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[SOLUTION] Best graphics card for 5760x1080 AAA gaming?

9K views 69 replies 16 participants last post by  deafboy 
#1 ·
I am looking to spend somewhere around $500 - $550 for a single-gpu graphics card for 5760x1080 AAA gaming. I am leaning towards the GTX 980, but want to get your opinion (no preference amd/nvidia).

Since my budget rules out any 6 GB cards, I am looking for the best 4 GB solution.

I am looking to play BF4, Far Cry 4, Assassin's Creed: Unity, etc. I'm a stickler for fps, so lemme know what you think will work best.

Thanks!

[SOLUTION] http://www.overclock.net/t/1525758/solution-best-graphics-card-for-5760x1080-aaa-gaming/50#post_23184078
 
#3 ·
I heard that SLI/Crossfire can net at best a +50% improvement over the first card, and typically improves less than that. Although I could be wrong (that's why I'm asking on here).

If so, then according to these benchmarks (http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html) then the R9 290's probably wouldn't be as good as the GTX 980.

Of course if I could "math" my way to a solution on this one, I wouldn't need you guys.
biggrin.gif


Any other points/suggestions?
 
#4 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by hexicGrind View Post

I heard that SLI/Crossfire can net at best a +50% improvement over the first card, and typically improves less than that. Although I could be wrong (that's why I'm asking on here).

If so, then according to these benchmarks (http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html) then the R9 290's probably wouldn't be as good as the GTX 980.

Of course if I could "math" my way to a solution on this one, I wouldn't need you guys.
biggrin.gif


Any other points/suggestions?
Two 290s are definitely better than a 980. By a considerable margin actually. However you then get 480-520 watts of power at stock worth of GPUs dumping a ton of heat and loud coolers vs a single 180-200 watt GPU running cool and quiet. Adding a second card usually has a 50-70% increase in performance but that totally depends on the game. Some games offer up to a 90-100% performance increase while other offer only a 20-30%. Multi-GPU is heavily driver and software dependent.
 
#5 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by hexicGrind View Post

I heard that SLI/Crossfire can net at best a +50% improvement over the first card, and typically improves less than that. Although I could be wrong (that's why I'm asking on here).

If so, then according to these benchmarks (http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html) then the R9 290's probably wouldn't be as good as the GTX 980.

Of course if I could "math" my way to a solution on this one, I wouldn't need you guys.
biggrin.gif


Any other points/suggestions?
those sites are useless for comparing cards. look at benchmarks at 4k
 
#7 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by hexicGrind View Post

Thank you very much for the input. After looking up as many benchmarks as I could find at 5760x1080, I believe I have found the perfect graphics card for me...

http://amzn.com/B00P9RDI9Y

I found an R9 290X with 8 GB for $500. Would you guys agree with my conclusion?
No way would I pay $500 for that card. 290x are going for $319 on Newegg. You don't need 8GB either, that card is really intended for surround 4k (11580x2160) using four of them. You are never going to be able to even push that 8GB Vram on a single 290x.
 
#8 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by hexicGrind View Post

Thank you very much for the input. After looking up as many benchmarks as I could find at 5760x1080, I believe I have found the perfect graphics card for me...

http://amzn.com/B00P9RDI9Y

I found an R9 290X with 8 GB for $500. Would you guys agree with my conclusion?
You know I myself have been eyeballing that card, with that much memory you should be fine. Heck I ran a single gtx 780 SC 3gb card for a while @ 5760/1080 just fine but that 290 looks much better.
 
#9 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by hexicGrind View Post

Thank you very much for the input. After looking up as many benchmarks as I could find at 5760x1080, I believe I have found the perfect graphics card for me...

http://amzn.com/B00P9RDI9Y

I found an R9 290X with 8 GB for $500. Would you guys agree with my conclusion?
Hmm, 5760 is 2MP lower than 4K. I think in general terms and in most cases 4GB is adequate for the megapixel load. You will be graphics power limited not vram limited. Thus I would say with confidence that you will want at least two cards, not just one. Three would be ideal. With one card, if you fire up MetroLL at max settings and you would witness your rig just crumble under the load. One card is just not enough processing power. More vram won't help in this case. Although I would agree that more vram is always a plus, but not at the risk of not having enough gpu power.
 
#10 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by MapRef41N93W View Post

No way would I pay $500 for that card. 290x are going for $319 on Newegg. You don't need 8GB either, that card is really intended for surround 4k (11580x2160) using four of them. You are never going to be able to even push that 8GB Vram on a single 290x.
The issue is that 4 GB is not always enough for 5760x1080 on Ultra for AAA games, and there are no cards available in this price range with 6 GB.

No solution here is going to have me at 60 fps, and while the gpu I linked on Amazon above will have it's limitations, we are obviously looking for the best fps possible. So anyone with any better alternatives, please suggest them.

Also keep in mind, that when you SLI/Crossfire, it doesn't share the vram of all the cards. Only the vram on the primary card is used. The other cards just help with the graphics power...
 
#11 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by hexicGrind View Post

The issue is that 4 GB is not enough for 5760x1080 on Ultra for AAA games, and there are no cards available in this price range with 6 GB.
4GB is more than enough for almost every AAA game on Ultra at 5760x1080. You are actually pushing 2 million less pixels than a single 4k display. The only games that go over 4GB at your resolution are Watch Dogs (due to poor optimization) and Shadow of Mordor with the ultra textures pack. Even if you buy the 8GB 290x you will find that your VRAM basically isn't helping at all because you aren't able to push that resolution enough to be able to actually utilize it on a single card.
 
#12 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by tsm106 View Post

Hmm, 5760 is 2MP lower than 4K. I think in general terms and in most cases 4GB is adequate for the megapixel load. You will be graphics power limited not vram limited. Thus I would say with confidence that you will want at least two cards, not just one. Three would be ideal. With one card, if you fire up MetroLL at max settings and you would witness your rig just crumble under the load. One card is just not enough processing power. More vram won't help in this case. Although I would agree that more vram is always a plus, but not at the risk of not having enough gpu power.
I never realized that, but you are totally right. So I could look up 4k gpu benchmarks and the cards should perform at least that well with my setup.

Thanks!
 
#13 ·
At least 2 290s or 970s...
 
#16 ·
Oddly enough, I found a benchmark that said that 2x R9 290s would be better in some instances than 2x GTX 970s.

(5760x1080 resolution would perform exactly in the middle of the two tested resolutions)
http://www.techspot.com/review/898-geforce-gtx-970-sli-4k-gaming/page4.html

And since the price difference is $200-300, I'm dubious of the result. Although I did hear the 290s are optimized for crossfire better.

Anyone else with experience at 5760x1080 or 4k?
 
#17 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by hexicGrind View Post

Oddly enough, I found a benchmark that said that 2x R9 290s would be better in some instances than 2x GTX 970s.

(5760x1080 resolution would perform exactly in the middle of the two tested resolutions)
http://www.techspot.com/review/898-geforce-gtx-970-sli-4k-gaming/page4.html

And since the price difference is $200-300, I'm dubious of the result. Although I did hear the 290s are optimized for crossfire better.

Anyone else with experience at 5760x1080 or 4k?
The 290s will be equal or better on AMD optimized titles. The 970s will be better on neutral titles and NVIDIA optimized titles. 290 crossfire will be about on average 9-12% worse than 970 SLI. The 290s have less horsepower but you gain a few % back thanks to better crossfire scaling with XDMA. Also the gap narrows a bit when you apply 4/8x AA at that resolution as the 290s have more memory bandwidth.
 
#18 ·
MapRef, you are a god among men. Thank you.

Has the heat issues with the 290s been resolved enough to allow crossfire air cooling (with little to no o.c.)?

I'm still leaning towards the GTX 970s, but nearly comparable performance for nearly $300 less is tempting.
 
#19 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by hexicGrind View Post

MapRef, you are a god among men. Thank you.

Has the heat issues with the 290s been resolved enough to allow crossfire air cooling (with little to no o.c.)?

I'm still leaning towards the GTX 970s, but nearly comparable performance for nearly $300 less is tempting.
Thanks
tongue.gif


As long as you have the setup to handle them, yes you can run two open air 290s. You just want to have a large case with lots of air flow. Get ones with a good cooler (I recommend the Vapor-X) and you should be able to keep temps under control. You will of course need to have spacing between them as well.

I'd still recommend the 970s personally, but if the savings is make or break for you than get the 290s.
 
#20 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by hexicGrind View Post

MapRef, you are a god among men. Thank you.

Has the heat issues with the 290s been resolved enough to allow crossfire air cooling (with little to no o.c.)?

I'm still leaning towards the GTX 970s, but nearly comparable performance for nearly $300 less is tempting.
Looked at DX12 you will need the next gen cards so 970s would be my choice
as for ram 4Gb that's twice as much as I got and I game @ 5760 x 1080 admittedly I have disabled windows aero and don't run ultra settings.
I am not really looking to upgrade my sli 770s till AMD release something to drop the price premium for Nvidia. and games actually become unplayable @ high settings
At the moment my setup eats any game @ high settings with 60+FPS
so GTX 970s would be my pick if I had no GPUs and had to buy some this week.
 
#21 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by hexicGrind View Post

MapRef, you are a god among men. Thank you.

Has the heat issues with the 290s been resolved enough to allow crossfire air cooling (with little to no o.c.)?

I'm still leaning towards the GTX 970s, but nearly comparable performance for nearly $300 less is tempting.
at high res with AA the 290 performs the same or outoperforms the 970 due to the higher bus width.amd just would loose in biased games towards nvidia

The custom cooling of 290s can keep them in the 60c or so.like the powercolor pcs+ sapphire trix vapor x club 3d royal ace..
 
#22 ·
If I may chime in with my experience and opinion on the issue, I've ran my share of games @ 5760x1200 and 3600x1920 (both landscape and portrait eyefinity).

I've successfully ran a lot of maxed games on a single 4GB R9 290 and I must point out that the memory buffer was nearly always full, but that was only due to texture caching, so it had 0 impact on performance. Games don't actually need that much memory at their disposal.
You will need a lot of processing power in order to play AAA titles maxed out at that resolution, so I'd recommend SLI or Crossfire. One very decent budget-oriented option would be spending the cash on 2 (maybe even 3 if power draw is non-issue) R9 290s, or if you can find an affordable 970 2-way SLI offer.

Again, please don't worry about the memory buffer size. In fact, I've ran Shadows of Mordor on 3-surround with the Ultra texture pack and maximum settings and had no trouble with VRAM whatsoever, only processing power.
If you need further proof, I believe I can provide a link to a youtube video of a gameplay capture I made (at half resolution, because even my SSD choked by the massive bandwidth of the uncompressed video.
 
#23 ·
You guys have been incredibly helpful. Thank you.

So in summary, to verify (and since there are several other threads related to this open right now)...

2x GTX 970s are better for the DirectX 12 support, but they are around $100 more per card. (Average 46.5 fps in BF4)
2x R9 290s will perform better in some games and are cheaper (by around $100 per card), but only support DirectX 11. (Average 50 fps in BF4)

(Averages were pulled from http://www.techspot.com/review/898-geforce-gtx-970-sli-4k-gaming/page4.html, with Ultra settings and 4x AA at 5760x1080.)
 
#25 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by hexicGrind View Post

You guys have been incredibly helpful. Thank you.

So in summary, to verify (and since there are several other threads related to this open right now)...

2x GTX 970s are better for the DirectX 12 support, but they are around $100 more per card. (Average 46.5 fps in BF4)
2x R9 290s will perform better in some games and are cheaper (by around $100 per card), but only support DirectX 11. (Average 50 fps in BF4)

(Averages were pulled from http://www.techspot.com/review/898-geforce-gtx-970-sli-4k-gaming/page4.html, with Ultra settings and 4x AA at 5760x1080.)
I run a pair of 970s at 5760 x 1080. Cards do great and I have not gone over 63C on air. They are definitely a great option at this resolution.
 
#26 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by PontiacGTX View Post

The r9 290 support directx12...and no one knows if the current card will support a set of the directx12 features or the whole api.and the amd also support mantle not just dx11..
I looked into this and found this article (http://techreport.com/news/26210/directx-12-will-also-add-new-features-for-next-gen-gpus).

Basically it says that cards that came out with DirectX 11 support will get some performance upgrades when running DirectX 12 compatible games, but there are some features that only DirectX 12 cards will support. The extra features that are listed don't sound very important, but it only lists a couple of features and said there are others.
 
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