Options of graphics card for computer build

[toxin9]

Hey everyone. I have a friend that wants to build a new computer. The key aspect is future proofing-hoping to makensure one that will last for 6 or 7 years. Because of that I decided it was best for him to get skylake for the chipset. In the end it came down to 2 options. What's better: to get the i5-6600k with an EVGA 980 for a graphics card or the i7-6700k with a msi 970. This computer is mainly for gaming. What should I do?
Thanks!

 

[Zerk2012]

he needs to upgrade now. trust me the computer is unusable. the question is do i get an i7 with the 970 or an i5 with the 980. or the 390x... he can't get a 980ti they're too expensive. and again, he doesn't want a computer that will be able to have top performance 5 years from now, he wants the best one he can get right now so 5 years from now he'll still be able to run games- not max specs but still run them

A gaming video card lasting 5 years is not realistic. Nobody in the world can tell you how demanding games will be 3 years from now.
This time 5 years ago you would be running a AMD 5XXX or team green 4XX card.

 

[genthug]

Just to expand upon the above with an actual experience^ I built the computer in my sig in summer 2012--a year after the GTX 5xx series came out. I was running a 550 ti (which was a pretty good card at the time). The only thing that my bulldozer AMD CPU has choked up on thus far has been Fallout 4. And that's on a title that was released not even a year ago, and is one of the most CPU demanding games on the market. As for the 550 ti? I scrapped it on the radeon 3xx release because there simply wasn't enough VRam and power in the chip to continue running games. 5 years from now, he won't be running close to max settings, he'll likely be running them on low. If the card even hits the 5 year mark. I would be surprised if it didn't start bottlenecking at 3-4 years.

 

[RobCrezz]

Just to expand upon the above with an actual experience^ I built the computer in my sig in summer 2012--a year after the GTX 5xx series came out. I was running a 550 ti (which was a pretty good card at the time). The only thing that my bulldozer AMD CPU has choked up on thus far has been Fallout 4. And that's on a title that was released not even a year ago, and is one of the most CPU demanding games on the market. As for the 550 ti? I scrapped it on the radeon 3xx release because there simply wasn't enough VRam and power in the chip to continue running games. 5 years from now, he won't be running close to max settings, he'll likely be running them on low. If the card even hits the 5 year mark. I would be surprised if it didn't start bottlenecking at 3-4 years.

Sure, you are running low-mid range cards you wont see bottlenecking that bad.

The 550ti was a low to mid range card when it was released, so not great, and the 370 is a mid range card.

 

[genthug]

Still one of the better cards on the market at the time barring the 560/560ti. I said pretty good, not great, and I agree. The performance difference between the 550/560/ti wasn't that great. I agree I could spend more on a GPU, but the fact of the matter is that it's still gonna bottleneck far faster than an Intel CPU when my AMD bulldozer is still running 95% of my games without hitting over 50% usage.

 

[RobCrezz]

Your memory must be a little hazy as the 560 ti was miles better than the 550ti - the 550ti was worse even than the 460.

Like I said, its not hitting high usage because you are using relatively slow cards.

I would check your individual core usage on the more CPU heavy titles, I bet one of the cores is getting close to maxed out.

 

[genthug]

Huh. Yeah I guess it was. On the more CPU heavy titles it's getting closer to maxing out, but that's only ever on open-world games, like Fallout 4 or GTA. The rest of them don't hit over 60% on the most used core. But, as I said, the only thing that my CPU has bottlenecked thus far has been Fallout 4, where I hit around 95% on every single one.

But, I digress. That's not the point of this thread.

 

[RobCrezz]

Thats good results, but I suspect if you had something like a GTX 970 or higher you would see the bottleneck a lot more often.

 

[toxin9]

don't you think the dx12 problem with nvidia will be resolved in this generation?

 

[genthug]

Pascal will likely help bridge the gap, but I'm not exactly well versed on that subject, so I'll let someone else answer that one. What I will say about Pascal though, is that if he can't afford a 980ti, he likely won't be able to afford a new Pascal GPU. So, it's kind of useless to talk about. There's been rumors of a 960ti bridging the $150-200 to $300-325 gap that NVidia has, so don't expect any of Pascal's GPUs to come in the 970-980 range price. But, that's just speculation.

 

[anti-duck]

don't you think the dx12 problem with nvidia will be resolved in this generation?

An Nvidia engineer had an interview with some Dutch tech magazine and literally said that they don't need async, so it doesn't sound like they're focussing on proper async support for Maxwell, I'm not even sure that they can even if they wanted to. I'll try and find a link and update this.

EDIT - Rev Lebaredian (Senior Director of Engineering at NVIDIA) - "Si les GPU GeForce sont à la base plus performants que les GPU Radeon, le recours au multi engine pour tenter de booster leurs performances n'est pas une priorité absolue." (If GeForce GPUs are already more efficient than Radeon GPU's (in terms of shader utilisation), the use of multi engine (compute engine) in an attempt to boost performance is not a top priority). - http://www.hardware.fr/news/14558/gdc-async-compute-qu-en-dit-nvidia.html

Sorry, it's some French website, not Dutch.

But I was thinking, where I live, I can get a R9 Fury Nano for the same price as an R9 390X, the Fury Nano beats the GTX 980, so maybe something to consider?

 

[RobCrezz]

don't you think the dx12 problem with nvidia will be resolved in this generation?

An Nvidia engineer had an interview with some Dutch tech magazine and literally said that they don't need async, so it doesn't sound like they're focussing on proper async support for Maxwell, I'm not even sure that they can even if they wanted to. I'll try and find a link and update this.

But I was thinking, where I live, I can get a R9 Fury Nano for the same price as an R9 390X, the Fury Nano beats the GTX 980, so maybe something to consider?

What about the regular fury?

The nano is great but held back by the tiny cooler and power limit.

 

[anti-duck]

don't you think the dx12 problem with nvidia will be resolved in this generation?

An Nvidia engineer had an interview with some Dutch tech magazine and literally said that they don't need async, so it doesn't sound like they're focussing on proper async support for Maxwell, I'm not even sure that they can even if they wanted to. I'll try and find a link and update this.

But I was thinking, where I live, I can get a R9 Fury Nano for the same price as an R9 390X, the Fury Nano beats the GTX 980, so maybe something to consider?

What about the regular fury?

The nano is great but held back by the tiny cooler and power limit.

Yeah, the Fury would obviously be a better choice, but atleast where I live it's more expensive than the Nano. Saying that, when comparing the cheapest Nano to the cheapest Fury, there is only a £20 difference.