What graphics card for UltraWide screen?

[Marine-RX179]

It is absolutely not worth getting a Vega, 1070 or 1080 and a new monitor on that old platform. The OP would be wasting money because so much performance of the new GPU would be chucked away. I have first hand experience of a CPU from that era (i7 860 overclocked from the factory 2.8GHz to 4.0GHz) bottlenecking an R9 290, a 5 year old GPU! This was at 1080p resolution mind you, and we are talking about higher resolution here, thus shifting more work on to the GPU. That said, the CPU is just too old to make this upgrade worthwhile. Don't forget, 2009 is almost 10 years ago...

For example, just switching from that old overclocked i7 to a stock 6600k doubled the minimum and average frame rates of quite a few games on the same R9 290!

I think you completely missed my point. If budget is an issue, the best way forward would still be upgrading the graphic card first as that is the biggest shortcoming and just overclock his existing system for now. If budget ain't an issue, then of course a whole new system would make sense.

Also if he is going for 1440 res, there CPU bottleneck would be much less than for 1080 res.

Also CPU bottleneck has always been a thing, but it's largely depending on the games you are playing on. For games that use all 4 threads/cores the CPU bottleneck tends to be a lesser issue, whereas games that using dated game engine that would not scaled 1~2 threads/core (like some RTS and mmorpg that are CPU demanding), then obviously the CPU bottleneck would be much more significant.

 

[Prophet]

If it is an i5 from 2009, I think it would probably be either a i5 750 or i5 760 then.

But I checked again and again, and I am pretty sure the ATI Radeon 9800 did not come with PCI-E version but AGP only (it was launched back it 2003 before PCI-E was even a thing!). Granted the 1st gen i5 is now nearly a decade old now, it is not "2003 old"! lol

OP you sure you have not confused the Nvidia 9800GT/GTX+ with the ATI Radeon 9800?

Anyway, it your motherboard does have a PCI-E slot, then there should be no issue using it with newer graphic card (since we are not talking about Core2 Socket 775 old neither).

The keys things to not is you might need to grab a 3rd party CPU cooler to overclock the i5 750/760 to 4~4.2GHz to help reducing possible CPU bottleneck for fast graphic cards, and the PSU depending on what it is it might need replacing (but being that old, it might need replacing anyway even if it might have enough juices according to rating).

If budget is not an issue, then building a new system might worthwhile...however DDR4 memory pricing is expensive AF and a rip off at the moment due to the high DRAM cost (averaging £200 for 16GB DDR4 ram of 3000MHz+), so not sure how comfortable are you with being bend over by DRAM manufacturers and have their ways with you
https://www.techrepublic.com/articl...rice-fixing-that-could-have-raised-pc-prices/

Putting everything aside, for Ultrawide the res of 2560x1080, probably something around the level of GTX1070 or Vega56 would do great, and for 3440x1440 something like a GTX1080 or Vega 64 would eat through most things as well. But as Nvidia is launching their new gen 2000 series soon, it might want holding on and wait for the GTX/RTX (rumour that Nvidia is going to change their naming from GTX to RTX) series, not the RTX2080 that's rumoured to be launching next week, but for the RTX/GTX 2070 and RXT/GTX 2060 that should "hopefully" be launched before this year ends.

The benefit of going with newer gen Nvidia cards it is going to have driver support and performance optimisation for longer for new games than old gen cards that are EOL.

It's a 750 i5, I do remember that

I think there has been a mix-up in graphics cards. I'll take a look when I get home and update the thread.

Judging on where things are right now I may just wait to see what the other offerings are like, then jump in.

Thanks for the detailed info

 

[Prophet]

what budget do you have?

If I'm going for a new PC I'd say around £1500.

 

[Deleted member 87287]

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[Marine-RX179]

If I'm going for a new PC I'd say around £1500.

Is that including or excluding the cost of the monitor?

 

[Prophet]

Is that including or excluding the cost of the monitor?

Excluding. I'd say around 2K with a monitor.

 

[Scania]

Anyway, it your motherboard does have a PCI-E slot, then there should be no issue using it with newer graphic card (since we are not talking about Core2 Socket 775 old neither).

I tried my SLI 1070’s in my old old rig (Q8300 Sct 775, 8Gb RAM etc) and despite the 550w psu (!) it ran GTA V very well in 4K about 25-30 FPS down on my current 4790(non k) and 16Gb RAM 30-35 FPS average overall not bad for an old relic I thought!

I then tried my new 1080ti and got very similar results, again roughly half what it’s capable of on my existing current rig but certainly very very playable.

Dropped the resolution down to 1920x1080 and it was up in the 70fps region, as a comparison at that resolution my existing rig is up in the 140fps+ region, more or less double.

I must point out though I have a VERY heavily modded GTA V install on my current rig and the older install on the Q8300 rig has a fair few mods itself so I concede this is far from a fair / standard comparison!

Still, impressive I thought but a certain pointer to the OP to update his rig first.