Graphics card help

[Deleted]

Hello

I want to run BF3, skyrim, and future games of 2012 on ultra settings.
My current specs:

CPU = Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU 3.40GHz
RAM = 6GB
OS = Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition Service Pack 1 64-bit
Video Card = AMD Radeon HD 6750


At this moment I can run BF3 beta on high settings with slight lag ( 25 FPS outside). Do you think I could be able to run it smoothly on ultra settings should I upgrade my video card? If yes, what would you suggest?
I don't know my PSU atm but I could upgrade it aswell if needed.

I'm also interested in 3D gaming, does anyone have any experience with it and is it worth the money?

Any help is appreciated.

[praze]

Short answer: you should upgrade your video card if ultra settings are what you want to play with.

The video card you have right now is pretty far down on the list when it comes to gaming performance. While it's got all the bells and whistles at a great budget price, it's meant to be used at lower resolutions and settings. Just going up a level to a 6850 will give you a good 50% performance bump overall. 6950? More than double the performance of the 6750. Now, each game scales differently with each model and may even have bias towards one brand or the other (AMD/Nvidia), but I like to give advice with the expectation that next year you might want to pick up a different game entirely. Also, I tend to go with the person's preference of company, since you have an AMD card, chances are you like the idea of sticking with them. I'll gladly give you some Nvidia equivalents if you're interested .

Basically, the thing to understand here is that BF3 comes out in a couple weeks. Seeing as it's a brand new title and definitely pushing the latest in game engine graphics, the quality settings are going to be based on what hardware is available and popular with gamers. Generally, a medium quality setting is optimized for the card with the greatest market share. The ultra setting is designed to push performance into systems built by enthusiasts. These machines have expensive setups like 2+ video cards and/or dual-chip cards. They are usually owned by people that don't run any of their hardware at stock speeds as well. Sometimes the software's ahead of the hardware (Crysis launched when no rig could play it at the highest settings) and sometimes developers are more conservative, but that's how things should work, ideally.

Let me know if you have any other questions! Knowing things like what kind of cooling you're using, PSU voltage, RAM speed and what resolution your monitor supports will help me give you more detailed advice

Edit: Just spotted the mention of Skyrim. When Oblivion launched, computers ran a a crawl playing it, it's my guess that the folks over at Bethesda learned from that experience, but it's worth considering!

[Deleted]

Hello and thank you for your response. Realy appreciate the time you took to make this post.

You are right there about my preference; after my GeForce card melted down (not bashing here, it worked really well for it's time) , I'm going to stick with AMD for now.
Anyway you have convinced me and as soon as I find the money, I'll probably buy the 6950.

About BF3, you say the 6950 would have double the performance of my current card. I'm running the beta on high reasonably now, so that means I would be able to run it on ultra smoothly, right? However, then you say you need 2 video cards or dual chip card to run it on ultra. Do you mean with the 6950 I could run most settings on ultra and the more graphic-intense options on high with a reasonable FPS?

I also have a question regarding my RAM; I got told that the i7-2600 does not go along well with 6GB of RAM and I should consider getting 4-8-16. Any suggestions there?

Furthermore, I do not have any computer-building experience so I've bought this computer all-in. ''Bought'' is actually wrong; I've got this one for free because when I send my older computer to repair, it fell of their palette and I got this one for free, which was a huge upgrade in every way. Anyway, I don't know these more advanced components. I've tried searching for RAM speed and PSU power but I haven't been able to find it on the box nor on their site. Only thing I'm quite sure of, is that there is a fan inside so I guess air cooling?

Thanks

[Zkeya]

Watercooling setups use fans too, but yours is probably aircooled. You can check the PSU by yourself by opening the case! Sandybridge CPUs (i3/i5/i7 2xxx) use dual channel RAM, so they'll work better with 4/8/16GB RAM. 4GB is enough for most games. I'd get 8GB since RAM is cheap. 16GB are too much, unless you're into video editing/3D rendering.

[haxartus]

Hello and thank you for your response. Realy appreciate the time you took to make this post.

You are right there about my preference; after my GeForce card melted down (not bashing here, it worked really well for it's time) , I'm going to stick with AMD for now.
Anyway you have convinced me and as soon as I find the money, I'll probably buy the 6950.

About BF3, you say the 6950 would have double the performance of my current card. I'm running the beta on high reasonably now, so that means I would be able to run it on ultra smoothly, right? However, then you say you need 2 video cards or dual chip card to run it on ultra. Do you mean with the 6950 I could run most settings on ultra and the more graphic-intense options on high with a reasonable FPS?

I also have a question regarding my RAM; I got told that the i7-2600 does not go along well with 6GB of RAM and I should consider getting 4-8-16. Any suggestions there?

Furthermore, I do not have any computer-building experience so I've bought this computer all-in. ''Bought'' is actually wrong; I've got this one for free because when I send my older computer to repair, it fell of their palette and I got this one for free, which was a huge upgrade in every way. Anyway, I don't know these more advanced components. I've tried searching for RAM speed and PSU power but I haven't been able to find it on the box nor on their site. Only thing I'm quite sure of, is that there is a fan inside so I guess air cooling?

Thanks

Actually, more than double. If you run with 25 fps now, you will probably run with 60-65 with a 6950 on the same settings. Though, I've heard that the "ultra" settings are locked in the beta, so you might not be able to completely max it out on release even with a 6950.
And for i7-2600k is best to have 2 sticks of RAM for dual channel. Currently 2x4GB is the best choice.
Edit:
Make sure you have a good PSU to support the card. By "good" I mean a good brand, not an extremely high wattage.

[praze]

The 6950 is a great card for the price right now and will most likely get you playable performance on ultra settings. I recommend trying out the Ultra preset but then lowering anti-aliasing and anisotropic (texture) filtering a bit to improve frame-rates at minimal visual impact. Always run the game at your monitor's native resolution and aliasing shouldn't be much of an issue. What you'll probably find is that it runs smoothly 90% of the time, but dips down in graphically intensive sections of the game, but that all depends on how drastic of a preset "ultra" is.

As for the RAM, the reason why 6GB is indeed not optimal is because the sandy bridge chipset required to run a Core i7-2600 processor like you have only supports RAM in pairs. Whereas the last generation of Core-i7 boards would typically have 6 slots (two triple-channel lanes), the new ones usually only have 4 (two dual-channel lanes). This sounds a bit like they're moving backwards, but it's quite literally the most optimal setup for this generation. Aaaaaaanyways... when a sandy bridge based computer like yours has 6GB of RAM, this means you either have two 3GB sticks of RAM (super uncommon, but performs fine) OR you have one 4GB stick paired with one 2GB stick. The mixing of RAM sizes in any capacity is generally a big loss in performance when running anything that can use anywhere close to that much RAM (like... a video game). So, I suggest replacing those as well. This is the single easiest upgrade you can do, and 8GB of RAM is a great amount to have for gaming (no need for more really), and pretty affordable. There's a good chance that the RAM in your machine is slow RAM as well, so upgrading will serve a double purpose.

I recommend getting at least DDR3 1600 RAM, corsair's always a solid brand choice to go with. You'll want to get 1.5v rated sticks as that's what your processor calls for. I can't post links, but if you just look for the Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) kit, that'll give you a good reference (or just buy those, lol).

The PSU wattage most likely won't be an issue. The 6950 does pull a bit more power than the 6750, but it's rare to run out of power really. The one thing you'll have to figure out though, is the power connectors. Your current card probably (based on the ones I'm looking at on-line) has one 6-pin power connector. The 6950 has TWO 6-pin power connectors. All this means is either your current PSU will have another free 6-pin lead that you'll use, or your new card will come packaged with an adapter of sorts. Either way, you shouldn't worry about not having the right stuff to upgrade, it may just take reading a few more pages of the instruction manual to get power to the card

Oh, and one last thing... measure the space you have inside of the case for a longer card to be installed. You'll need 10.6 inches from that back plate where the current card meets the back of your case. This is a show-stopper for some people, but let me know if this is the case, cause I have workarounds I can help ya out with

[Deleted]

Thank you all for your answers.
I understand everything I needed to know but one thing now; When I search for AMD radeon hd 6950, I find many of them ( e.g Sapphire AMD radeon hd 6950, XFX AMD radeon hd 6950, etc.). I don't quite understand this; why isn't there one model and one product? Also some of them are 200 euros while I've seen one over the 300. How big is the difference between those?

What do you think would be the best one in price/performance ratio?

Thanks

[pansertjald]

get a 6750 more and run them in CF and you will be ready for BF3 on ultra.

two 6750 will be more then enough to run BF3 and Skyrim on ultra

ps.
just look away from my post......... i looked wrong.

I thought it said 6950 in your post and not 6750......... was not awake there

so as the others say. get a 6950 from either Sapphire or misi

[haxartus]

Thank you all for your answers.
I understand everything I needed to know but one thing now; When I search for AMD radeon hd 6950, I find many of them ( e.g Sapphire AMD radeon hd 6950, XFX AMD radeon hd 6950, etc.). I don't quite understand this; why isn't there one model and one product? Also some of them are 200 euros while I've seen one over the 300. How big is the difference between those?

What do you think would be the best one in price/performance ratio?

Thanks

Sapphire, MSI, etc.
This one is fairly good.
Or this if you want 2GB.

[Deleted]

GTX 570 DCII. Battlefield likes nvidia more. And the DCII model comes with a cooler setup that doesn't rape your ears.

[Deleted]

Sapphire, MSI, etc.

I've checked those links and they look quite nice.
I'll get one of those two when I am able, but what is the difference between them? What advantage does the 2GB have over the 1 GB? I've noticed the price is merely 25$ more, but is it worth it?

[haxartus]

I've checked those links and they look quite nice.
I'll get one of those two when I am able, but what is the difference between them? What advantage does the 2GB have over the 1 GB? I've noticed the price is merely 25$ more, but is it worth it?

Depends on the resolution. For 1920x1080 or 1920x1200, 1GB is fine. You might get a slight boost in Crysis 2 from the 2GB, but that's it.

[praze]

The reason you're seeing multiple manufacturers and even multiple models from some of those manufacturers, is that AMD sells the core components to those companies as an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) and allows them to package it however they like and sell it at different price points. Some of them do little more than use the reference cooler that AMD used and slap a sticker on there with their name on it instead of whatever AMD had on there. Others will completely redesign the cooler and PCB, overclock it (not as common with AMD cards), add more memory, and package it with a game or some special accessories. While the average person doesn't care, this does help fill some gaps in prices on the market as well as help squeeze a little performance out of a card at a small cost. While Nvidia cards go crazy with this concept, I think AMD is merely trying to spread the work load out so they can saturate the market faster and alleviate some of the stress of worrying about supply and demand.

When you see a 2GB version of a video card that's normally only a 1GB card, that one's specifically designed to push higher resolutions. If you're running 1920x1080 or similar, you most likely won't see a big enough performance jump to justify the cost. What this is for is people pushing 27"+ displays with 2560x1600 resolutions or perhaps 2+ monitors of gaming using eyefinity. That's not to say that you won't see performance gains with a 2GB card, you'll just see more if you have a larger resolution display.

As far as choosing a brand, there are a lot of good ones out there. I tend to put a lot of value on warranty as that's where many of them differ the most. Sapphire has been around with AMD/ATI forever and has a lot of respect in the gaming community, they're always a solid choice. XFX has one of the best warranty's around and should not be overlooked. Every card they make comes with a lifetime warranty that even covers damage caused by the user trying to overclock the card and frying it. HIS has been around about as long as Sapphire, usually a good choice. MSI hasn't always made video cards, but does well and usually includes the best goodies in the box. Visontek, Powercolor, ASUS, Gigabyte... all of these companies have varying degrees of reliability and market respect, I wouldn't worry too much about going with one of them, but they would be considered after the ones I listed above if it were up to me.

On another note, don't get a second 6750. Someone suggested it then reneged, but just to clear things up... first off, you have a name-brand PC. There's no telling how many cards it can support or at what speed each card will run at when introducing that second card. Second, there are very few games that scale well with multi-GPU setups. I generally only expect about a 50% increase, but some games scale to almost double the performance, while others can even LOSE performance because they don't support heavy multi-threading. Bad Company 2 scaled fairly well with Crossfire, pushing about 80-85% increase with a second card. In general, if you're deciding between a high performance single card and two mid-range performance cards, go with the single card. The compatibility and reliability of a single card far outweighs a dual-card setup when you want to play games that haven't even released yet.

Good luck with your purchase!