttons project.

GTA V, mostly high settings, reflections on ultra with MSAA (sure they look better like that!) textures normal, I'm not at home now to check (or force any more video's upon you!) 40 -50 fps is my norm even with distance scaling quite high.

Battlefield BC2, 3 & 4, all run maxed out (I lower textures on 4 mind you) I do get momentarily slight pauses on 4 on the Dragon Valley map which I don't get in others, I assume I must be hitting a VRAM limit.

Star Wars Battlefront runs beautifully on mainly high and ultra settings again, I lower textures as I assume I must be pushing my VRAM to the limit and then some!

Mid 40's to high 50's in Project Cars, F1 2015 runs very well, 70+

FSX is low 30's (quite normal for FSX) but with most other settings maxed out, it's very smooth and fluid which is crucial especially with faster jets.

Thus far though, yes, all my current games run @ 5760x1080 very well given you'd think they wouldn't.

Yes it's old school kit but it still cuts the mustard and most crucially the whole lot - including monitors - stands me a lot less than the cost of a single GTX980!

I may create a "retro thread" or suchlike and put up a few videos showing other games and how they run if there's interest?

 

[Randall8686]

Damn, well i'm not looking at the TI range personally but I was hoping that the release would drop everything else in price. I'm hoping for a sub £200 970 of a decent variety.

Sub £200 970 wont happen until next gen. second hand can be picked up for £180 now and then.

 

[Nasher]

If you want to keep it cheap get a 2600k/2700k/3770k and a 980ti and overclock the cpu. Nothing still beats these for the price right now and performance is exactly the same for gaming, I fell for some of the fake gaming reviews stating that minimums and frame times were much better... LOL nope they were not at 3440x1440, they made zero difference, maybe at 640x480... I even tried 1920 x 1080 and saw a 1-5% difference at most, a difference you would never notice in real world use.

Yep, the 2600k is probably the best chip I ever bought (still using it) and the best chip Intel ever sold

I've certainly got my moneys worth from it. 5 years on and still no worthy replacements yet. Seems like it will be happily running at 4.6ghz until the end of time.

 

[DaveRom]

I may create a "retro thread" or suchlike and put up a few videos showing other games and how they run if there's interest?

Yes, definitely.

I ran 480's in sli up until a few months ago (highly overclocked but under water) and they were great. The 1.5gb of vram got me in the end. Rocked them for 4 years at 1920 x 1200.

Awesome cards

 

[Randall8686]

Yep, the 2600k is probably the best chip I ever bought (still using it) and the best chip Intel ever sold

I've certainly got my moneys worth from it. 5 years on and still no worthy replacements yet. Seems like it will be happily running at 4.6ghz until the end of time.

Actual clock frequency is not the only factor here. My 4790k smashes games like arma 3 compared to my old 2600k even at lower frequencies. i would say 20-25% FPS increase when i made the jump in Arma3. however for less CPU intensive games the 2600k is still a brilliant chip.

 

[arc@css]

I may create a "retro thread" or suchlike and put up a few videos showing other games and how they run if there's interest?

I'd certainly take a look. Cheers for the info.

 

[Randall8686]

Yes, definitely.

I ran 480's in sli up until a few months ago (highly overclocked but under water) and they were great. The 1.5gb of vram got me in the end. Rocked them for 4 years at 1920 x 1200.

Awesome cards

my 480 was an epic card that had HUGE punch. only trouble is the ring main in my house melted every time i turned it on it was so power hungry. Still it remains my longest serving card.

 

[Haggisman]

With Maxwell cards try using as little volts as you can when overclocking. They really don't like extra heat and volts.

My GTX 980 Ti's don't like any extra volts and will crash if they go over 55c but are monster overclockers.

So... success!! Thanks for that pointer.

Adjusted the fan curve so the temps don't go above 65c and I've got it stable at +100 core / +250 mem.

I did try running it higher, but it would crash after a while.

Got the following results, averaged over 6 runs of each (these are the only games with benchmarking tools I had installed ):

Showing an 8.1% increase on avg. fps in Heaven, 8.5% in Tomb Raider, 7.9% in Bioshock

Edit: All run at 3440x1440 with everything cranked up

I also did rough comparisons in Fallout 4 and Dying Light, which I estimate were also around an 8% increase, so can't complain really

A question about Afterburner - does ticking the "Apply at Startup" option mean that the settings will be applied when the PC starts up, or when Afterburner is launched? I.e. do I have to have Afterburner running all the time?

 

[Geeman1979]

In the General settings, make sure Start with windows is ticked and Start minimised and tweak your custom fan profile to suit. When overclocking it's standard practice to setup a custom fan profile.