21 replies to this topic

[Cyber]

Hi everyone

 

I am currently running a pair of MSI GTX 460s in SLI, and they are getting a little bit long in the tooth, so I have been thinking about upgrading to an AMD R9 card of some kind, mostly because SC will apparently use Mantle, and I would prefer to move to a single card config.  Perhaps once SC uses SLI it will be better but I am still thinking about upgrading.

 

Obviously getting an R9 290 would be awesome, but my budget being what it is, I am considering the 270, 270X, 280, and 280X version.  280X would seem to be the obvious winner except that I have read a number of user reviews that state that the 280X is really a huge boost from the 280.  I don't know much about the performance between the 270s and the 280s, but the price is certainly better (and I am sure they would still be a step up from my 460s).

 

Anyone out there have any experience with the R9 cards and Star Citizen?  Would a 270/270X be good enough or do I need to bite the bullet and hit the 280/280X level?

 

Thanks!

[Fred]

im not gonna lie.... the r9-290 is great.... in a lot of games.... except until they optimize it to work better with SC,  its pretty awful in my opinion.  In either single or xfire mode. 

[RomanticsWes]

I'm sure that will get worked out but yeah, I've read about the problems in Star Citizen right now. A driver fix would solve it and I'm sure CIG is pretty on top of that considering it's their promoted company of choice for graphics.

[daedalus212]

you can get a r9 290 for as low as like 400 bucks

[Cyber]

you can get a r9 290 for as low as like 400 bucks

 

As luck would have it, given my current job (start up company on a shoe string budget), 400 is a bit out of my price range

 

Perhaps I will have to wait until the 290 drops in price down the road.  It just kind of sucks that my 460s simply plod along in SC...would be nice to have some playable FPS.

 

I do appreciate the feedback though!

[Kaldo]

If you're building specifically for Star Citizen and are on a tight budget, your best bet is to wait for 2 more years. SC is aiming to make full use out of 2016 hardware and thus, even top of the line GPUs from today won't be able to run it at high when it's released. 

I haven't heard about the problems with r9 290 and I hope they will fix it considering I'm probably getting one in few weeks. I could have told you my personal experiences with it if I didn't have some personal issues that stopped me from completing the build already but.... Alas I can't help with that. I'm sure it will get resolved sooner or later.

 

There's supposed to be a big nVidia reveal soon (the 9x series) so the prices on some GPUs could drop. If you want, wait until at least then, I don't know the correct date but it should be before the month ends IIRC.

[Cyber]

Yeah it is always better to wait as long as one can, and I am not desparate quite yet

 

Thanks for the feedback!

[Ulfberht]

I just bought a Sapphire R9 270x and forked over the extra cash for 4gigs of Ram. It was 225 Plus shipping at the time. I am VERY happy with it. I have no frame rate problems like before with my last AMD card. I still try going to a lower resolution in hopes of speeding up loading times but that hasn't really worked out so I've been doing max resolution. Plus my cockpit is always out of wack if I use a different resolution.

 

I'm willing to admit I could be very wrong and my psychic ability to predict the future is always failing me but I disagree with Kaldo and don't think I'll be needing a new card by the time the PU rolls around. I know they plan on 2016 technology but I think two years of graphics cards in our time is different than 2 years of PC technology back in the 90s when we had to get a turbo on the 486 to run WC3 but we had to un-turbo to play WC2 at the right speed.

[HeroLif3]

I personally run a water cooled 280x overclocked too about 1500 mhz but even before i clocked it SC runs great. but i agree with kaldo waiting for a nice card in the future is going to pay off in the end if you plan to put a lot of time into SC.

[Cyber]

I just bought a Sapphire R9 270x and forked over the extra cash for 4gigs of Ram. It was 225 Plus shipping at the time. I am VERY happy with it. I have no frame rate problems like before with my last AMD card. I still try going to a lower resolution in hopes of speeding up loading times but that hasn't really worked out so I've been doing max resolution. Plus my cockpit is always out of wack if I use a different resolution.

 

Oh nice, thanks for the feedback.  I hadn't actually talked to anyone that had a 270X and it is great to hear that they are good cards.  It might be the case where I try to pick up a 270x on sale and then upgrade again in about two years.

 

But, I am not in a super rush so I may wait and see what happens in the near future

[Kaldo]

I'm willing to admit I could be very wrong and my psychic ability to predict the future is always failing me but I disagree with Kaldo and don't think I'll be needing a new card by the time the PU rolls around. I know they plan on 2016 technology but I think two years of graphics cards in our time is different than 2 years of PC technology back in the 90s when we had to get a turbo on the 486 to run WC3 but we had to un-turbo to play WC2 at the right speed.

That's fair and I'd say you're probably right. HOWEVER, I have no trust in my psychic abilities so I most often go by "hope for the best, prepare for the worst". So far it's working and at least I have my piece of mind. If this is really a build just for Star Citizen, then it's probably better to play it safe and wait. 

[Cyber]

Well, I wouldn't say it is only for SC per se, although that is certainly a consideration.  Mostly I would like to play the Arena Commander without FPS lag now, but there are other games incoming that I would like to play and that my 460s are starting to sit at the bottom of end of the playable specs.

[Ulfberht]

I need to put a full disclosure on my card, a while back I had done some performance enhancements in a user.cfg file.

This could be why the game runs so beautifully for me and my AMD problems seem to have gone away.. Here's the contents of the user.cfg file:

r_Gamma = 1.15

r_AntialiasingMode= 0

r_MotionBlur = 0

r_ColorGrading = 0

r_SSReflections = 0

r_HDRBrightLevel = 0

r_FogShadows = 0

e_ShadowsMaxTexRes = 256

r_TexMaxAnisotropy = 8

sys_spec_texture = 2

sys_spec_sound = 4

sys_spec_physics = 4

 

It's not broke right now so I"m not going to fix it and am leaving these settings...

[Kaldo]

I don't want to open a new thread just for that (and it's kinda relevant to this discussion) but has anyone seen the new GTX970? Same price as the r9 290 with better performance and much smaller power consumption. I think I'm going to get it asap (it's out of stock atm).

 

The only worrying thing is that I've never had an nVidia GPU before so... Hope I won't regret this, especially since SC seems to favor AMD.

[Cyber]

Yeah the SC and AMD relationship certainly does make the AMD cards a bit more attractive.  I have always been happy with my nVidia cards though, and the new 9XX series does look quite sexy

 

Edit: just noticed this article regarding the new nVidia cards....might be worth a read.

[totoherbs]

I don't want to open a new thread just for that (and it's kinda relevant to this discussion) but has anyone seen the new GTX970? Same price as the r9 290 with better performance and much smaller power consumption. I think I'm going to get it asap (it's out of stock atm).

 

The only worrying thing is that I've never had an nVidia GPU before so... Hope I won't regret this, especially since SC seems to favor AMD.

You wont. Its doesn't make much of a difference about which vendor you get the card from. Its all about cost and performance. Right now I have a 280x because it was the best card for 1080p and in my budget. If I was to buy now I would go with the 970 its faster/as fast and uses less power/produces less heat.

[daedalus212]

right now i am running two r9 270x's in crossfire and i get about 40 fps in the hanger but that is because cig has not really put any work towards lsi/crossfire. the 270x is a good card if you are going to upgrade when sc comes out, and kaldo the 970 is an amazing card for the price, in fact nvidia has held back the 960 launch because people keep buying the 970, the only reason i have not picked up two 970's is because i already have two 270x's... but ya the 970 is looking like it is going to be the most sold card this year.

[Kaldo]

I've ordered the parts, decided on the GTX970 in the end and hopefully I'll find some time to pick them before the end of the week so I can build it this weekend. If anyone's interested I can post some performance data, can't wait to test it out. Still wondering about the PSU, I'll order it tonight but basically, not sure if I should go for the thermaltake one (http://pcpartpicker....stpd0550mpcgus1) or the Antec (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/antec-power-supply-hcg620m). Maybe even Seasonic (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/seasonic-power-supply-m12ii620bronze).

[Falcon515]

I've ordered the parts, decided on the GTX970 in the end and hopefully I'll find some time to pick them before the end of the week so I can build it this weekend. If anyone's interested I can post some performance data, can't wait to test it out. Still wondering about the PSU, I'll order it tonight but basically, not sure if I should go for the thermaltake one (http://pcpartpicker....stpd0550mpcgus1) or the Antec (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/antec-power-supply-hcg620m). Maybe even Seasonic (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/seasonic-power-supply-m12ii620bronze).

Have you considered Corsair's CX600M or CX750M? In general, Corsair's products are arguably better quality than Antec and Thermaltake, and often trade blows with Seasonic.

[Kaldo]

I've considered a lot of things but ultimately I don't know which one is better, they all have similar efficiency, wattage and price and the only thing that differs are opinions on which brand is the best. I might pick up the Corsair since that is the first one I've checked out some time ago (due to it being used in Carey Holzmans videos), I'm sure any of them would work fine anyways.