Graphics card upgrade? (I currently have an nvidia geforce gtx 570)

[luxlunae]

It's that christmas list time of the year again. Does anyone have a recommendation for a graphics card which would significantly beat my current card for somewhere in the $250-$400 range?

[MiRai]

If you can afford $30 for a price that's slightly over your budge, shipping, and possibly tax, then the EVGA GTX 770 4GB (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130945) should hold you over for quite some time. Possibly better prices from EVGA directly (http://www.evga.com/Products/ProductList.aspx?type=0&family=GeForce+700+Series+Family&chipset=GTX+770).

[Ualaa]

I'm quite happy with the EVGA 670 GTX 4GB.
I'd imagine the 770 would be a sweet card.

There's not a lot of difference between the x70 and the x80 cards.
And the x70s are generally MUCH lower priced.

[MiRai]

Here's a review that shows the GTX 570 and GTX 770 (among other GPUs) in a number of different benchmarks:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_770/

World of Warcraft specifically:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_770/24.html

The review covers the 2GB version, but the 4GB version is no different (except that it has more memory and costs a bit more because of that). It looks like you can expect a solid 30-40% of an increase in performance depending on what's going on in the scene (and how many clients you're running).

EDIT: I just guessed you were playing WoW, but I think you could be playing RIFT as well, which may not yield as much of a boost because that game is kind of a resource hog -- It's an upgrade none-the-less.

[remanz]

770 GTX is the way to go for that price range for sure. If you play wow, don't forgot to use directx 11 mode. I was a fool to keep using directx 9 mode thinking 9 means less feature = more performance. Totally wrong. Innerspace + Isboxer runs much faster in directx 11 mode with current gen cards. It is about 15-20 FPS boost.

[luxlunae]

Rift I was actually getting CPU capped not GPU, but swapping cpus is something I'm a lot less excited about doing.

My current gpu is mostly ok for wow but certain things like Elegon really make the graphics card freak out. I'd rather have a smooth performance for four boxes rather than turning 3 of them down and up depending on master/slave.

I actually had to stop using dx9 at patch 5.4, dx9 had a number of brutal graphical glitches at launch that were fixed by a switch to dx11.

Thanks for the input guys, it looks like the 770 is just what I need.

[Damons]

For some reason after reading this thread, I wanted to check my video card stats in gpu-z, and saw that I only had 1gb vram! Always thought I had a 2gb 6970. Eww. Guess I should go get a 770 4gb too!

[Ualaa]

If you want to upgrade, its likely your best bang for the buck.

But if it's not your bottleneck, than an upgrade won't really help your performance a lot.
Although it might be your second limiting factor, which means its already done should you upgrade whatever limits you the most.

I believe CPU-Z gets you most of the benchmarks.
And GPU-Z gets you video specific stuff.
Performance Monitor can show you which resources your system is using; anything that approaches 100% is a bottleneck, and upgrading that component will improve performance for whatever you're doing.

One of the larger improvements on more Video-Ram is generally letting you run more clients.
Although higher settings do use additional v-ram too.

[Damons]

I'm hoping a 770 4gb goes on sale for $300 soon.

[pinotnoir]

From all the reviews I checked out the AMD R9 290 for $399 is the card to get. The stock cooler sucks though but you can buy an aftermarket one and squeeze more power out of the card.

[Damons]

So I'm ready to hit the buy button from Amazon for $369 +$10 one day shipping to get the 770 here on Monday...and I miss the deadline by a minute. So now I have 50 hours to decide if I want it on Tuesday:)

I did look into the AMD 290, seems like a good choice too. Seems to get pretty hot, might have to consider a fan mod/replacement.

[pinotnoir]

One thing to note is the AMD 290 is ok to run at 90C. The stock coolers blow but if you have an aftermarket cooler then it will run much cooler and silent. Plus you can push it to max overclocking for increased performance.

[Ualaa]

I've gone with non-AMD video cards, for the last few video cards.

More because I had a compatibility issue for my specific CPU/MB/Video Card combo (Owltoid had the issue too), and until I replaced one of the components... random crashes could not be prevented.
It wasn't that I was unhappy with the performance.

I generally stick with a company, until there's reason to switch to a new company.

Every AMD video card I've had has performed well.
And they have all run very hot, compared to non-AMD cards.

[wougoose]

I'm currently stuck deciding between the 4GB GTX 770 (~$399) vs the R9 290 (~$399). The 290 definitely wins performance wise, but I need something cool and quiet (770 wins here). Anyone have experience with the aftermarket coolers on the 290's?

I hear there may be better 290 non-reference cooler's coming eventually, but no idea when :)

[pinotnoir]

The ARCTIC Accelero Xtreme III VGA Cooler is an amazing gpu cooler for amd and nvidia. Once they are back in stock I will get one. They are cool and quiet.

[MiRai]

The AMD 290 is no doubt a nice card for the price, but like Ualaa pointed out, most people are comfortable with a certain manufacturer until they get screwed or are forced to switch.

I personally stick with nVidia cards because not only do their drivers allow me to fine tune the quality of my games, more so, than AMD drivers do, but SLI works in Windowed mode, whereas, Crossfire does not.