Is my PC overkill for 1080 60hz?

[gartersnake184]

My PC:
Asus z87-a
8gb ram - upgrading to 32gb
R9 295x2
I7 4770
1tb hdd
Cooler master silent pro m2 1000w

 

[sizzling]

Sort of, do you own the 295x2 already? Also 8gb is plenty, 16gb is nice to have and 32gb is a complete waste of money for gaming

 

[FarmerFran]

Meh... never overkill.

I run
Phantom Full Tower
EVGA Supernova 1300W
Gigabyte Z170 Gaming 7
I7-6700K
16GB Trident 3400MHz PC4-27200
Samsung Pro M.2 512GB SSD
nvidia GTX 1080 FE

Now I will admit I run 5760x1080, so it is 1080p times three.

 

[photonboy]

1) It completely depends on the game. Lots of games won't hit 60FPS constantly with that setup.

2) You can click on all these games if you want, though there are newer, more demanding games and we'll continue to get more graphically demanding games as time goes on.

Benchmark: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_295_X2/6.html

3) The game I linked above is just over 61FPS average so it drops below 60FPS. In my experience the average FPS needs to be well over 100FPS, sometimes as high as 200FPS (tested without VSYNC) to get the most consistent frame times when capped.

The reason why is a bit complicated.

I played the original Half Life (no mods) recently and it was incredibly smooth at 60FPS. I've played other games that are locked at 60FPS which are quite jerky.

Reported 60FPS doesn't mean you actually get 1/60th second for each frame. Also, some elements take SEVERAL FRAMES to appear (similar to pop-in) and can look better if the GPU has more processing power to get these jobs done in less frames.

Other:
DX12 will (eventually) start to optimize for your setup very nicely. A lot of people don't understand that the transition is incredibly complicated with a big learning curve. It will take several YEARS more to see some of the biggest benefits done properly.

Star Citizen for example will be supporting SFR (Split Frame Rendering) at some point which will enable both GPU's to work on the same frame. That gives you as much as 8GB available for Video memory and reduces the latency since the frame is complete quicker (AFR or Alternate Frame Rendering done in SLI and Crossfire have one GPU with its 4GB memory process one frame like normal, then the 2nd GPU does the next frame and it repeats. It adds latency and many problems.

SFR will end up being more native to the game engine thus easier to implement but it's not simple, and again will take a lot of time to be a common thing. It is however the FUTURE so fast forward ten years and 4+ GPU's will start being common similar to multi-core CPU's.

 

[photonboy]

MONITOR:
The best upgrade you could do would be a quality Freesync monitor with specs similar to THIS:

- 144Hz (it's important to keep this HIGH to make it easier to stay in the asynchronous range)
- IPS panel
- 4ms or below response time
- quality (see customer feedback) and 3-year warranty (some support no dead pixels)

In case you don't quite understand this technology, the monitor essentially draws a new frame when the GPU sends it one rather than at a preset time. A 60Hz synchronous monitor for example simply draws the latest frame from the GPU framebuffer very 1/60th of a second. This causes LAG (latency/sluggishness) if you enable VSYNC. VSYNC forces the monitor and GPU to stay synchronized to avoid mixing frames together (which causes screen tearing).

Freesync works very POORLY if the asynchronous range is less than 2.5X (i.e. 30Hz to 60Hz), so a 4K Freesync monitor is a poor choice. Not only does going above 60FPS mean the monitor is now synchronous (normal methods) it doesn't work well below 30FPS.

NVidia's GPU module has no such issue on the low FPS side. AMD did a driver update that simply tells the GPU to resend a frame for example if at 29FPS. You then get 58FPS so the monitor stays in the asynchronous range (it's still viewable as 29 frames, but you again eliminate the lag/tearing issues).

You need 2.5X because there's some delay in the driver with this so a 2X range isn't quite good enough.

 

[gartersnake184]

Is my PC capable at 4K? It looks like the 295x2 is better at high resolutions.

 

[photonboy]

Sort of, do you own the 295x2 already? Also 8gb is plenty, 16gb is nice to have and 32gb is a complete waste of money for gaming

Agreed.
Unless you edit video (not just convert) and even then more than 16GB isn't always necessary depending on the program and settings.

VM's (Virtual Machines) are another reason for more system memory though that's pretty rare.

Even to "future proof" I think using more than 16GB for gaming alone is a long, long way away. We will see intelligent buffering and streaming techniques that benefits from more system memory, though ironically those same techniques can theoretically help REDUCE the memory requirements.

Other:
I do suggest keeping web browsers CLOSED when gaming, or at least keep open only the page or few pages you may want to access during a game. Memory aside, I've seen my CPU usage sometimes go over 50% with only five tabs open on my i7-3770K due probably to all the video adds, memory leaks etc

 

[sizzling]

In games that don't support or poorly support Crossfire your 295x2 is no better than a 290. In games that support the 295x2 it's going to perform very well, little overkill really