New video card or wait?

MikeF

Hey guys, just wondering if anyone has some suggestions for a good video card or knows of any impending release that i should hold out for?

I'm not to up to date on current cards and the latest in the hardware market in general so any suggestions would be great.

Rite now i'm running a gtx460 and its still decent enough but now i'm doing a lot more development with head mounted displays and being limited to only 2 dvi ports is killing me. So ideally i'd need something that has at least 2 dvi ports and 1 hdmi (with the ability to have 3 displays running simultaneously) . Also something that wont break the bank would be an added bonus.

Thanks!

Add3r

I would wait for the 900 series cards to come out, they will be relatively affordable compared to the past pricing of the higher end cards (the 980 should be $450 I think? I paid that amount for my 770 4gb almost exactly a year ago, and its nearly 25% faster). That or get a 770 4gb when the new series comes out, should be in the mid to high 200 range is my guess, which is an absolute steal and will be getting a second at that point myself.

The 970's will be in the 300 range but should be easily double the power of your current 460, and EASILY be able to push 3 monitors (even a fourth through mini display port, I believe, it was the same on the 770/780's). Its well, well, wellllllll worth the investment for a long lasting GPU that can power through anything you throw at it. Getting a 970 or 980 though, would worry about your CPU at that point as the high 900 series cards might be bottle-necked quite a bit during games and other heavy tasks.

What CPU and RAM setup are you running currently? That should be able to help us determine if money should be spent on those before hand.

EarthQuake

980? Do you mean 880? Or is nVidia skipping the 800 series and going right to the 900 series?
edit: Looks like that is the case, weird. http://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-geforce-gtx-980m-geforce-gtx-970-geforce-gtx-970m-3dmark-firestrike-performance-numbers-unveiled/
Looks like the 970, which is as fast as the current 780 will be price at $400, or about $50 cheaper than you can buy a 780 for.

I have a 770 4GB which I paid about $370, its very good, the 2GB version is about $320 or so. You can basically always get more for your money if you wait, but when the next generation comes, well, then you could wait until the generation after that and REALLY get your moneys worth, or what about the gen after that?

Seriously though, it depends on how big of a need it is to get a new card. If its not a pressing need, probably best to wait until the next generation. If you want to buy something today, a 770 or 780 are both very good cards.

MikeF

Thanks for the info
I'm running a core i5-2500 @ 3.3ghz and 16mb ddr3 ram
I dont think i'll have much of a budget for a processor upgrade along with the video card, so hopefully that wont be that big of a problem with the 900 series you're talking about

EarthQuake

How much your CPU is an issue will depend on exactly what you're doing. For cpu intensive tasks like rendering AO and stuff like that, a new GPU won't help.

But for gpu intensive tasks like high end games, running many high resolution monitors, or gpu-based renderers like Marmoset Toolbag, a new gpu will help, even with your existing cpu.

MikeF

yeah for sure, I honestly wouldnt mind moving up to an i7 to speed up my bakes, but priority here is to make development with HMD's easier, so really i'm just after that third input and an all around upgrade while i'm at it.

ZacD

Also a side benefit for waiting for the 900 series, if you plan on getting a 2560x1440 or 4k display, the 900 series should have more vram and higher memory bandwidth, both of which start to limit performance at those higher resolutions.