Would the 960 or the r9 290 run better with my sytem and get more frames?

[Dogxat]

I am thinking of buying either the gtx 960 or the r9 290 and I was wondering which one of these would run with my system and get better frames than the other one in games like GTA V. My friend has an r9 290 and I borrowed it and I seemed to only get 30-40fps in the city with all the settings on high and the sliders on half with no MSAA, I even installed the right drivers and even tried the beta one but they didn't effect the performance. (I used the Display Driver Uninstaller to uninstall my other drivers and ccleaner so I could make sure it ran correctly.)

My PC Specs:
CPU: AMD FX 6300
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3
Power Supply: Corsair CX600
RAM: Corsair XMS3 8GB (2X4GB) 1600MHZ DDR3
GPU: either the gtx 960 or r9 290

What graphics card would run better in GTA V with my pc?

 

[geofelt]

What graphics card are you now using?
A R9-290 is considered as a stronger card than a GTX960.
A GTX970 or GTX780 would be comparable.
One benchmark I saw @1080P showed 79 fps vs. 58 for GTX960.
That suggests to me that you may be more limited by the slow core speeds of the FX-6300.
Have you tried to overclock the cpu?

------------------------------------------------------------
To help clarify your CPU/GPU options, run these two tests:

a) Run your games, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
If your FPS increases, it indicates that your cpu is strong enough to drive a better graphics configuration.
If your FPS stays the same, you are likely more cpu limited.

b) Limit your cpu, either by reducing the OC, or, in windows power management, limit the maximum cpu% to something like 70%.
Go to control panel/power options/change plan settings/change advanced power settings/processor power management/maximum processor state/
This will simulate what a lack of cpu power will do.
Conversely what a 30% improvement in core speed might do.

You could also experiment with removing one core. You can do this in the windows msconfig boot advanced options option. set the number of processors to less than you have.
This will tell you how sensitive your games are to the benefits of many cores.

If your FPS drops significantly, it is an indicator that your cpu is the limiting factor, and a cpu upgrade is in order.

It is possible that both tests are positive, indicating that you have a well balanced system, and both cpu and gpu need to be upgraded to get better gaming FPS.
-------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Dogxat]

What graphics card are you now using?
A R9-290 is considered as a stronger card than a GTX960.
A GTX970 or GTX780 would be comparable.
One benchmark I saw @1080P showed 79 fps vs. 58 for GTX960.
That suggests to me that you may be more limited by the slow core speeds of the FX-6300.
Have you tried to overclock the cpu?

------------------------------------------------------------
To help clarify your CPU/GPU options, run these two tests:

a) Run your games, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
If your FPS increases, it indicates that your cpu is strong enough to drive a better graphics configuration.
If your FPS stays the same, you are likely more cpu limited.

b) Limit your cpu, either by reducing the OC, or, in windows power management, limit the maximum cpu% to something like 70%.
Go to control panel/power options/change plan settings/change advanced power settings/processor power management/maximum processor state/
This will simulate what a lack of cpu power will do.
Conversely what a 30% improvement in core speed might do.

You could also experiment with removing one core. You can do this in the windows msconfig boot advanced options option. set the number of processors to less than you have.
This will tell you how sensitive your games are to the benefits of many cores.

If your FPS drops significantly, it is an indicator that your cpu is the limiting factor, and a cpu upgrade is in order.

It is possible that both tests are positive, indicating that you have a well balanced system, and both cpu and gpu need to be upgraded to get better gaming FPS.
-------------------------------------------------------------

I tried running everything on very high and I got the same amount of fps as I did before with everything on high. I can't really overclock because of my power supply and motherboard. I will try disabling a few cores now.

 

[maxalge]

I am thinking of buying either the gtx 960 or the r9 290 and I was wondering which one of these would run with my system and get better frames than the other one in games like GTA V. My friend has an r9 290 and I borrowed it and I seemed to only get 30-40fps in the city with all the settings on high and the sliders on half with no MSAA, I even installed the right drivers and even tried the beta one but they didn't effect the performance. (I used the Display Driver Uninstaller to uninstall my other drivers and ccleaner so I could make sure it ran correctly.)

My PC Specs:
CPU: AMD FX 6300
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3
Power Supply: Corsair CX600
RAM: Corsair XMS3 8GB (2X4GB) 1600MHZ DDR3
GPU: either the gtx 960 or r9 290

What graphics card would run better in GTA V with my pc?

with that power supply, and since you cannot overclock your cpu the best bet would be a 960.

You will be cpu limited.

 

[Dogxat]

I am thinking of buying either the gtx 960 or the r9 290 and I was wondering which one of these would run with my system and get better frames than the other one in games like GTA V. My friend has an r9 290 and I borrowed it and I seemed to only get 30-40fps in the city with all the settings on high and the sliders on half with no MSAA, I even installed the right drivers and even tried the beta one but they didn't effect the performance. (I used the Display Driver Uninstaller to uninstall my other drivers and ccleaner so I could make sure it ran correctly.)

My PC Specs:
CPU: AMD FX 6300
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3
Power Supply: Corsair CX600
RAM: Corsair XMS3 8GB (2X4GB) 1600MHZ DDR3
GPU: either the gtx 960 or r9 290

What graphics card would run better in GTA V with my pc?

with that power supply, and since you cannot overclock your cpu the best bet would be a 960.

You will be cpu limited.

So the 960 would be my best choice out of the two?

 

[geofelt]

Your tests indicate to me that your cpu is your limiting factor, not your graphics card.
What is your current graphics card?

Your motherboard is suitable for overclocking the FX-6300.
The PSU makes little difference.

 

[JOSHBLY]

The 290 Has:
Much better 3DMark06 score 32,300 vs 10,683 More than 3x better 3DMark06 score
Significantly higher memory bandwidth 320 GB/s vs 96 GB/s More than 3.2x higher memory bandwidth
More memory 4,096 MB vs 2,048 MB 2x more memory
Significantly better floating-point performance 4,800 GFLOPS vs 2,308 GFLOPS More than 2x better floating-point performance
Significantly higher texture rate 152 GTexel/s vs 72.1 GTexel/s More than 2x higher texture rate
Better 3DMark vantage graphics score 38,650 vs 32,171 More than 20% better 3DMark vantage graphics score
Higher pixel rate 60.6 GPixel/s vs 36.1 GPixel/s Around 70% higher pixel rate
Significantly more shading units 2,560 vs 1,024 1536 more shading units
Significantly more render output processors 64 vs 32 Twice as many render output processors
Significantly more texture mapping units 160 vs 64 96 more texture mapping units
Significantly wider memory bus 512 bit vs 128 bit 4x wider memory bus

The 960 Has:
Significantly better 3DMark 11 graphics score 32,987 vs 14,570 More than 2.2x better 3DMark 11 graphics score
Significantly higher clock speed 1,127 MHz vs 947 MHz Around 20% higher clock speed
Significantly higher effective memory clock speed 7,012 MHz vs 5,000 MHz More than 40% higher effective memory clock speed
Significantly higher turbo clock speed 1,178 MHz vs 947 MHz Around 25% higher turbo clock speed
Much higher memory clock speed 1,753 MHz vs 1,125 MHz More than 55% higher memory clock speed
Significantly lower TDP 120W vs 300W 2.5x lower TDP

I hope this solved it.

 

[madmatt30]

The 290 is a far stronger card than the gtx 960.


In your case though I would go with a gtx 96 . ,buy an after market cooler & overclock your 6300.

You have plenty of headroom with that gigabyte board & the cx600 PSU with only a 960 installed.

JOSHBLY - don't know where you copy pasted that but its mainly rubbish - the 960 certainly doesn't get a better 3dmark 11 score - they're a totally different league performance wise.

 

[Dogxat]

Your tests indicate to me that your cpu is your limiting factor, not your graphics card.
What is your current graphics card?

Your motherboard is suitable for overclocking the FX-6300.
The PSU makes little difference.

My current graphics card is the GTX 650

 

[Dogxat]

The 290 is a far stronger card than the gtx 960.


In your case though I would go with a gtx 96 . ,buy an after market cooler & overclock your 6300.

You have plenty of headroom with that gigabyte board & the cx600 PSU with only a 960 installed.

JOSHBLY - don't know where you copy pasted that but its mainly rubbish - the 960 certainly doesn't get a better 3dmark 11 score - they're a totally different league performance wise.

What would you recommend I overclock the processor to? I just want to know for when I get the gtx 960.

 

[madmatt30]

^ because at stock speeds on multithreaded games you'll get significant fps drops at CPU intensive moments compared to an Intel CPU.

A smallish overclock (4-4.2ghz) alleviates this.

Another reason is simply why wouldn't you overclock it?? A $20 cooler pretty much gives you anything between a 10-20% performance boost.

 

[Dogxat]

^ because at stock speeds on multithreaded games you'll get significant fps drops at CPU intensive moments compared to an Intel CPU.

A smallish overclock (4-4.2ghz) alleviates this.

Another reason is simply why wouldn't you overclock it?? A $20 cooler pretty much gives you anything between a 10-20% performance boost.

Thanks for the help!

 

[dorsai]

The R290 is a better card in every way...the 960 with 4 gig of memory costs the same as the R290 with 4 gig.

A 2 gig 960 is obsolete right now...barely even capable at 1080 resolution.

The R290 has a 512 bit memory bus...the 960 is only 128 bit.

There is no compelling reason to the buy the 960 at all...any advantage over clocking your CPU would provide to the 960 would only make the R290 even more compelling...