GPU suggestion thread

[EmileS]

Mantle is a pipe dream at the moment.

From the benchmarks I've seen it's pretty promising. Especially on low tier cards. Guys playing BF on these cards said it made quite the difference in FPS when the update came.

 

[Electric]

How far is it from becoming mainstream though?
I see all the Asus guys mentioning mantle but until there's real world benchmarks to work with I won't believe any of the hype.

 

[Zewp]

Go with a H81 Mobo + 4gb DDR3 1600mhz RAM + i5 4440. Should set you back about R3800-R4000. The latest Core i5 Haswell CPU's are more than adequate for gaming.

I use an H61 + 8gb DDR3 1333mhz + i5 2400 and it's going well for 2 years now. Not once have I had the system shutdown whilst gaming.

Ah, yes, I see it's roughly the same price as the one I was looking at.

Has anyone used Teslatech before? I see from them I can get a H81 mobo + the i5 4440 for R3,153.00, I assume with shipping not included. Then I can get RAM from TakeAlot and the 7850 or 7260X from Wootware, which I can go collect myself.

 

[EmileS]

How far is it from becoming mainstream though?
I see all the Asus guys mentioning mantle but until there's real world benchmarks to work with I won't believe any of the hype.

You know it has been rolled out in a few games already? With some real world performance improvements (like I mentioned with BF). How long before it's going to be mainstream? I guess about a year for all the AAA games and 2 years for the rest. There are about 15 games working on Mantle integration ATM, even Thief (not that the game is all that exciting).

 

[EmileS]

Ah, yes, I see it's roughly the same price as the one I was looking at.

Has anyone used Teslatech before? I see from them I can get a H81 mobo + the i5 4440 for R3,153.00, I assume with shipping not included. Then I can get RAM from TakeAlot and the 7850 or 7260X from Wootware, which I can go collect myself.

Why not get the CPU and H81 mobo from Wootware as well? Comes out a bit cheaper, depending on the exact motherboard Teslatech (which I never heard of) is giving.

 

[Electric]

Thanks EmileS, I wasn't aware they had started implementing it.

 

[EmileS]

Thanks EmileS, I wasn't aware they had started implementing it.

Yeah, Battlefield is the only game (worth mentioning) that had some excellent improvement with Mantle. The other game that has it, Star Swarm, also had good improvement... No idea wat Star Swarm is... Some spaceage game.

 

[Zewp]

Why not get the CPU and H81 mobo from Wootware as well? Comes out a bit cheaper, depending on the exact motherboard Teslatech (which I never heard of) is giving.

Ah, I see. I was looking at their H81 motherboards in the Intel Haswell section for some reason. Yes, if I add the 7850, mobo and CPU at Wootware it comes out to around R4920 or something.

However, someone just suggested I check out AMD as well and this build seems pretty alright. I know apparently the FX-6300 isn't quite as good as that i5, but as long as I can play most games at med-high settings I'll be satisfied, so what do you think about the following build?

http://www.wootware.co.za/asus-m5a78l-m-lx-am3-am3-integrated-micro-atx-amd-desktop-motherboard.html

http://www.wootware.co.za/amd-fx-63...5ghz-4-1ghz-turbo-socket-am3-desktop-cpu.html

http://www.wootware.co.za/open-box-...it-pci-express-2-1-desktop-graphics-card.html

Would I be better off sticking with the i5 build or would the performance difference be negligent with the AMD CPU?

Thanks for all the advice btw! Initially I just wanted advice for a GPU but it seems to have become general advice for my upgrade. It's much appreciated.

The thing with the FX6300 seems to be that it is very great for overclocking, if I ever wanted to go that route.

 

[Fox1]

The FX6300 seems decent just that it has a slightly higher power draw, requires 1866mhz RAM, and a it's gives lesser performance over the latest Core i5 per clock cycle yet it has more cores.

Here are some comparisons to look at:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/699?vs=702
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/fx-8350-8320-6300-4300_5.html#sect1
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/fx-8350-8320-6300-4300_6.html#sect0

 

[EmileS]

Ah, I see. I was looking at their H81 motherboards in the Intel Haswell section for some reason. Yes, if I add the 7850, mobo and CPU at Wootware it comes out to around R4920 or something.

However, someone just suggested I check out AMD as well and this build seems pretty alright. I know apparently the FX-6300 isn't quite as good as that i5, but as long as I can play most games at med-high settings I'll be satisfied, so what do you think about the following build?

http://www.wootware.co.za/asus-m5a78l-m-lx-am3-am3-integrated-micro-atx-amd-desktop-motherboard.html

http://www.wootware.co.za/amd-fx-63...5ghz-4-1ghz-turbo-socket-am3-desktop-cpu.html

http://www.wootware.co.za/open-box-...it-pci-express-2-1-desktop-graphics-card.html

Would I be better off sticking with the i5 build or would the performance difference be negligent with the AMD CPU?

Thanks for all the advice btw! Initially I just wanted advice for a GPU but it seems to have become general advice for my upgrade. It's much appreciated.

The thing with the FX6300 seems to be that it is very great for overclocking, if I ever wanted to go that route.

You have the budget, so rather go for the Intel i5. It opens up a better future upgrade path as well, if you intend to get an i7 in a year or so.

 

[Zewp]

Thanks for the help everyone! Especially EmileS, because if you hadn't pointed it out to me I would have ended up getting the i5 3340 instead of the 4440.

I've become a bit clueless with hardware over the last few years, so thanks for all the patience.

If I'm lucky Wootware will have it in tomorrow or Friday so that I can go collect it.

 

[EmileS]

Thanks for the help everyone! Especially EmileS, because if you hadn't pointed it out to me I would have ended up getting the i5 3340 instead of the 4440.

I've become a bit clueless with hardware over the last few years, so thanks for all the patience.

If I'm lucky Wootware will have it in tomorrow or Friday so that I can go collect it.

Glad we can help! Fox1 suggested the 4440 though

 

[Fox1]

Glad we can help! Fox1 suggested the 4440 though

Hehehehe

I setup i5 4440 + H81 for the office a week ago and it's a trailblazer in Windows 8.1. All the drivers for the chipset and onboard GPU except the soundcard drivers was already installed during the windows installation.

Pair your setup with a R9 270x and you have enough power to game on 1080p on high and ultra settings.

 

[Zewp]

Ah yes, sorry about that Fox1. Well, everyone gave helpful advice anyway.

My rig is up and running without any issues, thank god. I was hoping to get into Windows to backup my data before I format, but sadly it just refused to even after I repaired the install, meaning I lost all my games. Now I'll have to wait for them to download before I can put the new rig through its paces, unfortunately. That's the problem with an digital gaming collection, I guess.

 

[Zewp]

I setup i5 4440 + H81 for the office a week ago and it's a trailblazer in Windows 8.1. All the drivers for the chipset and onboard GPU except the soundcard drivers was already installed during the windows installation.

Sadly mine didn't install most of the drivers, but the driver CD included a few essentials such as .Net Framework 4.0 and Google Chrome (because Chrome is generally the first thing I install on a fresh OS).

 

[Garson007]

260X

 

[EmileS]

Ah yes, sorry about that Fox1. Well, everyone gave helpful advice anyway.

My rig is up and running without any issues, thank god. I was hoping to get into Windows to backup my data before I format, but sadly it just refused to even after I repaired the install, meaning I lost all my games. Now I'll have to wait for them to download before I can put the new rig through its paces, unfortunately. That's the problem with an digital gaming collection, I guess.

Glad you're up and running! Yeah... I have a boat load of games on Steam and Origin. Would probably take a month to download all! That's why, everytime I format, I don't download the games completed Although I back them up on an external...

 

[CataclysmZA]

Mantle is a pipe dream at the moment.

Nah, in the few games that have it enabled now it runs really well. It improves the performance of low-end APUs, FX CPUs and even Intel Pentiums and Core i3 chips. Not only does Mantle make CPU bottlenecks less of a problem, it also increases minimum framerates if you have a low-end CPU paired up to something beefy.

Which is why Toms Hardware's recent low-end system in their builders guide is silly, because they didn't have any games to test which exposes CPU limitations in their build.

Yeah, Battlefield is the only game (worth mentioning) that had some excellent improvement with Mantle. The other game that has it, Star Swarm, also had good improvement... No idea wat Star Swarm is... Some spaceage game.

It might come in a future patch to NFS Rivals (though it doesn't need it because the game is framerate-capped) and it's in Thief as well. Star Swarm's progress is also relevant for the RTS genre as well, because if Mantle had been around for Supreme Commander it wouldn't have been so taxing on low-end hardware when you got to the huge battles that required zooming out.

Once Crytek puts it into their next game it's only going to gain more traction as time passes and because it's compatible with Microsoft's HLSL language, devs making games for DX12 after gaining experience in Mantle will have a much easier time with it. Same goes for OpenGL, too.

The FX6300 seems decent just that it has a slightly higher power draw, requires 1866mhz RAM, and a it's gives lesser performance over the latest Core i5 per clock cycle yet it has more cores.

You can run a FX CPU with 1600MHz modules, it makes little difference to overall performance on the AM3+ platform.