Graphics card advice needed looking to spend about $300 immediately

[JoeDaCabbie]

Hello everyone. When I built my main PC I didn't have the cash for a decent video card and have been using mobo video, but I want to branch out into 3D modelling as well as have decent gaming so it's time to expand. I have an Asus Hero VII Maximus Z97 board with an Intel Devils Canyon 4790K CPU. I have a large case so size and heat shouldn't be too much of an issue (my cooling fans almost never turn on right now.)

I'm new to this whole multi-GPU thing so I'm pretty lost here. I want to spend about $300 to start and am willing to expand later. So, I can do PCIE 3.0 x16 or x8/x8 and don't know if SLI or Crossfire is a better choice. The main games I play are Fallout 4, ESO, and Skyrim to give you an idea. Should I go with one decent x16 card, one decent x8 card and save for a second later this year, or two lesser x8 cards and call it done? Any advice/experience will be greatly appreciated. Thanx!

 

[maxalge]

Hello everyone. When I built my main PC I didn't have the cash for a decent video card and have been using mobo video, but I want to branch out into 3D modelling as well as have decent gaming so it's time to expand. I have an Asus Hero VII Maximus Z97 board with an Intel Devils Canyon 4790K CPU. I have a large case so size and heat shouldn't be too much of an issue (my cooling fans almost never turn on right now.)

I'm new to this whole multi-GPU thing so I'm pretty lost here. I want to spend about $300 to start and am willing to expand later. So, I can do PCIE 3.0 x16 or x8/x8 and don't know if SLI or Crossfire is a better choice. The main games I play are Fallout 4, ESO, and Skyrim to give you an idea. Should I go with one decent x16 card, one decent x8 card and save for a second later this year, or two lesser x8 cards and call it done? Any advice/experience will be greatly appreciated. Thanx!

a single powerful card is always better


full specs?

 

[Hellfire13]

get gtx 970 or wait for gtx 1060 to launch later this year...

 

[BrandonTheGPU]

Something along the lines of the "EVGA GTX 970 SSC" would probably do you well for $300

 

[JoeDaCabbie]

a single powerful card is always better

full specs?

Intel i7-4790K @ 4 GHz, running at 4.4 w/ 16 PCIe lanes total
Asus ROG Maximus VII Hero Z97
12 Gb RAM DDR3 (3 x 4 Gb DIMMs)
Intel 4600 onboard graphics
2 Tb total storage (RAID 10) (1.6 Tb main storage/0.4 Tb Recovery) SATA 5400 rpm drives
EVGA Gold 550W power supply
Win 10 Pro 64 bit

I'm going to tear down that RAID in the winter for a SSD/RAID 1 Storage combo, I think, but that can wait for now.

 

[Hellfire13]

as mentioned earlier, one single powerful card will always perform better than sli/crossfire...besides, not all games support sli/crossfire...so u can either get a gtx 970 at around $300 if u r in a hurry...or wait for the new pascal card in that range to come later this year...

 

[JoeDaCabbie]

Thank you, everyone. I think I"ll wait a bit and pick up a decent GTX 1070 card when I can afford it.

 

[Hellfire13]

gud decision...cheers