Best gpu for 1080p

austinl93

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I'm looking for a good gpu for 1080p. I was looking at a 980 or a 980ti but if I got either one I would probably have to wait two weeks to get one... I have a little over 600 saved up but the problem is I also will have to upgrade my power supply if I get either one since I currently only have a 520 watt psu... Also is an ssd worth it? I have a 2tb seagate hard drive in my pc and it performs pretty well but I sometimes when starting an fps game I'll enter the game a little bit later than the rest of the players when we were all just in the lobby waiting for the countdown for the game to start...
 
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because
A both those games are heavily intensive, the game devs really pushed it hard to make teh PC versions something demanding, remember the old saying "can it run crysis?"
B unoptimized as heck ;) pretty sure Metro is still not exactly the most optimized game, which on top of of its already demanding features really doesnt help

Vram is mainly a concern for resolution scaling, yes there is a benefit going from a certain amount to a higher amount, but at teh same time that "benefit curve" has a cutoff, and seems like 2gb is what did the trick at 1080 p, and most games barely even uses that much
thats why adding more Vram doesnt increase performance so much, unless you increase teh resolution, i.e. jump from 1080p to 1440p
you will...

Fez___

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980 is a good GPU but the 970 can handle 1080p gaming just as well. I myself went for the 970 and it has been truly amazing. But if you want to go for the 980, do it. Its a great card which will last a while. Personally I'd choose the 970 simply for the great value and its capabilities.

I always will recommend an SSD. Boot speed decreases by so much it's great, only 4-5seconds. I myself am mainly using my SSD for my OS and for a couple of games. But you don't really need an SSD for your games, it will simply decrease load time. Whilst this is a benefactor, its not necessary unless you want to be in at the beginning to warmup.
 

Gnuffi

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520w PSU should be more than enough for even a 980ti,
noted you didnt mention the name of the PSU so we dont know if its a good PSU, but most 520 psus should handle even a 980ti
that said, both 980 and specially 980ti is completely overkill for 1080p gaming
970 is more than enough will not only allow you a minimum of 60fps on Ultra settings in all games, will even allow more fps in some games, should your monitor allow
but consider waiting with GPU purchase, new GPUs are releasing soon, reviews will be out mid/late may so wait and see what reviews say/when official release date will be

also you didnt mention what CPU you have, it you have a really old CPU getting a new "Big" GPU doesnt matter much since it would only bottleneck

if you are using a hdd, adding an ssd would be overall beneficial to your system, suggest a minimum of 250gb Samsung 850 EVO, and put your OS on it, consider larger SSD if you want many games on at same time, tho 250gb should be plenty for a couple of games
 
GTX 970 will max most games at 1080P and a good quality 500 watt power supply is fine with it. GTX 980 ti is overkill at 1080P and better for 1440P or higher. New video cards from Nvidia, Pascal< are releasing soon so you may want to wait a few more weeks for that. They are supposed to be very powerful compared to current cards.

An SSD is an excellent upgrade for your system to install the OS and main programs on, even a few of your favorite games. Everything loads much faster with an SSD. Samsung 850 EVO 250GB is one of the best to get.
 

dickey005

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Look ur budget is good but without upgrading power supply and playing at 1080p the best card is NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 it will get u decent frames in most games and it is enough for 1080p but if want to play at higher resolution like 2560x1440 at high frames then u should go with PowerColor Radeon R9 390X it will need around 750 watt psu , good one is CORSAIR RM750 and both are in ur budget (around 450$ forPowerColor Radeon R9 390X and 120$ for CORSAIR RM750 )

And the slow loading of online games could be because of ur internet connection low speed.
 

austinl93

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I don't remember the brand psu since I bought it a little while ago but I think it's an insignia.... It's still rated 4.5. It's the only power supply that best buy had that had a 5 star rating online so I found it in the store and bought it since I live in the middle of nowhere and don't have any other places to buy computer parts besides online... And my processor is still a pretty good processor I have an i5 4460. But that doesn't really matter because I'm trying to upgrade my pc piece by piece since my i5 is a few years old and my graphics card is a 750ti. And yes I read today that the 1070 and 1080 are suppose to be released in June I think that's when it said it would be released I only glimpsed at the article I saw today on it and it's rumored specs.
 

Gnuffi

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hogwash, thats teh manufacturers "recommended" PSU size, it will draw nowhere near that, wont even draw 3-400w from the wall on full stress and any 600w psu can handle it, and most halfway decent 520/550w PSU's will do it fine
 

Gnuffi

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your CPU is fine dont worry about that 1 for some time
suggest you get the 970/1070 equivalent when reviews are out in may you can get a better judgement which 1 is worth it for teh money performance-dollar wise
but the SSD you can safely get ASAP, it wont be the biggest performance increase in your games, but it will help your system overall be a bit faster and load more quickly
 

austinl93

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I know the 390x has 8gb of vram which is great and all since the card is super cheap but I'm reluctant to go back to an amd card since the last one I had was a 7770 forever ago... And I like physics in games. Since I play a lot of games like witcher, dying light, and even some racing games...
 

dickey005

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then u should go with 970 and u don't need to upgrade psu and 980 or 980 ti will be over for ur needs.
 

Gnuffi

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considering you PSU is of the "unlisted" kind, im leaning towards it not being a very good quality so doubt you should tangle with 390x on that

also, 8gb of VRAM does nothing for you on 1080p, more vram is mainly for higher resolutions, most players dont get much if any benefit going from a 2gb to 4gb version of teh same card on 1080p
 

maxalge

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they average about ~300w while gaming BUT can spike over ~400w actually

which is why it's a good idea to run a 650w good psu with it
 

austinl93

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And I saw an article like that today but it was also saying that the 1080 and the 1070 were going to have 8gb of vram also... The 1070 was suppose to have either 6 or 8 i don't remember... I'd probably get one of the 900 series cards right after the 1000 series releases just because they will drop in price...
 

dickey005

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This is ok just go with the 970 is want to play at 1080p and want to or can wait for pascal then check the links i posted above.
 

Gnuffi

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dont worry about the Vram size, the reason tehy do this is not so much because of the game demands, but because of people gravitating to higher and higher resolutions, and then more vram helps
at 1080p you could play on a 2gb vram card just fine ;)

but yea do it like that, wait for pascal/reviews, and then get either 970or the 1070 depending on price, its teh smart thing, and you definitely wont need bigger on 1080p unless you plan on something like 150fps on ultra settings in all AAA games ,)

 

Gnuffi

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this is true there is some "slight detail" about 970 not using all its vam at full speed, but that doesnt matter on 1080p, only on higher resolutions, if tehy are having GTA V issues on 1080p with a gtx970, the fault lies somewhere else in their system
2gb vram is plenty for 1080p truly,
check some benchmarks of people testing out diff Vram size of teh same model cards, and the performance "increase" is not what you would expect ;)
 

austinl93

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then why does an older game like i think it was metro have newer gpu's having issues at maxing it out? It may not be metro it might be crisis or something along those lines... Sorry for the late reply I'll have to wait longer to upgrade my gpu since I just broke my xbox one by accidentally spilling a soda on it...
 

Gnuffi

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because
A both those games are heavily intensive, the game devs really pushed it hard to make teh PC versions something demanding, remember the old saying "can it run crysis?"
B unoptimized as heck ;) pretty sure Metro is still not exactly the most optimized game, which on top of of its already demanding features really doesnt help

Vram is mainly a concern for resolution scaling, yes there is a benefit going from a certain amount to a higher amount, but at teh same time that "benefit curve" has a cutoff, and seems like 2gb is what did the trick at 1080 p, and most games barely even uses that much
thats why adding more Vram doesnt increase performance so much, unless you increase teh resolution, i.e. jump from 1080p to 1440p
you will see a significantly higher performance increase in say overclocking a 2gb card a couple of 100Mhz vs adding double the Vram on teh same card and having 4gb

its sorta the same with regular system ram, adding more will greatly benefit your system to a certain degree, like going from 2gb to 4gb,, but going from 4gb to 8gb the benefit lowers, and going to 16gb or 32gb, it completely vanishes, because the system simply never uses is like that
thats why you see people with 8gb or 16gb systems that perform completely the same compared to say an idiot like me with 32gb ;)
what you "do", ie the game/program/application need to be able to use what you have or its not being used, and games at 1080p simply rarely uses more than 2gb Vram (mostly about 1.5gb), and never 4gb or more ;)
ofc thats like saying all games only require a strong GPU and the CPu doesnt matter, there is always an exception to the rule, where some games can benefit a tad by more than 2gb vram, but still not much
and never to the point where the gtx970 would perform "poorly" on 1080p, then the error simply must either lie elsewhere on teh system, like a CPU bottleneck, or the game is unoptimized like crazy
 
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vtomi80

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I recommend to get the best you can afford depending on what games you planned to play. I don't think 980Ti is overkill for 1080p, newest games like Division, Rise of the Tomb Raider will not run on constant 60fps when everything is set to max on a 980Ti. If you want to play FPS like Far Cry, Battlefield 4, etc. a custom 970 will definitely do the job.

I wouldn't recommend a 980Ti for your CPU, I am using one for 1080p and had to upgrade my 4690K to a 4790K as it was bottlenecking in CPU heavy games like The Division even on 4.4GHz when everything was set to max in the game. Just a note, I was not using DSR, I like to play on native 1080p, using DSR gives a serious load to the GPU and could help on CPU bottlenecking.

However I also strongly recommend to upgrade your PSU as the very first thing to a quality PSU. 500-550W are enough, I am using a Thermaltake Hamburg 530W which runs fine my OC'd 4790K and 980Ti FTW. It could kill your PC's parts, and also a high end GPU deserves a good PSU :)

 

ATi RaDEoN

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Just wait for Pascal. 1080 and 1070 are expected to release in June. There is no point going to Maxwell when new gen cards are around the corner. Maybe after the release of Pascal, you might find a good deal on Maxwell. It's better to wait.
 

Gnuffi

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yea was teh very first thing i said too, since its so close , there wouldnt be any idea in not waiting, atleast to see if the performance is on par with all the hype,
at best it will be worth the wait,
at worst, price drops slightly on 9xx series maxwell cards in the time spend waiting

since reviews are supposedly out in mid/late may, no reason not to wait and see whats going on