Need help upgrading Gaming Computer

[ch233992]

I could use some help deciding how to upgrade my computer as playing Eve Online with three accounts is getting lagy. I have a 100mbps internet connection so I dont think its my internet. I think I need to upgrade my graphics card since I only have one GTX 760 to power a 4k display and a second 1080p monitor. Heres my system now:

CPU: Intel i7-4820K @ 3.7 GHz
Motherboard: GIGABYTE X79-UP4 ATX w/ Ultra Durable 5, GblAN, 4 GEn3 PCIe x16, 2 PCIe x1, 1 PCI
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 2GB GDDR5 PCIe 3.0 x16 Video Card
Memory: 16GB (4GBx4) DDR3/1866MHz Quad Channel Memory
Power: 650 Watts - Corsair CSM Series CS650M 80 Plus Gold Certified Modular Ultra Quiet Power Supply
HDD: 256GB ADATA SP600 SATA-III 6.0Gb/s - 555 MB/s Read & 530 MB/s Write
OS: 64-bit Windows 7 home

Looking to spend somewhere around $500 for the upgrade. Thanks for any advice!!

 

[ThomasKK]

Yep, GPU is the bottleneck there. I have 760 myself and it's performance at 4k is horrible. For this resolution i would recommend nothing below GTX 1070, but i don't know what kind of game "Eve" is.
How many fps do you get with a gtx 760 on that 4k monitor at that game? (min avg max numbers from Fraps would be great)

 

[ch233992]

Yea - I ran a few tests last night using the in game FPS monitor. If I open two accounts on separate windows only displayed on the 1080p monitor, I can get 60 fps. But as soon as I open the third account on a window displayed on the 4k monitor, my fps drops to like 20, then will average out to 30 fps. If I do anything dynamic in the game, my fps can drop to as low as 15 fps.

Since I'm using two monitors and would eventually like to replace the 1080p one with another 4k display, would you recommend using two GPUs? Research I've done so far says I don't really need to use SLI as two GPUs should be sufficient. Two GTX 1080 TIs?

 

[ThomasKK]

It depends how well that game scales with dual GPU setup. I still hear people saying that one more powerful GPU is better than 2 less powerful ones, because not every game scales well and the fps increase from the added 2nd card may be only +10-15% or even up to 70-80% for the games that are optimized for SLI.

GTX 1080Ti is not released yet. Even if it was, the price would be close to Titan X(P).
For your budget, the closest option would be a GTX 1070.

1080 can play all the latest games at 4K at relatively high settings at 60fps, but it's more expensive. But a 1080 would be more future-proof for 2x 4k displays and with an opportinity of SLI in the future it would be better than 2x 1070s.

 

[ch233992]

Great, thank you so much. I think I'll go with a GTX 1070. The price seems to vary quite a bit based on different versions of the GTX 1070. I've seen as low as $379 (Windforce) to $449 (Founders Edition). Do these different versions really matter?

 

[ThomasKK]

Yes they do. The base of the card is the same, which means every GTX 1070 will have the same amount of CUDA cores, processing units, bandwidth etc. The only thing that is different is cooling and clock speeds. Reference card (founders edition) usually comes with blower style cooler and lower clock speeds, meanwhile other manufacturers make the same card but with double or triple open air coolers, which allows better cooling of the card and lower temperatures. Lower temps means you can overclock the card - increase it's speed a bit and some manufacturers do that so you can enjoy OC out-of-the-box.

From what i've heard, EVGA FTW version of the card (not only 1070) is usually about 5-10% faster than reference card made by Nvidia. But overall the performance varies from 2 to 3%, no more. I would say that cheaper windforce card is slightly better.