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GPU Upgrade Advice Please

asimmd

asimmd

asimmd

Associate
Joined
27 Apr 2007
Posts
144
HI All
I have recently discovered Eurotruck Sim which seems to run ok on my GeForce GTX460 card.

I am told I really should upgrade the card to something like an MSI GTX960
and I was wondering what improvements a new card would give me.

Thanks

Alan
 
A GTX960 has more than twice the performance of a GTX460.

What's your budget?

Edit : are you happy with the performance of your GTX460? It reads like it kind of does what you want it to?
 
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Pretty sure your GTX460 is more than fast enough for that game.

If anything, it would be your CPU holding back your GTX460 and not flexing its muscle fully, due to the game's engine probably doesn't use more than 1 or 2 CPU cores.
 
Thanks guys
Budget is up to £200 and my processor is an Intel i5 Quad core 2500 @3.30 with 8Gig ram.
You are correct the GTX460 does seem to run the game fine and I turned everything on full and it still works the problem was I wondered just how much better it could get but it seems not a lot so I will stick with the 460.

Maybe a new monitor Asus Frameless VX279Q 27" LED Monitor with AH-IPS Panel would be in order to replace my Dell 24"
 
Equally you could get a 970, B grade MSI ones are £239.

Or while its on sale is the KFA 2 version at £259 with MGS V free which if of no interest for you, can be sold to bring the price back down to £220/£230 ish
 
queamin said:
Why would you buy a 970, B grade MSI ones are £239. when a new 390 is 239 which is the better card
Click to expand...

Because performance (especially negligible) isn't the only consideration.
Some people don't like AMD, some don't like Nvidia. Some people love shadowplay, some don't.

Peoples like and dislike of driver sets is another story.

And from the benchmarks i've seen the 970 is faster at 1080P, the 390 Faster 1440P and up ( although overclocked 970's regain this ground).

TL,DR there's more than just performance to look at for individual people
 
ETS2 isn't that demanding, my old AMD 5850 ran it just fine with all the eye candy on. The R9 290/390 are so lightly loaded they throttle down between frames...
 
Thanks for the recommendations problem is I prefer Nvidia.

So a monitor that does better that 1920 X 1080 and a card that
supports it?

Mmmmmmmm suggestions please.
 
Well, you can get a 28" 4k monitor for under £300, only 60fps but if your not playing FPS it's not an issue. Also no freesync/gsync and if only playing a truck simulater you should be fine using plain old ingame vsync.

The card however is a tricky one, If you intend to stay with Nvidia it's probably the 970 you're going to want to be going with, not a great card for 4k but probably okay for your needs.

So you are looking at a £500 outlay. Probably knock £100 or more off going for a 1440p screen though.

I'm not familiar with the performance needed for Euro Truck Simulator at any resolution so probably much better to check with someone who actually plays it.
 
Well I will be playing FPS at some point so I guess the 4k is out.

I'm not overly fussed about the monitor I just wondered why I was being recommended to upgrade the GPU when the one I have runs the game fine.

It also runs Crysis 3 fine as well so I reckon I should stick with what I have for now and wait for some earth shattering new toy to be announced.

Thanks

Alan
 
Well, ETS2 is half broken when it comes to new hardware. I'm running it on Fury x at 1080p and frames are choppy as hell. Same as 290x. It says its 60fps but frame skipping is catastrophic. I hear that ETS2 game engine is much better for nvidia cards.
Just my thoughts.
 
Well I just put FRAPS on ETS and it hovers between 38 and 42
I don't know if that is good or not.

Probably get more with a better card,what do you think?
 
asimmd said:
Well I just put FRAPS on ETS and it hovers between 38 and 42
I don't know if that is good or not.

Probably get more with a better card,what do you think?
Click to expand...

My friend has 970gtx, and he is running everything maxed out on 1080p with 60fps, and he is not seeing any major dips.

A lot of stuttering in that game comes from idiotic save system, which does not care if you save it on fastest SSD there is or on HDD. And new areas texture loading is not the best, stuttering is visible.
 
I don't understand this I just maxed everything I could did a short run round Birmingham and got 60fps.

Motorway with more traffic and scenery gives 38/42.
 
asimmd said:
I don't understand this I just maxed everything I could did a short run round Birmingham and got 60fps.

Motorway with more traffic and scenery gives 38/42.
Click to expand...
Do you use MSI Afterburner? You could enable onscreen display for showing real-time GPU usage, and with that it will allow you to see if your GTX460 GPU usage is staying at 99~100%, rather than dipping down.

If the GPU usage is dipping down, it would mean you have a CPU bottleneck. As unbelievable as it may sound, your 2500 at stock might still be bottlenecking, mainly due to the fact that most sim games in general, their game engine were never written to use more than 2, or even 1 CPU core. Also for sim games it is quite common to be CPU limited.

Have a go with using MSI Afterburner and check your GPU usage during your framerate dips. If your 2500 is the 2500K rather than the non-K, you could try overclocking the CPU, which will help reduce the amount of CPU bottleneck.
 
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Thanks for that looks like a job for tomorrow.

As you say it's unbelievable my 2500 Quad could have a bottleneck
but I understand that games don't always use all cores.

I'll post results tomorrow.
 
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