Best value for money GFX card for Rift?

[aikakana]

Hi,

Simple question, what is the best gfx card for Rifting considering price/speed ratio? I have an outdated one that needs replacing and was thinking of something aroud 200e or perhaps little less. Or do I need to invest more?

Thanks in advance!

[Popopinsel]

This question makes no sense. You could also ask for the best graphics card for PC monitor XY. The Rift is just a display which actually has a pretty poor resolution, so you won't even play games in demanding high resolutions.

The real question is about the best performance per buck for a graphics card that suits your application(s). If I may guess I think it's for gaming. But do you really want to buy a new graphics card just for a few demos and prototypes that support the Rift? Or do you generally plan to upgrade your graphics card to play recent games? And if so, what graphics quality do you desire?

As I'm more of a NVIDIA guy I can say about their GPUs that their midrange class GPUs (GTX x70) usually deliver decent performance per bucks. Take a GTX 770 for the very latest games in max quality, 670 for high quality or a 570 for medium quality. The GTX x60 series is a good tradeoff for saving some additional dollars.

[aikakana]

The question made just the sense you made for it and quite correctly =)

NVidia guy here too, I've had too much driver problems with ATI's stuff. GTX 660 could possibly be the best value for money currently if I can judge correctly as I don't want to pay 100% more in price for 20% in speed.

Edit: so yes, this the use for the card will be only for Rift gaming and as I know the res is small, but rendering in larger resolution is nice for the quality. Will the 660 be able to keep 60fps in most newish games in 1080p resolution with moderate quality settings?

[mr.uu]

http://www.3dcenter.org/artikel/grafikk ... 13-seite-3

In german, but self explaining...

[geekmaster]

After a lot of research, I was planning to buy a GTX 670, but I just spent THAT money on a Virtuix Omni.

[Leahy]

Best bang for your buck is probably the 650TI Boost, I was dead set on getting a 670 myself but ended up finding a 7970 OC for 250 Euros when the cheapest 670 was at least 70 euros more

[crespo80]

I agree, a GTX660 or a 650 Ti Boost are your best bets, I personally own a GTX660 (on a i5 2500K) and have no problem with most games at max settings in 1080p, except for very hungry ones like Metro or Crysis in which I have lo lower quality a bit (mainly not noticeable things).

[nateight]

I always wind up checking this chart before or after I read more in-depth benchmarks. The GTX 660 does look pretty good in the bang/buck category, but I'm still glad I threw an extra $100 at a 660 Ti. If I hadn't gotten Borderlands 2 for "free" in that deal, though, the plain ol' 660 would look pretty decent.

[aikakana]

Thanks for all the input guys! This helped me to conclude it is the 660 or the Ti model, depends on what extras they throw in either and if it makes it worth the little speed boost.

Hope the thread helps others too to find the card that suits their Rifting

[Xemakon]

What would be the mobile equivalent of the GTX660, the GT750M? I am in the market for a laptop, right now the Levono Y500 looks pretty good. I like that you can remove the DVD drive and add another 750M for SLI performance.

[garagebattle]

7870 XT is the fastest thing you can buy for the money, especially after you sell off the free games it comes with.

Downside - it produces some coil whine.



My 660ti does not.


Personally Im returning the 660 ti, selling the 7870 Xt, and buying a new 770.


BTW i dont know if its allowed, but I can let the 7870 xt go for $185 to a board member. No box, includes all connectors. I can post Valley benchmarks from it if you like. Hits 1650 score on Extreme HD with a very stable, conservative overclock. Slightly higher score than the 660ti.

[cybereality]

Watch out with laptops. The Nvidia ones use Optimus, which sounds cool but actually cripples external output. I have the Lenovo Y570 and you can only use the Nvidia GPU on the laptop screen. If you plug in an external monitor (say, the Rift), then it uses integrated Intel GPU. I'm not sure if they have fixed this on the newer chips, but its like that with the 555M and other models around that time.

[totallymichael]

I just got myself a GTX 770 OC for $400. It's 10-15%(20% OCed) faster than a 680 for $100 less. It's not going to run Crysis 3 at highest settings, of course, but I think for most games it should be fine. Especially at 800p. When 1080p hits it might be a different story, but by this time next year we'll also have Nvidia's Maxwell coming out which should be a hefty jump. I'll just do what I always do and sell my 770 OC for $300 and get either the 870 or 880 depending on how broke I am at the time.

[oculusfan]

A mid-range card may suffice right now, but in a year or two will it still hold up? What about when a higher res Rift comes out? You may find yourself in another upgrade situation. Was it really the best bang for buck then? You get more years out of the card if you spend another $100 or so. Be sure and factor that into the decision.

[aikakana]

About that 100$ addition, you get about 10% speed boost with that if you put it on top of a good mid-range card, in year or two the new cards are quite more faster than 10%, so I see upgrading every two years or so is cheaper actually.

[Diorama]

I just got myself a GTX 770 OC for $400. It's 10-15%(20% OCed) faster than a 680 for $100 less. It's not going to run Crysis 3 at highest settings, of course, but I think for most games it should be fine. Especially at 800p. When 1080p hits it might be a different story, but by this time next year we'll also have Nvidia's Maxwell coming out which should be a hefty jump. I'll just do what I always do and sell my 770 OC for $300 and get either the 870 or 880 depending on how broke I am at the time.

Yeah, a few weeks ago the question of which card was a little harder, but if you are looking at the $400 mark then 770 is great.

Just 2 weeks ago i was looking at getting the 680, but the 770 has just come out about %10 faster on all counts and about £60 cheaper in the uk.

[greenknight]

I agree with the general sentiments so far.

Toms hardware has very extensive charts showing historical graphics performance.

[Lookforyourhands]

Just spend as much $$ as you can on a graphics card and you won't be disappointed. lol

If you skimp and get something midrange there's no point. You'll just have to upgrade again later.

You'll want a GTX 680 or above for the consumer version. I'm running a Titan right now and it's obviously extreme overkill
but a for me it's worth because its a perfectly smooth experience with the highest possible quality settings. Many other
cards will do that. Always look at the bandwidth you'll want a card with 150+ GB/S memory bandwidth and at least
a 256bit bus. GDDR5 really has it's advantages too.

[Drewbdoo]

This question gets asked every so often and I think it's just from a new person's perspective who is eager for the rift and vr and wants to be ready.

Having said that, until a newer devkit/consumer model is on the horizon or I decide to make a better DIY rift, I intend to stick with my 6850. Granted, it's in a beast of a computer. I take a bit of a tick/tock cycle with building pc's because of the cost of the gpu vs the rest of the computer. This year was a "rest of the computer" upgrade - i5 3570k @ 4.4ghz, 16gb ram, etc

Hopefully, I'll be proven wrong and some of the "made for the rift" games will prove me wrong and force a gpu upgrade early, but I doubt it.

[garagebattle]

Just spend as much $$ as you can on a graphics card and you won't be disappointed. lol

If you skimp and get something midrange there's no point. You'll just have to upgrade again later.

You'll want a GTX 680 or above for the consumer version. I'm running a Titan right now and it's obviously extreme overkill
but a for me it's worth because its a perfectly smooth experience with the highest possible quality settings. Many other
cards will do that. Always look at the bandwidth you'll want a card with 150+ GB/S memory bandwidth and at least
a 256bit bus. GDDR5 really has it's advantages too.

The 770 overrides the 680 in cost/performance.

Ive been through this pretty good on my own:


1. 650ti: not enough bang for the buck - $170
2. 7870/660: not enough bang for the buck - $210
3. 660ti: too pricey, beat by 7870xt - $300
2. 7870 XT/LE - sweet spot - $200
3. 7950 - too pricey, 7870xt nearly as fast - $280
4. 770 - sweet spot - $400
5. 7970- too pricey, beat by 770 - $380
6. 680 - beat by 770 - $400

[Direlight]

which actually has a pretty poor resolution, so you won't even play games in demanding high resolutions.

Actually, you're playing in 3d and I believe you can set the resolution to 1080p and the box scales it down. (anyone confirmed this yet?)

Rift will be more demanding as you can't play at low framerates like a 3d monitor, unless you want headaches etc. Resolution will be going up to for actual release, needing even more performance.

Let's not spout factually incorrect information which has been debunked by the entire Oculus team and basic common sense. Mods need to be giving out warnings too, we don't need people ruining this thing with false promises.


Either get a fast computer or be severely limited in game selection, most of you probably would of been better off dropping $300 on upgrades right before commercial release. Most the graphics cards mentioned on this forum are not fast enough for 1080p 3d, @ 60fps on low settings, take a gander at GPU benchmarks for evidence.


Right now we're mainly seeing very old games that run even on slow macbooks (doom3, tf2, etc.) @ 720p giving the false impression it's not demanding.


Modern games need modern hardware.

[boone188]

ATI or you lose.

[Nedo]

660 Ti

[geekmaster]

ATI or you lose.

You need an Nvidia card to run the real-time Rift ray-tracer (which is pretty awesome). It required CUDA support.

I suppose you would be more accurate to say "ATI and/or you lose."... It all depends on what apps you want to run.

[cybereality]

The GTX 770 looks like a good buy to me, but I haven't actually tried it myself.

[Hicks100]

just picked up a evga signature 2 670 from ebay for £240... now thats best value

go ebay, some great bargains.

[nanicoar]

The best GPU might be the one which you can upgrade, so maybe an enthusiast grade device with SLI or Crossfire.

There's a bit of a war going on over GPGPU where nVidia keeps pushing its CUDA vendor lock-in platform while also supporting OpenCL and AMD sticks to OpenCL like it should. I'm not sure it's a complete loss for the end-user since nVidia has developed some software libraries which are useful and their marketing department has actually managed to sell some very large installations to traditional supercomputing customers. They have the type of business practice which subsidies aggressive pricing in emerging markets with inflated prices for return customers, artificially inflating their brand.
AMD is still playing catch-up to that game, but you get considerably more performance for the money from them. OpenCL libraries are starting to emerge now, but nVidia already has a strangle-hold on a lot of projects.

As a developer with an eye to VR I'm very interested in OpenGL/OpenCL interoperability since it translates to high-performance computer graphics (CG) and computer vision (CV). The Rift doesn't use CV yet but it appears to be in the pipeline. - The software project to watch out for in this area is OpenCV, which already has a lot of OpenCL acceleration.

Note, OpenCL isn't restricted to GPUs, but CUDA is.

Watch out with laptops. The Nvidia ones use Optimus, which sounds cool but actually cripples external output. I have the Lenovo Y570 and you can only use the Nvidia GPU on the laptop screen. If you plug in an external monitor (say, the Rift), then it uses integrated Intel GPU. I'm not sure if they have fixed this on the newer chips, but its like that with the 555M and other models around that time.

You can usually disable Optimus via the BIOS, and if you can't your OEM has probably released an update for doing that since Optimus keeps having problems. - Note, read the instructions before updating the BIOS since it probably isn't cumulative.

[Leahy]

Regarding laptops with Optimus, I believe some of them are intel graphics only for the VGA out but have the HDMI connected to through the GPU so should be OK for the Rift. However with a big purchase like a gaming laptop it's best to assume the worst until confirmed otherwise

[cybereality]

For GPGPU there is also Microsoft's DirectCompute, but it doesn't have nearly as much documentation and material available as CUDA or OpenCL. It does work on both AMD and Nvidia cards, though.

[Xemakon]

well I hate giving up the mobility of a laptop, but I took everyones advice and spent my money on a nice pre-built.

ASUS
i7 3770 3.4ghz
32 gb RAM
1TB 7200 rpm HD
GTX-650 1GB DDR5
DVD drive, tons of USB ports and other various bells and whisltes.

about $900 at the local electronics store. I wish it would have had a 660 but I can fix that down the line. All in all I'm pretty happy with it.

[crespo80]

If you don't want to give up on portability but need an Overclocked Core i5 4770K and a Geforce Titan, there's the small evergreen Lian-Li PC-TU200 mini-ITX case, you can make a tranportable little 12 pounds monster

[garagebattle]

well I hate giving up the mobility of a laptop, but I took everyones advice and spent my money on a nice pre-built.

ASUS
i7 3770 3.4ghz
32 gb RAM
1TB 7200 rpm HD
GTX-650 1GB DDR5
DVD drive, tons of USB ports and other various bells and whisltes.

about $900 at the local electronics store. I wish it would have had a 660 but I can fix that down the line. All in all I'm pretty happy with it.

if you havent pulled the trigger yet I would suggest against that build.

That price seems WAY over what it should cost.

I would do:


i5
16gb ram
128gb SSD for OS / graphics drivers
2tb for storage
7870 XT for graphics (sell the free games off - make money back).

No need for a pre built, no need for a shop built. Let me know I think we could turn this thread into a nice build thread, do a line by line....

at the same point this is becoming off rift topic.


IN CAPS I TYPE - VIDEO CARD >>> CPU. Dudes are still pulling good FPS on Core 2 Duos with modern video cards. an i5 will more than cover it.

[Xemakon]

Well, speaking to the topic; I do belive that for the cost the 7870 or the nvidia 660 would be the way to go.

As far that asus I bought I'm pretty satisfied with the price. Keep in mind that is store bought and pre-built.

Definatley could have saved $100 or so if would have went the online & DIY route. But I work full time +OT, and I make a decent salary. To me the extra time wasn't worth the savings.

[cybereality]

I am still running a C2D @ 3GHz. Would upgrade the video card every so often to keep it current. Originally built it with an 8800 GTS, then went to GTX 285, then to GTX 470, a few months ago I added another GTX 470 for SLI. Still seems to have life in it, and I am able to play new games @ 1080P in 3D (with moderate settings). Probably not worth it to me to upgrade this rig any further, so I will just ride it out as long as I can and then build a new rig. But it's still alive.

[garagebattle]

I am still running a C2D @ 3GHz. Would upgrade the video card every so often to keep it current. Originally built it with an 8800 GTS, then went to GTX 285, then to GTX 470, a few months ago I added another GTX 470 for SLI. Still seems to have life in it, and I am able to play new games @ 1080P in 3D (with moderate settings). Probably not worth it to me to upgrade this rig any further, so I will just ride it out as long as I can and then build a new rig. But it's still alive.

best part is you can buy an i5 processor, buy a new mb, and ram, and plug all of the rest into it and keep rocking. those 470's will last at least another 12 months before its time to pull the wallet out for something more....and you can still sell the 470s!

[Alkapwn]

Does this statement still hold true?

2. 7870 XT/LE - sweet spot - $200

I'd very much like to purchase a new graphics card this week and was just wondering if there's been any updates that would make a 7870 not the best choice for around $200 price point.

Here's the one I'm looking at getting. I have like a $200 Gift Card for Best Buy Canada.

http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/dia ... ageIndex=1

[WiredEarp]

I'm actually in the process of specing/building a portable Rift box, using a micro-ITX motherboard and case, i5, 8-16GB RAM, and a 120GB SSD. I intend to run a GTX760 or similar if the GTS460 in my older box doesn't cut it.

I intend to also use it for a LAN gaming box, as moving my TJ07 case is just not easy.

[WiredEarp]

Dudes are still pulling good FPS on Core 2 Duos with modern video cards. an i5 will more than cover it.

It really depends on what you are running. For Rift demos, C2D is probably fine.
Try playing BF3 on a C2D machine, and no matter what vid card you put in, you'll have issues. BF3 uses multiple cores quite well, going to a quad core from a dual is a significant increase. Its playable, but not so good on bigger maps.

[Ryuuken24]

Why buy a new card, Ebay has a huge selection of graphics card for little money.