Back in the day when I used to build my own PCs the video card was a huge decision and the tech seemed to change rapidly. A card had been replaced by numerous other faster cards within a years time.
Today I have no interest in building my own PCs and I bought a Falcon Northwest Talon with a Nvidia 970 GTX (4gb) a year and half ago, which has been great for my purposes (I rarely play FPS type games). I have been playing a lot of Grim Dawn in 2560x1440 lately though and have noticed it struggles during big fights and when rotating the camera. Not horribly, but noticeable. Did some research, and the 970 is still a good card it seems but one article I read suggested at my resolution I should being a Radeon card (No, do not like their software) or a 980 GTX. But looking at benchmarks, the 980 GTX doesn’t seem to be a big jump in performance for that kind of money. Seems like you have to get into SLI or get something like a Titan if you want to get a decent boost in performance. I have no idea if my computer is even capable of SLI, but I suppose I could open it up and look.
Anyway, my question is whether I should just accept my 970 GTX is a good card or should I be looking for something better. Is it worth upgrading?
Yeah, I wouldn’t upgrade from a 970, and certainly not right now with Pascal a few months away. I game at 2560x1440 on a 780 and it’s mostly fine, with a handful of settings turned down, though I do have a G-sync monitor which helps a lot.
Yep. In my experience you can’t crank everything to Ultra but there’s usually an inconsequential setting that can be lowered for a nice frame rate boost like shadows or grass, and anti-aliasing isn’t as important to max out.
That’s my take on it. A reasonably priced replacement for my 970 is many months away and may exist only in the design stage right now. But I can’t bring myself to pay more for a video card than a newly released console.
Thanks everyone, sounds like waiting for the next line is the way to go.
I shot an email to Falcon NW as well asking if there were any limitations that I should be aware of if I wanted SLI and it turns out my power supply is too small and won’t support 2 cards. Definitely don’t want to mess with that or destroy their pretty wiring job.
Others will rag on me for saying this all the time, but I used to insist on Ultra/Max because I felt “you might as well get the full experience”. But the more I play, the more I realize that Ultra settings exist mainly to slow down video cards so that PC Gamers can prove their rig is faster. The game and images look pretty much the same (as high / very high). Witcher 3 link:
Yeah agree with everyone else, just notch down your graphics quality settings and you should be fine. You could consider a GSYNC monitor as well to help with frame rate hickups if your current one is old.
