gpu upgrade

[gingerterry 16]

Hi all, Firstly  merry xmas to you and a happy new year.

 

My wife, rather foolishly has agreed to a new GPU, she does not know what a GPU is, nor does she know what one does, only that her husband needs to upgrade as he has had this one for about 2 years.

I have been cranking up the overtime at work for the last three months to appease her, and she has finally given in.

I have a budget of around £200 and am looking for a 4 gig card. does anyone have any suggestions for a mid range Nvidia card.

I cannot go SLI as my board does not support it and I have an i5 3570k un-clocked at this time running at 3.40ghz with 14gb of ram.

 

the problem I am trying to cure is CTD since moving to v3. I have tried every tip or hint that I can find yet they are still happening. Reading between the lines on the forums, it may be that my memory on the current GPU, an EGVA GTX660 sc, is not enough.

Many thanks in anticipation for your words of wisdom.

 

BTW the £200 is pretty fixed, I don't want to poke the dear now that she has agreed to let me spend some of MY hard earned cash.

Terry

 

[mikeymike 357]

Sorry to burst your bubble mate but you won't get a good card for 200 especially running p3d v3 which needs the vram

 

I run 2x Titans sc in

Worth the investment rather than upgrading every year

 

I suggest save a little longer and get something like a 980ti

And they will be cheaper

Soon

Just my 2 cents

[dmarques69 316]

Hello Terry,

 

First thing do some overclock in that CPU that is ready for that, you gonna notice some improvements, second, what errors do you see in the event viewer after those CTD's? Do you have the drivers updated?

[gingerterry 16]

win 10 just gives the generic fault error log that nobody seems to be able to help with as I have asked this before. I did try to overclock with the auto overclock programme for my gigabyte MB but it just gave me the BSOD every time. I was thinking about seeing if there are any other OC programmes out there that would fair better but dont really like messing about with the bios and things. all my drivers are up to date according to the win 10 driver updates. many thanks.

[ckyliu 1,749]

I don't get why so many Avsim users believe crazily expensive top-end graphics cards (e.g. SLI Titans) are essential for a good simming experience. The 980Ti just mentioned is over £500, where do these people find the money!? Like everything else, hardware is subject to diminishing returns and there comes a point where doubling the budget will garner little noticeable improvement.

 

Terry, you'll be pleased to know that circa £200 is enough to get a solid mid-range graphics card that will run most games well (including P3D) such as nVidia's GTX 960 or GTX 970 (I'd stretch to the latter if you can). You could even opt for a high-end previous generation card.

 

Of course a 980Ti will be better than the above, but it's not twice the price better.

[gingerterry 16]

Many thanks CKYLIU. I have been looking at the GTX970 over the 960 after reading the reviews. I agree about the cost, it is very expensive to buy titans and if i did then i would just end up with another bottleneck somewhere else.

The thing with this product is that it appeals to the more mature person who are very lucky people out there with cash to burn, and I envy them for that. I am not at that stage in life yet as I still have a large family to look after. I tend to upgrade about every 3 years as this is within my budget.

I can get a gtx970 in the UK for about £240ish and by the time my overtime goes in the bank, I dare say that they might even be a bit cheaper.

I just hope that the $gb will sort my CTD's out with this program. regards

[mikeymike 357]

gingerterry

 

Mate I am in the same boat I have a family to, that is why I save for 5 years and then upgrade so I get higher end and have it for so long.

but yeah if you can hold off and save a little more for the 980ti and it ill be cheaper also.

 

even with a high end pc I have encountered a few ctd

 

computers and software are a big headache mate you spend more  time tweaking than flying if  its not  p3d its windows or a driver etc etc etc lol

 

all the best

[ca_metal 2,015]

Have in mind 970´s have some memory issues. They have 3.5GB of fast memory and 0.5GB of slow memory. 

Prepar3d is VRAM hungry, it can be a problem.

 

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2888877/its-a-feature-not-a-flaw-nvidia-ceo-addresses-geforce-gtx-970s-memory-spec-fiasco.html

[vgbaron 3,508]

970 is the way to go. Almost as good as the 980 but quite a bit cheaper. I've seen no memory issues with it at all. I now run two in SLI.

 

 

Vic

[DylanM 1,069]

Terry, you'll do great with a 970, and I've even seen used 980s show up on ebay if you don't mind going that route (probably Rob clearing up his closet of ancient hardware... ). Either will be a massive upgrade from the 660.

 

Another low cost option is picking up an aftermarket cooler and overclocking your CPU - it should easily make it to 4 or 4.3 GHz (there are a few simple guides on the net) and this should have a significant impact on performance.

 

Good luck!

[dmarques69 316]

Have in mind 970´s have some memory issues. They have 3.5GB of fast memory and 0.5GB of slow memory. 

 

Prepar3d is VRAM hungry, it can be a problem.

 

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2888877/its-a-feature-not-a-flaw-nvidia-ceo-addresses-geforce-gtx-970s-memory-spec-fiasco.html

 

It's not a problem, i never saw my 970 with more than 60% load in P3D v3 even in complex enviroments, on the other hand the cpu it's always working like a slave even with AM changes and HT on or off. P3D it's still more cpu intensive rather then gpu in my opinion.

[gingerterry 16]

Many thanks for the replies, Can I take it that 4bg of memory is the way to go then as 2 just wont cut it any more. I was quite happy with 2.5 and never got any OOM until I changed to three. I always fly with photo-scenery and have medium settings. I did try to OC a couple of times with the gigabyte easy tune but that just gave me BSOD after a couple of minutes. Is there a better OC program that does it all automatically as I have never relished the thought of buggering about with my Bios.

 

I have been looking at pushing the boat out and getting a 980 but was then reading about it needing a bigger PSU. At the moment I have a novatech 600w atx modular PSU, will this run the 980?

 

 

many thanks.

[kevinfirth 1,392]

I upgraded from an AMD radeon 7959 3Gb to a 980Ti and couldn't be happier with it. It eats AA, resolution and slider settings at max. Cheap? no, but it performs like a beast and has me futureproofed for 4k v shortly.

[hychewright 46]

I upgraded from an AMD radeon 7959 3Gb to a 980Ti and couldn't be happier with it. It eats AA, resolution and slider settings at max. Cheap? no, but it performs like a beast and has me futureproofed for 4k v shortly.

+1   980 ti is fantastic !! If you can afford one.  They are a little expensive but well worth the money.

[gingerterry 16]

Many thanks,

                 just been running some tests with process explorer and it shows P3D running at just under 2 gb. If I flip between views it goes over 2gb and CTD. Can I assume that the 2 gb is the limit of the card? I am not a geek by any stretch of the imagination, but the way I understand is that if I had a 4 gb card then I have 2gb to play with.

Again, many thanks