Old card, old question...

[MoridinUK]

Hi all,

I've a msi geforce 1080 gtx 8gb (not ti). This card has been great but I started to notice some odd behaviour in a few games I've owned for a good while but not played much.

I'm trying to understand if I'm just asking too much, or if there is good guide to help me or a good benchmark to try to see how my graphics card is doing!

I have an AOC Q3270WG5B monitor. It's native 2560x1440 at 75 hz (freesync)

Now I'm connected on a display port and have enabled the g-sync compatible stuff.

So I thought this card would work for most games I like to play. I like strategy games and city builders, I'm not needing 150fps in a shooter or anything.

My latest muse is actually Stellaris which is quite old (directx 9 it has an dx11 beta but it dont work for me!)

I notice that the screen doesn't pan smoothly at all while playing the game and started messing about with the frame rate. Riva tuner told me my card can't render at even 40 fps when I pan that galaxy view about. I've tried dropping the game resolution, that didn't speed it up, I drop the quality and it didn't do much either. So maybe it's just stellaris is a bit rubbish (but I see people with perfect streams!) or I'm missing something about the freesync or the nature of 2556x1440...

Is the card just too old for that resolution? Should I try to turn the framerate caps off? I dont know!

System Ram isn't getting slaughtered nor cpu...

Any advice? It's a bit dull but I want to avoid having to hunt for an upgrade and selling an internal organ to fund it if I can!

 

[Jb456]

You could run 3Dmark benchmark and compare your system to others with similar specs to see if the performance is where it should be.

I think the 1080 is still a capable card at 1440p with some settings turned down, depending on the game. Dropping resolution is really a last resort but it should net you a nice fps boost... Maybe there is a different bottleneck.

There is a twitter account called FE part alert that can notify you when the cheaper Founders Edition cards are available, make sure to enable notifications, setup your payment info prior and as soon as you get notified be quick. I think a UK drop is expected soon.

 

[TrojanWhore]

I'm still using a GTX 1070 and most (older) games run fine with a few settings dropped at 1440p.
The only game I've had to drop to 1080p has been ARK: Survival Evolved (and only really to make it smoother for recording as I'm making some videos on it, was previously playing it at 1440).

The 1080 is leagues above the recommended requirement listed for Stellaris so I doubt that will be the issue there, what are the specs of the rest of your system? (@MoridinUK )

 

[Marak]

I'm a huge stellaris player, trust me its not your system.

Even on my 5950x and 3090 with 64gb ram system it chugs like an asthmatic ant with some heavy shopping.

I don't think it takes much (any?) advantage of multi core cpus and when you get to late game there's a lot to keep track of.

 

[MoridinUK]

There is a twitter account called FE part alert that can notify you when the cheaper Founders Edition cards are available, make sure to enable notifications, setup your payment info prior and as soon as you get notified be quick. I think a UK drop is expected soon.

Thanks for the tip I will look this up when I'm ready to spend!

I'm still using a GTX 1070 and most (older) games run fine with a few settings dropped at 1440p.
The only game I've had to drop to 1080p has been ARK: Survival Evolved (and only really to make it smoother for recording as I'm making some videos on it, was previously playing it at 1440).

The 1080 is leagues above the recommended requirement listed for Stellaris so I doubt that will be the issue there, what are the specs of the rest of your system? (@MoridinUK )

I've 16gb windows 10, running on an i5-6600 3.5ghz I think it has an overclock on it though to about 3.9 or 4, the cpu and memory doesn't seem bothered

I'm a huge stellaris player, trust me its not your system.

Even on my 5950x and 3090 with 64gb ram system it chugs like an asthmatic ant with some heavy shopping.

I don't think it takes much (any?) advantage of multi core cpus and when you get to late game there's a lot to keep track of.

Yeah it gets so slow in the late game, does it really only use one core? Would the cpu bottleneck make the rendering of the screen shudder when the game is paused though? it shouldn't need o think much at all at that point?

Thanks everyone, I think I may run 3dmark on it and see if it's all healthy, it's probably just paradox not threading it properly. If my SW-Eng team did that at work I'd give em hell to pay!

 

[TrojanWhore]

I've 16gb windows 10, running on an i5-6600 3.5ghz I think it has an overclock on it though to about 3.9 or 4, the cpu and memory doesn't seem bothered

Ok well going by what Marak said above, looks like stellaris won't benefit too much from extra threads, but I'd imagine city builders/strategy games in general would benefit more from a CPU (and therefore motherboard and RAM) upgrade than GPU at the moment. 4 cores 4 threads can be a bit limiting these days in a lot of titles and I noticed a huge difference going from 4c4t (2500k) to 8c16t (AMD 3700x).

Best single core performance (by quite a margin!) appears to be the latest intel architecture (alder lake) and they generally seem to be the best bang for buck at the moment for gaming, if you are in the market for an upgrade!

But obviously it could just be that the game doesn't run all that smoothly on anything and you may be better off waiting if that's the only game you're playing and don't have stacks of spare cash to burn.

Edit: confused myself and forgot 6600 is usually DDR4 as well, so you could do just CPU and motherboard for now, but if it's below 3200MHz I'd also look to upgrade the RAM too!

 

[MoridinUK]

Ok well going by what Marak said above, looks like stellaris won't benefit too much from extra threads, but I'd imagine city builders/strategy games in general would benefit more from a CPU (and therefore motherboard and RAM) upgrade than GPU at the moment. 4 cores 4 threads can be a bit limiting these days in a lot of titles and I noticed a huge difference going from 4c4t (2500k) to 8c16t (AMD 3700x).

Best single core performance (by quite a margin!) appears to be the latest intel architecture (alder lake) and they generally seem to be the best bang for buck at the moment for gaming, if you are in the market for an upgrade!

But obviously it could just be that the game doesn't run all that smoothly on anything and you may be better off waiting if that's the only game you're playing and don't have stacks of spare cash to burn.

Edit: confused myself and forgot 6600 is usually DDR4 as well, so you could do just CPU and motherboard for now, but if it's below 3200MHz I'd also look to upgrade the RAM too!

Thanks for the advice!

I need to check the speed of the memory, but I think it is DDR4...

The mainboard is a RoG maximus VIII gene so I think I can still push a cpu upgrade without a new mainboard...

 

[TrojanWhore]

The best CPU you could fit on that would be a 6700k (or looking at the compatibility list, maybe a 7700k, which are both 4 core 8thread) and going by 2nd hand prices I think the money would be better spent doing a larger upgrade to something more modern. No point chucking more money in to an outdated socket!

OCUK don't have them yet, but it looks like the go to would be an i5 12400F, these are 6c12t and have a significant advantage in single thread, brand new they are only about £50 over what you'll get a 6700k for second hand!

Or the i3 12100F can be had for even less (although it is still 4c/8t, it'll still have a significant advantage!)

Check out this section here for some ideas (and maybe start a thread in that area or ask a mod to move this one):
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/community/new-to-pc-gaming-upgrade-advice.172/

The guys in there will have more up to date knowledge than me and can point you in the right direction for whatever your budget is

 

[MoridinUK]

Thanks Trojan!