GPU upgrade + how to sell my 570

[killianzz]

Hello everyone,

As I plan to get a 27" 1440p monitor I guess I need to upgrade my twin frozr ii gtx 570 due to its lack of vram.

First of all I must say I don't actually game that much these days. I haven't done so in about a year but in 2012 my graphics card could take anything I threw at it. Ideally I wouldn't like to upgrade it, especially considering how little use I've really got out of it since I dropped 300 quid on it a couple of years ago. In your honest opinion just how limited would I be gaming at 1440p with 1.3gb VRAM? The only 2 games I really plan on getting are BF4 and GTA 5 when (or if) it lands...

Are games really progressing enough to take advantage of all these expensive new graphics cards if your not using 3 monitors?

Another thing, what would be the best way to go about selling my gtx570? I know I can't use the sellers market on here but would I fetch a decent sum for it on that popular auction site considering I don't think I even have it's original box anymore? Any advice on selling it would be appreciated.

I actually bought it with the intention of going SLI should I need too but i didn't foresee the ridiculously low prices of the Korean 27" 1440p monitors

Thanks

 

[LtMatt]

Hello everyone,

As I plan to get a 27" 1440p monitor I guess I need to upgrade my twin frozr ii gtx 570 due to its lack of vram.

First of all I must say I don't actually game that much these days. I haven't done so in about a year but in 2012 my graphics card could take anything I threw at it. Ideally I wouldn't like to upgrade it, especially considering how little use I've really got out of it since I dropped 300 quid on it a couple of years ago. In your honest opinion just how limited would I be gaming at 1440p with 1.3gb VRAM? The only 2 games I really plan on getting are BF4 and GTA 5 when (or if) it lands...

Are games really progressing enough to take advantage of all these expensive new graphics cards if your not using 3 monitors?

Another thing, what would be the best way to go about selling my gtx570? I know I can't use the sellers market on here but would I fetch a decent sum for it on that popular auction site considering I don't think I even have it's original box anymore? Any advice on selling it would be appreciated.

I actually bought it with the intention of going SLI should I need too but i didn't foresee the ridiculously low prices of the Korean 27" 1440p monitors

Thanks

Battlefield 4 is going to want up to 3gb of ram at 1440p with all the bells and whistles on. At least if you go by the recommended requirements and alpha vram benchmarks. So with that in mind what CPU do you have? A 7950 sounds like the ideal card for you. If you have a good cpu maybe going crossfire would be a a good idea as you'd have excellent performance and scaling in Battlefield 4 with it being an AMD gaming evolved title. If you could stretch your budget to £350 you could pick up 2x7950's with 6 free games. You could either sell the games and recoup £50 or keep them for yourself. That will grant you 25%+ faster performance than a titan which is £800.

 

[killianzz]

I've got a 2500k @ 4.5ghz which I can't imagine bottle necking game performance at least for a while. 2x. 7950s could work but would my corsair tx750 be able to cope with headroom along with my overclocked CPU? What would you suggest for under £200?

 

[LtMatt]

I've got a 2500k @ 4.5ghz which I can't imagine bottle necking game performance at least for a while. 2x. 7950s could work but would my corsair tx750 be able to cope with headroom along with my overclocked CPU? What would you suggest for under £200?

A 2500k would bottleneck 2x7950's a little bit in some titles. Battlefield 3 springs to mind but generally you'd be ok. Overclocking the cpu as much as you can would obviously help. In an ideal world you'd want an i7 cpu though for multi gpu.

Your psu would be fine for 7950 crossfire.

If you only have £200 to improve your cpu id go for a second hand 2600k/2700k and overclock it to 4.5ghz.

Or you could just get one gpu ala 7950/7970 and not worry about upgrading your cpu. Two gpu's though will give you a lot of bang for your buck and will allow you to run BF4 on highest details.

 

[ubersonic]

Battlefield 4 is going to want up to 3gb of ram at 1440p with all the bells and whistles on. At least if you go by the recommended requirements and alpha vram benchmarks.

Considering the alpha benchmarks show the game to be unplayable on anything less than a GTX780 at max settings I would take the VRAM charts with a pinch of salt as the game obviously hasn't had any optimization done yet.

Having said that though I would recommend a 3GB card too as the HD7950 and 7970 are currently the best price/performance options out there (if you buy CF 7950's and sell then 12 free games its cheaper than a single GTX770!) and the next gen of AMD cards should offer similar price/performance.

 

[killianzz]

I really can't believe that my i5 would bottleneck BF3 even at 4.5ghz, sandybridge was still fresh out of the oven when that game came out. Although I do fancy a switch to amd cards, if I was just going for a single card option would a gtx 670 be equally as good? It seems to be about the same price. From what I have heard gtx is slightly faster but the 7950 over clocks a lot better.

 

[nutsnut]

Its been proven time and time again that a 2500k even when overclocked to 4.5 bottlenecks dual card set ups.

The crossfire GPU usage maxes at 70-80% for some people and is only relieved by the extra thread an i7 CPU offers. Though note, this is a game(s) specific bottle neck.

 

[ubersonic]

Its been proven time and time again that a 2500k even when overclocked to 4.5 bottlenecks dual card set ups.

The crossfire GPU usage maxes at 70-80% for some people and is only relieved by the extra thread an i7 CPU offers. Though note, this is a game(s) specific bottle neck.

So technically speaking its not really a CPU bottleneck more a "badly written software cannot use CPU effectively" bottleneck

 

[nutsnut]

no, the 4 cores of the 2500k will be at 100% being fully utilized, the two GPU's will be at 70-80%. Battlefield 3 in particular needs an I7 chip for the extra threads it offers to alleviate the bottle neck allowing the GPUS to breath and be full utilised.

This may become more of a trend with future games as the next gen consoles will be utilising upto 8cores, only time will tell.

 

[ubersonic]

Yeah what I mean is, its not a case of the CPU causing the bottleneck, its the rubbish software causing it by using the 4 available cores extremely inefficiently and thus it needs a CPU that can handle >4 threads to overcome this problem.

 

[nutsnut]

It may well be that, but BF3 is not the only game this happen in, and as mentioned earlier with the next gen consoles being 8core machines newer games may be more CPU dependent.