What graphics card to buy for 4k?

John96

Reputable
Apr 6, 2014
157
0
4,680
I am considering either x2 GTX 970, r9 295x2, x1 GTX 980 or adding an extra GTX 780.

At the moment, I already have 1 GTX 780 but I have been told that the VRAM is not enough for 4k gaming.

So instead I was thinking of selling the 780 and getting 2 GTX 970's however they still only have 3.5GB of VRAM and have coil whine issues which I'm not fond of.

Then I decided I should go for the r9 295x2 but have been told that it is not as good as some other cards at 4k.

I know the GTX 980 is probably the best, but I don't really have the money for two of them since 1 980 is nearly the same price as 2 970's.

My current system has a 4790k and 16gb of ram.
 


I can't really afford to pay nearly $1.4k for 2 980's.

Also looking at 970 sli vs 980 sli at 4k the 980's only increased fps by around 10.

970 sli = ~$880, 980 sli = ~$1400

is $520 really worth the extra 10 fps?

It would make more sense to buy x3 970's.
 
10 FPS at 4K is a lot of GPU performance if you think about it. Really need to keep it above 30FPS to make 4K worthwhile at all.

With 3 970's you have to power them, so that means 6 PCIe 6-pin connectors and a fairly large power supply 850W or more.

The better bargain is probably still the R9-295X2, but if I were going 4K right this second I would want a G-sync monitor so that FPS matters less.
 


Where are you from? In the US SLI 970 is about $660, SLI 980 is about $1000.
 


I have the Asus PB287Q which does not have G-sync.
 


Im from the UK, here 970 sli is £577.06 and 980 sli is £1,031.36

The 980's are nearly double the price of 970's so i don't think its worth it.
 
Well then, aside from the power requirements, I'd take the R9-295X2.

Some hefty debate between a single GTX Titan X and the R9-295X2 but the benchmarks don't seem to be telling the whole story. I would have to compare them in person I think. (Don't know anyone with either right now, most of my acquaintances jumped on the GTX970 bandwagon last year.)
 
The 3.5GB VRAM issues from the 970 doesn't really matter that much for 4k anymore, since none of these have enough VRAM for some current games and most likely future games, that is if you want to play on ultra every step of the way. In some or half of the time you play a new game, it will use over 4GB of VRAM. As of right now Nvidia seems to be winning for many reasons such as drivers. I had the 295x2 before the Titan X and ever since that jump, every game I have played have had its problems solved. When I was on AMD drivers which was months old and they still haven't updated it, I always get some weird or annoying issues in my games. Right now I'm playing all of my games very smoothly, because of the drivers and because of the extra massive VRAM that I can use. So unless they're going to do a major update for 390x and fix most things, I think you should stick with Nvidia, but then again after everything I have just said doesn't really help you if the Titan X is the only option. You could always wait and see what comes out next or maybe wait for 390x and read about it when it is out and give it a chance. Just telling you if you want to play upcoming games at 4k ultra, you'll need more VRAM :) As far as I know or when I looked up what happens when you run out of VRAM, you get fps drops, but since you won't use over the 4GB all the time, that fps could be random.