GPU Upgrade Advice

[Deleted]

Hi,

I am currently in the market for a new GPU. I have around £350 pound to spend and as you can imagine I would like to be able to play WoW on Ultra with all max settings. I would prefer an Nvidia Card as that is currently what I have but if there is a benefit to switch to Radeon then I will take that into account.

My PC spec are:-
RAM:- Corsair Memory Vengeance Black 8GB DDR3 1600 MHz CAS 9 XMP Dual Channel Desktop
GPU:- EVGA GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB
CPU:- Intel Core I7 3770K S1155
PSU:- Corsair TX850M
Mobo:- Gigabyte Z77-DS3H MOTHERBOARD
SSD:- 120Gb Intel 330 Series SSD
HDD:- 1 x Western Digital Caviar 1TB Green SATA III - 6Gb/s Hard Drive - HDD and 1 x Western Digital WD20EZRX 2TB Green SATA 3 - 6Gb/s Hard Drive 64MB Cache 8ms OEM
Cooling:- H80I (2 x Corsair AF120 and 2 x AF140 front of case fans)
Monitor:- Asus VN247H 24"Widescreen Super Narrow Bezel LED Monitor

If you can give me some guidance that would be much appreciated

[Deleted]

R9-290 and high-end GTX 770 should be within range. For exmaple, the R9-290 Tri-X OC from Sapphire is £329.99 almost everywhere. The cheapest GTX780 seems to be around £379.99, which is, admittedly, overkill. So, mysuggestion would be to get a GTX770 at around £275, such as the GTX770 Superclocked ACX from Aria.

[megabeat]

A new 350 pound gpu wont give you much improvement in only wow(id be surprised any), it does in other games.

[Deleted]

OK thanks for your help I will take a look at both cards as I don't really know what the Pros and Cons are.

[Deleted]

if you're just playing wow save yourself £350 and dont upgrade - your current card is fine and unlikely to be limiting fps at ultra

[chazus]

With all the bells and whistles you have, I assume you're overclocking your 3770K? What is it at?

[Xuvial]

Asus VN247H....that means you're playing at 1080p @ 60hz. There is very little a more expensive GPU will bring you over a 660 Ti in WoW.

For giggles, boot up MSI Afterburner and take note of your GPU usage % while WoW sessions. I doubt it will be anywhere near maximum. Your 3770K is an absolute beast of a CPU, I would spend $50-100 on a solid CPU cooler and push it to 4.5ghz.

If you play something more graphics-intensive than WoW (like say...Battlefield or something) THEN you can look at a GPU upgrade.

[Deleted]

The CPU is just running at the normal speed I think they come at 3.9Ghz. I currently have a H80I CPU cooler on it at the moment. Is there a piece of software i can use to overclock the CPU?

You will have to forgive my lack of knowledge on this front

[Xuvial]

The CPU is just running at the normal speed I think they come at 3.9Ghz. I currently have a H80I CPU cooler on it at the moment. Is there a piece of software i can use to overclock the CPU?

You will have to forgive my lack of knowledge on this front

Oh you have an H80i? Excellent, that's perfect. CPU overclocking isn't done with software (not usually anyway), it's done through the motherboard BIOS.

Luckily there is an official 3770K + Gigabyte mobo overclocking guide: http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/c...ocking_guide/2

Don't let the length of the guide make you think it's complicated or something, a lot of it is just explanation about stuff. There's very little you actually need to adjust/enter (mainly just turbo multiplier and core voltage).

Take your time, overclocking is a one-time job. Once fully stable it can be left alone for years providing you that free/extra performance...easily till your next CPU upgrade, whenever that is

[Deleted]

Thanks Xuvial, I will take a look at the guide and make sure I know what I am doing before I go ahead and do the overclocking.

If you don't mind, I have a small question. Is it wise for me to be playing with Vsync on? or should I be turning it off? I have read a whole host of information and I am still not sure.

[Xuvial]

Thanks Xuvial, I will take a look at the guide and make sure I know what I am doing before I go ahead and do the overclocking.

If you don't mind, I have a small question. Is it wise for me to be playing with Vsync on? or should I be turning it off? I have read a whole host of information and I am still not sure.

Hahaha, yes vSync is one of those things that you can read an entire BOOK about and still have no idea whether to leave it on or off. I'll sum it up real quick.

With vSync on:
> Minimal tearing
> Increased input lag

With vSync off:
> Increased tearing
> Minimal input lag

It comes down to what YOU personally notice. Screen tearing is when you can visibly see horizontal "cuts" moving down your screen during gameplay and for some people it's intolerable. Looks something like this:



If it gets to you, turn on vSync. If you don't notice it at all, then leave vSync off to minimize input lag. Generally all competitive gamers leave vSync off.

As for me, I'm part of the 120hz master race so none of this stuff matters. Mwahahaha.

[Shakadam]

Hahaha, yes vSync is one of those things that you can read an entire BOOK about and still have no idea whether to leave it on or off. I'll sum it up real quick.

With vSync on:
> Minimal tearing
> Increased input lag

With vSync off:
> Increased tearing
> Minimal input lag

It comes down to what YOU personally notice. Screen tearing is when you can visibly see horizontal "cuts" moving down your screen during gameplay and for some people it's intolerable. Looks something like this:

If it gets to you, turn on vSync. If you don't notice it at all, then leave vSync off to minimize input lag. Generally all competitive gamers leave vSync off.

As for me, I'm part of the 120hz master race so none of this stuff matters. Mwahahaha.

1 thing to add to the list of cons for vSync: It drops your FPS if you pass below the threshold where it triggers. I.e if you have a 60Hz monitor and you drop down to 55FPS, vSync will force it all the way down to 30FPS in order to be synced to the monitor.

@OP: There's really no part you can change to get any decent performance increase. Your CPU and GPU are still good and you have an SSD. As others have said, save your money and OC your processor instead.

[Deleted]

Ah Ok that makes more sense. Thanks, I will try later when I am raiding and see what I think is better.
Also master race.... something tells me that I need to be apart of this!!!

- - - Updated - - -

Xuvial, I tried playing last night with both VSYNC turned on and off. When it was off it was almost displaying wavy lines down the screen and when it was on my FPS was capping at 30FPS every couple of minutes... annoying.

[Shakadam]

Ah Ok that makes more sense. Thanks, I will try later when I am raiding and see what I think is better.
Also master race.... something tells me that I need to be apart of this!!!

- - - Updated - - -

Xuvial, I tried playing last night with both VSYNC turned on and off. When it was off it was almost displaying wavy lines down the screen and when it was on my FPS was capping at 30FPS every couple of minutes... annoying.

Since you have a nVidia graphics card: You can enter the nVidia Control Panel and set vertical sync to "adaptive" in "manage 3D settings". It'll override any program specific options so just leave vSync disabled in games. What adaptive vSync does is automatically turn vSync on when you're at or above 60FPS (assuming a 60Hz monitor), and turn it off when you drop below 60 FPS. So you may end up with tearing below 60FPS, but it won't cap your FPS at 30.

[Xuvial]

Xuvial, I tried playing last night with both VSYNC turned on and off. When it was off it was almost displaying wavy lines down the screen and when it was on my FPS was capping at 30FPS every couple of minutes... annoying.

Hmm yeah forgot to mention that but Shakadam mentioned it :P
vSync works in halves of the refresh rate, for maximum effectiveness you have to lower settings to the point where you're ALWAYS sitting at 60fps or above. The moment it drops below 60fps, it synchronizes with the next divisible number which is 30.
Go into nVidia control panel, 3D options and enable Adaptive vSync...I'm not 100% sure whether that is available on GTX600 series, but check for it anyway. That should do the trick. If not, then Triple Buffering is the last resort. This gives you one-third fractions of the refresh rate (20 > 40 > 60 > 80 etc) and makes vSync less painful. It will possibly add more input lag.

Personally I just disabled all this crap in ALL my games back when I was gaming on a 60hz...whatever little tearing I noticed really didn't matter, and at least you'll always be aware of your exact framerate instead of having it leaping in huge chunks and adding input lag.

[Danifilth]

Since you have a nVidia graphics card: You can enter the nVidia Control Panel and set vertical sync to "adaptive" in "manage 3D settings". It'll override any program specific options so just leave vSync disabled in games. What adaptive vSync does is automatically turn vSync on when you're at or above 60FPS (assuming a 60Hz monitor), and turn it off when you drop below 60 FPS. So you may end up with tearing below 60FPS, but it won't cap your FPS at 30.

Adaptive Vsync doesn't work when you have windows set to classic mode which disables the OS vsync since wow uses that for some reason in full screen. Had to do that to stop making wow run at 233 fps

[megabeat]

I dont use Vsync, but i cap it around 60 fps, its called in maxforeground fps in the options. I dont notice any screentearing and inputlag while having the pc not to overperform.

[Deleted]

Since you have a nVidia graphics card: You can enter the nVidia Control Panel and set vertical sync to "adaptive" in "manage 3D settings". It'll override any program specific options so just leave vSync disabled in games. What adaptive vSync does is automatically turn vSync on when you're at or above 60FPS (assuming a 60Hz monitor), and turn it off when you drop below 60 FPS. So you may end up with tearing below 60FPS, but it won't cap your FPS at 30.

I will try this first and see what happens. I hope that this can sort or at least improve the issue.

I dont use Vsync, but i cap it around 60 fps, its called in maxforeground fps in the options. I dont notice any screentearing and inputlag while having the pc not to overperform.

Failing the above, I will give your settings a go aswell

Thanks for your replies

[gyousel]

you could possibly get an additional 660 Ti pretty cheap

not sure if WoW benefits from SLI setups

If not i can run Ultra in raids on my EVGA 770 SC with the ACX cooler and its around 350 US dollars