GPU for these games at 4k?

[nashathedog]

Those games might be fine, but you're limiting yourself to those games only. 4K needs more resources to play with if you want any semblance of future proof.

None of those cards are future proof for 4k gaming.

For the grunt the gpu has it's ample even for 4k so unless you are talking about going crossfire in the future 4 gb's will be plenty.

 

[ugly ferret]

That said, a 970 is exactly the sort of thing that would be in my normal upgrade cycle anyway. Will have a poke around and see if I can find some benchmarks - although nobody really benches games that aren't very fps sensitive anyway. For my purposes, I suspect anything over 30-40 would be fine...

Well if 30-40fps is enough for you then a 970 will more than suffice. With a 970 I can play relatively demanding games like far cry 4, ryse, evil within, metro redux at around 40fps, sometimes more with most settings maxxed out some on high and no aa (you really don't need it at 4k).

Pretty much anything older you should be able to max out and get a pretty solid 60fps. Out of the games you've listed I have civ 5 and skyrim and they run maxxed out 60fps (skyrim might drop to 50fps in some outdoor sections mind you).

Also as the 970 is very bandwidth limited at 4k, overclocking the memory yields good improvements, and they're usually very overclockable!

I say go for it!

 

[Quartz]

No, 4 GB does not cut it at 4K. I regularly see VRAM usage in excess of 4 GB in Tomb Raider, for instance.

Just to expand on this, I meant that 4 GB is not enough if you want ultra-level graphics. Turn the graphics down to medium-high or play older games, and I was happy with my 780 Ti.

 

[Angst]

No, 4 GB does not cut it at 4K. I regularly see VRAM usage in excess of 4 GB in Tomb Raider, for instance.

4GB is more than enough for 99% of games, even crysis 3 only uses 2.5gb of vram on a 980ti at 4k for me.

 

[Seanspeed]

In all honesty, I don't care about 4k - I want a 32" IPS monitor, and that simply isn't available with simple QHD 1440p

I'm actually increasingly inclined to just not bother until next year. Either graphics hardware needs to take a jump up, or monitor makers need to take a step down. Feels like the screens have gone running off ahead of GPUs without asking how big the market for them will be...

Waiting a year(or even two) is probably the smart bet. Hell, I'm waiting another year before I even make the jump to 1440p.

4k is such a giant leap. Easy to just treat it as some number, but think of it like this:

1920x1080(1080p) = 2 million pixels

2560x1440(1440p) = 3.7 million pixels

3840x2160(4k) = 8 million pixels

That is an extreme amount of pixels to render with hardware tomorrow, much less hardware today.

 

[Seanspeed]

Those games might be fine, but you're limiting yourself to those games only. 4K needs more resources to play with if you want any semblance of future proof.

I dont disagree there. I'm not even moving beyond 1080p until I upgrade my GTX970. I wont settle for less than 8GB in my next GPU.

 

[caff]

I have the i5-2500K too, 16GB RAM, and a GTX970 - and it plays all the games @4K as you listed in your original post at top settings, comfortably.

BUT - I would stretch to a 980Ti if you can afford it. It will give you breathing space.

 

[r7slayer]

Some games @1080p can use 6GB of Vram, Shadow of Mordor for example.

I dont break 4 gb on that game on highest settings. Though I dont have Aa maxed but I have it on. Stays around 3.3 -3.4 gb and I do see the memory buffer flushed every so often.

 

[ossieclap]

XCOM: Enemy Within barely broke 2GB at 4K when I was playing around with DSR a while back

 

[eddiew]

...
4k is such a giant leap. Easy to just treat it as some number, but think of it like this:...

Yer, that's the thing; it's easy to forget that 4k is four HD screens worth of pixels and ideally needs 4x the gpu power. I did have a flutter with 1440p though, and found that even with my old 760, everything was comfortable. Apart from the screen itself, obviously, hence this thread ^^;

I have the i5-2500K too, 16GB RAM, and a GTX970 - and it plays all the games @4K as you listed in your original post at top settings, comfortably.

BUT - I would stretch to a 980Ti if you can afford it. It will give you breathing space.

That's interesting to know, cheers. I wouldn't actually be worried over picking up a 970 now, on the basis that next year is Pascal (and presumably an AMD equivalent) which should provide all the graphics power required for 4k within reasonable power envelopes


And thanks for the responses in general, chaps - turned into an informative thread ^^