Advice on GPU upgrades for GTA 5??

Hey, I haven't been keeping up to date with GPUs for quite a few years, but playing GTA 5 its very clear to me that its bottlenecking my experience and that its time to upgrade.

this is what I have right now:

i5 2500k CPU

ASUS P8Z68-V PRO GEN 3 Mobo

8 gigs DDR3 Ram

AMD Radeon HD 6870 GPU

I'm hoping some of you who follow current tech could help give me advice on good cards to pick up today. I'd like to know what I need to max out GTA, and also maybe a budget card that will still run it much better than my current rig, if the first option is too expensive.

GTX 960 4gb would be a nice upgrade from a 6850 and its Direct x 12 ready. But if your budget is below 200 a AMD R9 280 would a good alternative.

But if you have a ~ $300+ budget a GTX 970 is the one to choose.

@04dcarraher:

Save up for a GTX 970. It runs GTA V awesomely with my 2500k (stock currently)

the 970 totals up to almost $500 CDN after taxes. I'm having trouble finding benchmarks that compare the 4GB version of the 960 to the 970. how big is the difference?

Here you go, while it only shows the 2gb model of the 960, you can expect the 4gb model to handle higher texture detail better.

The 960 is a garbage card. He can get a lot more for his money. R9 290 can be had for around 250$ and smacks the 960.

Also, the only difference between 4GB and 2GB variant is that the 4GB will not run out of VRAM at higher res or AA. Otherwise they'll perform identically. A 960 will run out of muscle before 4GB starts to be an issue. It's a waste of a card that won't use 4GB unless you're modding Skyrim.

970 is a great bang for your bang card. Otherwise R9 290 is very good and can be found for dirt cheap. R9 280X is also a good card with 3GB of VRAM.

When I search the GTX 970 the cards vary greatly in dimensions. Some are 12 inches and some are 6 inches. There are alot of options that are similarly priced. Should read all the reviews into the different brands or are they all pretty much the same, and I should just go with the cheapest one that will fit my case?

@04dcarraher said:

@True_Sounds said:

the 970 totals up to almost $500 CDN after taxes. I'm having trouble finding benchmarks that compare the 4GB version of the 960 to the 970. how big is the difference?

Here you go, while it only shows the 2gb model of the 960, you can expect the 4gb model to handle higher texture detail better.

128-bit bus is still too slow. It'll stutter.

Bus width has really nothing to do with stuttering, lack of vram causes the problem. and with very high settings with standard textures GTA 5 stays below 2gb at 1080p. The maxwell series uses compression methods to overcome the narrower bus. Same reason why the 970 and 980 with 256bit buses having no issue competing with 512bit bus based cards all the way to 4k.

@Juub1990:

Only if he lives in the USA, in Canada prices are much higher. a 290 is anywhere between 330-400 there.

Also dont forget the 960 being DX12 ready as well, a 290 does not always smack the 960 around for example in GTA 5, 2gb 960 performs only 16% slower. So its not really garbage even though its price should be less.

Also about the 960 's vram , games are starting to use more then 2gb in general for 1080p gaming which means that 4gb buffer will prevent stuttering and sudden fps drops because the data had to be swapped from lack of vram. So if your vram limited you can actually see better fps averages and no stuttering by having more vram. In Farcry 4 at 1080 2gb vs 4gb seen a 8 fps minimum difference and 2-3 fps higher average.

http://www.ncix.com/detail/asus-radeon-r9-290-directcu-71-93995-1079.htm?affiliateid=7474144

This R9 is ~$75-100 cheaper than the cheapest GTX 970s. What do you guys think about this option compared to others, and it should be fine with a 750 watt PSU? It has 4 gigs Vram which I take from this thread is good for GTA 5. The benchmarks tested here show that is it not too much of a drop off from the GTX 970 and if that's accurate I'm leaning towards it being worth the savings. Not sure if there are major differences between the two cards I am not aware of.

@04dcarraher said:

@True_Sounds said:

the 970 totals up to almost $500 CDN after taxes. I'm having trouble finding benchmarks that compare the 4GB version of the 960 to the 970. how big is the difference?

Here you go, while it only shows the 2gb model of the 960, you can expect the 4gb model to handle higher texture detail better.

It's so hard to find a GTA V benchmark where they max everything but MSAA.

Most of them leave some settings slightly lower or completely ignore the advanced settings.

Nice, OC you CPU to 4.3Ghz or so, get that R9 290 and OC it as well.

Only get this module instead: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-video-card-912v308002

It's around 10% slower than the 970 if I recall correctly. Great bang for your buck card.

@04dcarraher The R9 290 will also support DX12. So will the R9 280X. I also wouldn't say 16% slower is insignificant. It's quite a difference. A 4GB 960 is the same price as a R9 290 4GB and gets absolutely demolished by it. A 960 2GB is slightly better than a R9 280X but you're stuck with a measly 2GB of VRAM which was standard 3 years ago but is now becoming outdated.

Above 330$ GTX 970

250$-299$ R9 290

Below 220-250$ R9 280X

A 960 is pretty much the NVIDIA equivalent of a R9 285. As useless as they get.

Why that module? It's not cheaper, because I might get cross border tariffs and its also in USD instead of my link which is CDN.

Because Asus DIRECT CU2 isn't great cooler as their new STRIX series.

http://www.ncix.com/detail/gigabyte-radeon-r9-290-oc-87-93517-1382.htm <<< this one is still better for OC.

Alright thanks everyone! I just went ahead and ordered the R9, cause it fit my budget and even if it won't max GTA it looks like it should run much much better which is great! 8)

290s are great cards for the money. Its step better than 960 and close to the 970 while priced after the middle of two. Ive been rocking these for the past year.

Cranked almost every setting possible up @ 1080p and it gets 30-60fps for me which isn't shabby at all.

These are tests that made using everything in max but without MSAA. They used FXAA instead.

I guess we will have +20% or more performance from 1080p with same settings.

Source: Techspot.

edit: They used everything maxed without AA too:

source: PClab

Yeah, I'm in the same boat when it comes to bottlenecking GTA 5, but it's CPU for me so I'm in the process of upgrading my i5 3470 to i7 4790K.

You definitely should go for a GTX 970 and avoid AMD.

While DX11 cards will support DX12 but not fully, and the gains will not as as substantial as with DX12 cards. DX12 tests ie 3dmark shown so far a DX12 gpu (GTX980) seeing a 40-50%% increase over AMD's Mantle and DX12 on 290x. So there is a good chance seeing a 960 gaining enough performance to give a normal 290 a run for its money. Dont forget the 4gb version of the 960's. however 960 is not useless and nether is the 285, hell the 285 actually handles some tasks better then 290x does.

Does newegg ship to Canada?

Newegg has a Canadian site. http://www.newegg.ca/ . It pretty much offers everything the American site offers.

TC, if I were you I would wait for AMD to release their new generation of AMD GPU's with the HBM memory. Even if you don't decide to go with AMD, there might be price cuts following the release of new GPUs from AMD so you may be able to get current nVidia GPUs for cheaper price.

It's nice to see my 2 970s can still match even 2 980s at 4k res.

My avg is 46.8fps and theirs was 47 so I count that as pretty much even since 0.2fps is negligible.

Still the multi gpu performance is not that great.

Hopefully new patches or drivers will improve it.

Right now I play at 1440p so I can achieve a constant 60fps.

The amount of bandwidth is calculated with the memory clock. Trying running 4k textures on a 960 that has 4gb.

I'd say they're kind of "separate but related" issues -

memory size (2GB vs 4GB) is going to come into play *mostly* above 1080p, because we are dealing with larger textures, but some recent games do eat more than 2GB when its available at 1080p. It's an interesting debate... there are a handful of reviews of 2GB vs 4GB 960 out, and they generally show very little benefit of the extra RAM at 1080p but its limitations do manifest in these boundary cases (eg. this comparison page)

Bus width (128-bit vs 256+-bit)*memory clock speed controls access rate to the RAM, whatever memory size it may be. Now... when your RAM starts to run out, the card has to swap RAM contents more frequently, and at that point the bandwidth becomes particularly critical. So here is a case where 4GB also helps avoid issues due to small memory bandwidth. The memory compression used by Maxwell (and related technology in the R9 285) does make a surprising impact here... I'm amazed how well the 128-bit 2GB 960 does in benchmarks. Again, if you REALLY search around, you can see it start to break down at those boundary cases... even the memory compression can only take a low-bit memory bus and small memory pool so far. But it's pretty remarkable what it can do. Personally, I would have loved to see a 256-bit 3GB 960 over a 4GB 128-bit any day. It would be such a versatile card. To be honest... they probably just don't want to poach from the 970 given its relatively high price point (but also fantastic performance!)

gtx 960 4gb is pretty cool card, buy it. There isnt any good option.

Why don't many people mention the 290X? Isn't that in the 970's price range too?

R9-290x or GTX970 and above.

Because it's crap GPU, don't worth the money, just get R9 290 and OC it.

I have the same GPU. I can't afford to get a new one yet, but I do want to play GTA 5 right now. Did you play the game on this rig before you got your new card? I'm curious what settings I might expect (my specs are almost identical to yours).

@PredatorRules: But the 970 is better than the 290, right? Can you point me towards benchmarks or something which show their performance in various games? That would be great.

Yea the 970 is faster then the 290 and the 970 is full DX12 ready, so when DX12 games start coming out all DX11 based cards wont see all the performance and feature additions. With DX12 on a DX12 card tests maxing out draw calls shown GTX 980 seen more then a 40% increase over 290x using Mantle and more then 50% using DX12. Using DX9/11 at 1080p GTX 970 is overall on par with the 290x. At 1440p the 970 sits between the 290 and 290x So when DX12 comes out 970 will widen the lead over 290 series, to suggest a 290 or 290x when there is more future proof card's available is short sighted when you have the budget to do.

Now the price cuts being done on the AMD gpu's are a nice way to upgrade to better gpu's for less dough. But AMD's rehashing of gpu lines for the last two generations has not given people great upgrade choices if you upgrade semi regularly.

I can play at 1920 × 1080 with most settings on normal, which is actually the low setting in this game. However there are a bunch of settings that are purely CPU intensive and I can max those. I get between 30 and 60 fps

It plays great but its not pretty.

for example, not to mention the R9 290 is not OC here... so yeah, that's 100$ save IMO for 15% difference in benchmark overall in gaming.

Thanks for the info. Looks like I need to save up for a new card. Should be able to enjoy the game regardless. :D