Upgrade suggestion request

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by SylverFyre, Jun 21, 2015.

  1. SylverFyre

    SylverFyre Well-Known Member

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    Hi all, I'm new to Raceroom but loving it.
    I currently have an i7 920 with 6Gb ram and an ATI 5850 graphics card. I use a Thrustmaster TX wheel for input.

    This all works ok, some tracks are silky smooth with low to mid settings, other struggle a bit more. Adding in AI drivers doesn't help, to be honest I prefer multiplayer anyway though. I want to enhance the graphics a little but mostly smooth out the framerate to a solid 60fps at 1080p. I can overclock the processor as I have a reasonable heat sink and fan, but am wondering if getting a beefy graphics card alone will help much, or is my system getting a bit long in the tooth generally?

    Do any of you have similar systems and can offer any suggestions please?
     
  2. rbn

    rbn Well-Known Member

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    I would suggest upgrading you graphics card.

    The processor is old but its not that slow, although a new i5 is faster.
    Adding more RAM wouldn't give you much benefit.

    Get a GTX960 or better, then at later stage upgrade you motherboard/cpu.
     
  3. D.Boon

    D.Boon Well-Known Member

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    Seems we're in similar circumstances, you might not like it but, running the game in 720p over 1080p will vastly improve frame rate and generally doesn't look bad at all, actually, as your card is significantly better than mine, it should enable you to run higher general graphic settings as I run low-mid settings at the moment too... sort of.

    It's worth considering the new AMD 300 series graphics cards, price point is good and although many are just re-brands, they have been slightly tweaked and are showing slightly better than their predecessors, I'm looking at the R9 390 myself in the next few weeks.

    Your CPU is much stronger than mine so that shouldn't be an issue but may be worth considering an upgrade later down the road. I'm not completely up to speed on Intel CPU chips but, upgrading to a new generation of "I" processor could mean a new socket type so, that would mean a new motherboard too.
     
  4. James Cook

    James Cook Well-Known Member

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    The all important question: what's your budget?

    I agree that a graphics card upgrade should be the first port of call. The CPU and RAM should be fine for a little longer. R3E doesn't seem to be that CPU intensive.
     
  5. Revvin

    Revvin Member

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    Are you running the CPU at stock clock settings? Its getting on a little bit now but I think its your graphics card which is likely the biggest bottleneck at the moment. I'd recommend changing to an NVidia card but its down to personal preference really and your budget would dictate how far up the family of GPU's you go i.e. 7xx series or 9xx series
     
  6. SylverFyre

    SylverFyre Well-Known Member

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    Thanks for all your replies. I'll drop the resolution until I can get an upgrade and see if that helps.

    The 920 is currently at stock, but is a D0 stepping which is known as a good overclocker. I should be able to go anywhere from 20 to 50% but if the game isn't so CPU intensive, I'll see how it goes with as mild a boost as I can get away with.

    Thanks again everyone, I think I'll take a closer look at some nvidia cards. Budget would be around £300.
     
  7. James Cook

    James Cook Well-Known Member

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    At that budget the GTX 970 is a no-brainer* for around £250. You'll be able to max the game at 1080/60fps bar a couple of fps hungry settings.

    * Google the 3.5GB vram issue for some bedtime reading, just so you know.
     
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  8. Revvin

    Revvin Member

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    A small overclock might help a little in conjunction with a new graphics card and if £300 is your budget then I agree with James that the GTX 970 is a great card to choose and within your budget.
     
  9. AMarkham40

    AMarkham40 Active Member

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    I just upgraded from a 1.2GB GeForce 570 to a 4GB GeForce 970 on my i5 2500k system. I was running medium settings before, now I have the graphics cranked! I purchased the Asus Strix 970 from B&H Video. They have it on sale right now plus you get a $10 mail-in-rebate & the Batman Arkham Knight game. If you don't need your old graphics cars put it up on Ebay, the same goes for the Batman Arkham Knight key code as I didn't need it either.
     
  10. SylverFyre

    SylverFyre Well-Known Member

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    Been looking up on the 970, it looks good value and I presume that Raceroom doesn't push the 3.5GB performance limit on the VRAM. Just shopping around for the best UK deals over the next week.

    Thanks once again everyone for the advice, hopefully this thread might also be useful for other people too going forward. See you on the track!
     
  11. James Cook

    James Cook Well-Known Member

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    Not even close at 1920x1080. Some really demanding games like GTA V are pushing the limits but I can play that just fine on high settings with a 3GB 780.
     
  12. D.Boon

    D.Boon Well-Known Member

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    Worth having a look at the R9 390, similar price, 8GB RAM, dodgey drivers at the moment (Betas) but still beating the GTX 970 in the benchmarks, especially at the higher resolutions.

    @James Cook, AMD FTW!! :p

    Lol only joking. May also be worth holding out until the 24th to see what the R9 Fury prices are going to be.
     
  13. James Cook

    James Cook Well-Known Member

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    The 970 still makes more sense to me. Nvidia drivers give better performance with racing sims so I would be confident that the 970 will beat the 390 where it matters. Nvidia drivers seem to be more reliable in general and are updated more often. Also, AMD cards are very power hungry and can run hotter and louder as a result.

    8GB vram is completely unnecessary for 1080p. Handy for 4K if running 2x 390's in Crossfire, but even then, by the time 4K becomes 'a thing' there will be many better cards on the market.

    If you want the best price vs performance card for running 1080p at very high settings for the next couple of years, the 970 is, as I said, a no-brainer.

    The Fury cards are interesting but will be well over budget. I'm interested to see how they perform but I guess it will be a while before drivers get the best from them.
     
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  14. D.Boon

    D.Boon Well-Known Member

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    I respectfully disagree, the current benchmarks put the R9 390 ahead of the GTX 970 by a significant margin at 1080p and more so at 1440p. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of the GTX 970 and especially nVidias driver support and TDP but, the 8GB from the 390 means you can plan for a multi-monitor set-up later down the line without too much to worry about and, the 390 is DX12 ready on the hardware side, not just software side like the 970.

    In an ideal world, you'd be able to get a card with the 390 performance and the 970 TDP, unfortunately, if you want that at the moment, you have to spend the big bucks on a GTX 980.

    End of the day though, both are exceptional cards and should last another few years yet before you have to start dropping the graphic settings. :)
     
  15. James Cook

    James Cook Well-Known Member

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    I don't think DX12 is a deciding factor until we see games programmed for it, and that could be some years away. By the time it becomes relevant there will be much faster cards on the market aimed at 4K.

    I always say buy for what you need now, this case a card to drive a single 1080/60 display at very high settings. The tried-and-tested 970 really is the way to go. Keep it a couple of years, sell it on and then see how the land lies in the graphics card market once we have much faster architecture available and some DX12 games to play.
     
  16. D.Boon

    D.Boon Well-Known Member

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    Sound advice, I'd completely agree with that but from the red corner lol.
     
  17. SylverFyre

    SylverFyre Well-Known Member

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    This isn't the right place but...

    Bought and installed a brand new gtx970 but have spent the evening trying to get it to work. With the basic windows standard vga driver, or in safe mode, it will run for hours. As soon as I install the supplied driver on the disc that came with it, or the latest release driver from nvidia, it boots windows then after a moment or two reboots the PC without warning. This continues in a loop, it will even reboot if left at the windows log in screen. It is a fresh windows 7 64 install, updated.

    Any ideas would be appreciated, does it sound like faulty hardware?
     
  18. mr_belowski

    mr_belowski Well-Known Member Beta tester

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    Sounds like its not getting enough power - is your psu up to the job? Did you connect the pcie power connectors?
     
  19. rbn

    rbn Well-Known Member

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    Yes, maybe its a power draw issue, but I wouldn't expect it to reboot.
    Do you have at least a 500W quality PSU? (Nvidia recommendation)

    Also going from ATI to Nvidia could be driver related.
    Did you remove the ATI drivers completely?
    Maybe ATI has a cleaner, I know there is a 3rd party driver cleaner tool.
     
  20. SylverFyre

    SylverFyre Well-Known Member

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    Both pcie connectors are fully plugged in. I even tried switching over cables to see if that would help, no joy. The psu is a Corsair TX750 and, while its about 5 years old, should still have enough grunt to run this 145w card. It runs an amd 5850 which is a 151w card at least. In desperation I'm going to pull the 500w supply from another PC and use the pcie cables from that to power just the Gtx.

    Oh, and thanks rbn, I thought that so did a format and fresh install of windows last night. The machine has been running now for a solid 24 hours, but as soon as I install the drivers it reboots within moments of loading windows. No other software is installed :(