GPU Sweet Spot?

[rapstar]

Looking to upgrade my 650 Ti for 5-boxing. Instances are fine right now, but OMG cities and garrisons are horrible! What's the current sweet spot for GPUs assuming I'm not looking to go ultra graphics w/ lowered FPS in background.

Other specs that might be relevant:
- 16 GB RAM
- i5-2500K Processor 3.3GHz 6 MB Cache Socket LGA1155

[mbox_bob]

A 1060 is a good spot and a fairly decent jump from a 650TI. A 1070 if you want the most perf without paying totally top dollar.

[MiRai]

My vote is for the GTX 1070, but that CPU is probably going to be a huge bottleneck either way, as cities tend to be much more CPU dependent.

[rapstar]

Hmm, so maybe I should look at the CPU instead? I'm going to stay away from the 10 series for now as nvidia hasn't released OSX drivers for Pascal yet (Hackintosh, necessary for work, don't ask). There's a decent deal on a 970 though that I could spring for...

Any CPU recommendations then? Again I don't want to break the bank on this, and I don't need the processing power for anything beyond 5-boxing really. This is my board: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3854#ov

Starting to suspect I'm in for a big overhaul :(

[Lyonheart]

I have a spare 980ti i might sell..not sure what its worth at this point

[MiRai]

Any CPU recommendations then?
The only CPU upgrade path you have is a 2600K/2700K, which I imagine might be tough to come by since they were discontinued in Q1'2013 (http://ark.intel.com/products/61275/Intel-Core-i7-2700K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_90-GHz). I guess I shouldn't say that because eBay has a handful of them for sale, but I find it difficult to recommend $150-$200 for a CPU upgrade for such an old system. I don't know how much better the system would perform if you decided to do that, but, personally, I'd do my best to drop the resources required by the game clients, and just wait until you can afford an overhaul. If you think the overhaul is too far away, then grab a used CPU and the 970.

[rapstar]

OK thanks a ton for the advice guys. I'm going to put it off for now and plan for a bigger upgrade down the road.

[rapstar]

Did some profiling and found out that the bottleneck was definitely the GPU. Upgraded to a refurbished 970 and it's like night and day. No issues whatsoever now. Definitely worth a few bucks. FYI I run my slaves at 10 fps, but setting them to 30 makes no noticeable difference as far as I can tell.

So I guess I can put off the system rebuild until next xpac.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

For NVidia, going from an x50 to and x60, x70 or x80 will all be notable steps up. the x50 series really isn't designed to handle much outside of browser games and productivity apps. The x60 is entry level in the performance series. x70 is good but budget conscious, and the x80 is all-out performance. Within those, you have the Ti and some other enhanced models that trade various things around, but basically that holds. In my experience, an x70 of one generation will perform about like an x80 of the previous generation and so on down the line.

I have a GTX580 Ti that performs better in some 3D games than a plain-jane 950.