Liox5
Hey folks .
Im building my first gaming rig after Getting fed up with the limited performance of the qosmio x500 .
Im stuck in an endless dilemma That is taking over my mind :
graphic really counts for me and I always pause the game just to take a snap of the scenery using FRAPS ( like in nfs most wanted 2012 - tomb raider - gta iv - arma 2 .... ) .
Actually im torn between a SHaphire hd 7950 3gb oc boost vapor x and MSI gtx 660 ti oc 2gb twin fozr .
The Former is undoubtedly a better card and more futur proof . However , the gtx supports physx which enhances graphics and makes the game look more realistic ( ? Correct me if im wrong )
I ve searched all over the internet but couldnt overcome my dilemma yet .
How important is physx for graphics ?
Is it really worth choosing a weaker card ( gtx 660 ti ) just to benefit from gpu physx ( cpu physx makes the game unplayable )
How come the gtx 660 ti gets higher fps in modern demanding games ?
The games i would like to play are arma 3 , gta 5 metro last light .
Any input would be highly appreciated !
AvoK95
Dude! That's the stupidest thing I ever heard. PhysX is just a way of Nvidia selling their cards to you. The 660Ti is a very bad and bottlenecked card. It's already too slow to run modern games properly. Games are becoming more and more demanding and you will NEED that extra horse power.
PhysX is nothing special. It's definitely not worth it. You won't notice it anyway. I have had a 560Ti and currently a 7970, I even forget that PhysX exists. It's not that realistic. It's exaggerated.
I bet I'm not the only one who told you to avoid the 660Ti. If you are that stubborn about PhysX, wait a bit and get the 760.
Note how Nvidia is keep releasing cards and the 7000 series from Nvidia are almost 2 years old now. Reason? AMD doesn't need to update to a new generation of graphics cards, Nvidia does because their cards are loosing against cards like the 7950 in a very ridiculous way. Even if you get the 760, the 7950 will STILL beat it, it's just more future proof. Forget about Nvidia for now, think about performance. 7950>660,670,680, 2 of those cards are faster than a Titan, do you see how stupid it is to go to Nvidia? I am an Nvidia fanboy TELLING you to go AMD. The 660Ti will suffocate against GTA V btw. Also, 90% of games are going to be AMD optimized. And they're beast overclockers.
Again, absolutely avoid Nvidia for this generation.
Also, for the love of god, avoid Thermaltake powersupplies!!! Get XFX. Why do you people settle for something that you know is bad. You're seeing the whole world not buying Nvidia, you go Nvidia. You see the whole world going XFX, Seasonic or equivalent PSU, you go Thermaltake. WHY? Why push yourself through a wall?
yasamoka
PhysX was never good in performance. Just read about how Borderlands 2 performs with PhysX on High.
It's only in a few games, it looks unrealistic, it brings performance down for no good reason (it's inefficient), and the only way to retreive part of that performance is with a dedicated PhysX card. To give numerical examples:
I had a GTX260, ran PhysX on High in Batman Arkham Asylum. Minimum FPS dropped to 26 in the benchmark. I added a 9600GT for PhysX. This card is less than half the performance of a GTX260 in games, and its specs show it's quite less than half in shader performance (this is what PhysX uses). Minimum FPS shot up to 39FPS, a 50% boost. You could see how it doesn't exactly scale well when you're running both graphics and PhysX on the same single card.
Getting a dedicated PhysX card is a waste of money as you will still face performance drops and the card will barely be used for a couple games. What happens when you finish Batman, or Mirror's Edge? Yeah, the card sits there doing nothing.
That's not even considering the raised temperatures your primary card will face by having a dedicated PhysX card obstructing some airflow a slot away or so (except if you can place the PhysX card in the last slot, then this wouldn't be an issue).
660Ti is a crippled card. Nvidia are pushing the 7xx series now. The 760, which is faster than the 660Ti but slower than the 670 by a couple percentage points or so, sells for less than the 660Ti and comes with a bigger memory bus, 256-bit, just like 670,680,770.
The 7950 comes with a 384-bit bus and overclocks further than all of these, particularly against the 660Ti which doesn't overclock much at all.
Which games run faster on the 660Ti, and what reviews are you looking at? What date? If it's before October, it's invalid, as new AMD drivers that were released then boosted performance greatly.
Do remember that some titles (select few) will perform quite better on either brand. Examples of these are World of Warcraft on Nvidia (really faster, if things haven't changed now), Metro 2033, Dirt Showdown, Grid 2 on AMD. Dirt Showdown runs so much faster that the 7970 is faster than the Titan at it, due to a OpenCL feature called Global Illumination that doesn't run well on Nvidia's cards which are currently weak at compute, compared to the 79xx cards (even the Titan).
EDIT: I should add that a good portion (if not the largest) of the new titles using PhysX are using software-based PhysX, meaning that PhysX runs on the CPU irrespective if you have an Nvidia card, dedicated Nvidia PhysX card (will not use it), or AMD card.
bermudapineapple
Anyone know how to count with AMD? I've been using nVidia since forever but lately I've been thinking of switching over to AMD. With nVidia, I'd count the cuda cores, core clock rate, memory size and memory clock rate to decide on and compare which card I wanted and which card was worth the money. How do I count on the AMD side? What should I be looking for?
yasamoka
tt400 wroteAnyone know how to count with AMD? I've been using nVidia since forever but lately I've been thinking of switching over to AMD. With nVidia, I'd count the cuda cores, core clock rate, memory size and memory clock rate to decide on and compare which card I wanted and which card was worth the money. How do I count on the AMD side? What should I be looking for?
Around the same I guess. Stream processors (shaders), memory bus width, and the rest that you have mentioned.
Honestly, I'd only look at those raw numbers if I were thinking of running compute applications on the card, as those scale almost linearly with the theoretical specifications. The difference in compute performance between the 7970 and 7950 is more pronounced than the difference in gaming performance and closely matches the specs on paper (2048 vs. 1792 cores, 1000MHz vs. 850MHz stock, but the 7950 stock clock is rather low for what it can pull).
Liox5
Thanks yosamoka and avo for your continuous support .
Here are the specs of my rig .
I7 3770
Msi b75 g43
Kingston hyperx blu 4x2 gb ram
Sapphire hd 7950 vapor x
1 tb 7200 seagate hdd
Cooler master scout 2 case
Psu : xfx 650 watt
Monitor : LG 21.5 fhd
Ups : 792 watt pce
It costs 1600 dollars
Is 650 w enough to power this rig ? What about the ups
yasamoka
Why not a 750W XFX unit?
Would you mind shooting pcandparts an email asking them about the availability of Z87 boards and the 4770K?
AvoK95
Your rig needs nothing more than a 500W PSU. A 650W will just give you headroom for longevity. However, I agree with yasamoka, get a 750W from CompuWorld from Dekweneh so that you run another card in the future.
bermudapineapple
yasamoka wrotett400 wroteAnyone know how to count with AMD? I've been using nVidia since forever but lately I've been thinking of switching over to AMD. With nVidia, I'd count the cuda cores, core clock rate, memory size and memory clock rate to decide on and compare which card I wanted and which card was worth the money. How do I count on the AMD side? What should I be looking for?
Around the same I guess. Stream processors (shaders), memory bus width, and the rest that you have mentioned.
Honestly, I'd only look at those raw numbers if I were thinking of running compute applications on the card, as those scale almost linearly with the theoretical specifications. The difference in compute performance between the 7970 and 7950 is more pronounced than the difference in gaming performance and closely matches the specs on paper (2048 vs. 1792 cores, 1000MHz vs. 850MHz stock, but the 7950 stock clock is rather low for what it can pull).
Thanks, I'll look into that. I guess a good way at figuring out gaming performance would also be to just check the head-on-head benchmark performance charts. If there's a difference in something like only 5 FPS, it's not worth it to buy the more expensive card.
Liox5
I would like to buy all the parts from pc and parts to benefit from free shipping :/ 750 w psu would be awesome though .
I dont intend to run 2 gpu in the future just replace the old card with a better one which will be more efficient and consumes less power .
Can i downgrade the ups to 660 w and save another 40 $ ? Put in mind that im plugging the lg monitor ( 25 w) to the ups .
Liox5
Yosamoka : there is a marginal ( 1 to 4 % ) difference in performance between the 3770 and 4770 . I dont mind getting the third gen cpu as long as it is a powerful one .
venam
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AvoK95
Dude, don't change a single thing. We have carefully chosen the best things you can get and this is the 3rd time I'm saying, it's impossible to buy something better at that price. Leave the UPS, spend the extra $40. You're not benefiting from anything with shipping, you'll barely save 0.006$ in shipping. CompuWorld will not charge shipping, you pick it up yourself. But 650W is still fine for any single GPU configuration.
