Upgrading my gaming PC or building a new one advice

[tonberrian]

It should be noted that Kaby Lake and Zen chips will support nothing earlier than Windows 10.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Let's get a couple of things straight.

There is one difference between the 1050 Ti and the 1070 that matters, and that's their ability to create as pretty graphics for the screen to display as quickly as possible. The GTX 1070 costs over twice as much as the GTX 1070 because it's over twice as powerful.

In practical terms, it means the 1050 Ti is fast enough to play AAA titles currently being released at 60 frames per second on a 1920x1080 monitor or close to it, if you turn down some of the details. The GTX 1070, seeing this, lets out a belly laugh, shoves the 1050 Ti aside and delivers 100 frames per second or more on the "high" or "very high" setting. Most monitors cannot physically display that kind of framerate fast enough.

But if you use a 2560x1440 monitor, the GPU has to pump out vastly more pixels. The 1050 Ti will be at around 30-40 fps in that case, for example, while the 1070 still has a fairly easy time meeting the 60 fps target with room to spare.

If you have a 4k monitor (3840x2160 pixels), the 1050 Ti gives out a whimper, and even the 1070 fails to meet the 60 fps target, likely getting more like 40 fps. To get smooth 60 fps play on these monitors, you need the GTX 1080 Ti, the new Godzilla among GPUs that was released just recently. It's another 60% faster than the GTX 1070.

Clockrate doesn't have any bearing on how powerful a card is, by the way. The only way to measure it is benchmarks; tests done to compare cards with each other in real life. If you have specific games you like to play, it's a good idea to find benchmarks done with many different GPUs within that game.



Incidentally, if the GTX 1070 is a muscle car, and the GTX 1050 Ti is a decent SUV, the GT 730 is a rusty bicycle. The GTX 1050 Ti is over six times as fast. The GT 730 has no business anywhere near a dedicated gaming PC; the only legitimate use for a card that weak is for PCs that don't have integrated graphics for one reason or another. But it's often the cheapest graphics cards that big stores will put on their shelves, and Nvidia has absolutely no issue writing lots of nice words about it on the box. Something like "3x faster than integrated graphics!" Which is like saying that walking is faster than lying down prone and pulling yourself along with your teeth. To Nvidia's credit, they don't seem to even be making cards that weak anymore. There is no desktop card below the GTX 950 and the GTX 1050.

tl;dr version: Go with the 1050-Ti because I don't have a monitor or an eyeball capable of telling the difference between it and the 1070. Got it.

Incidentally... the 730 was the card I had in this to begin with. Five years ago. When the 10 series didn't yet exist. However, since I still have my 3.5 Ghz 8 core proc and AM3+ board, I can now upgrade to a 1050-Ti and get all the GPU performance I need, and then some. Your information is appreciated. Your condescending tone is less so.

Incidentally, the GTX 1050 Ti is not a very cost-effective card. AMD's RX 470 is marginally more expensive, but a lot faster. The main appeal of the GTX 1050 Ti is that it requires very little power to run - so little that there are versions of it that don't need a power connection from the PSU; they plug directly into the motherboard, which can be a godsend for people with a low budget who have a really small PSU.

I've got a huge honkin' PSU. However, I also run Linux. Which now has driver support for Nvidia 10x cards. Which means I can take full advantage of h.264 encoding and Xsplit streaming. AMD's cards still don't have Linux support, and aren't looking like they are going to do it any time soon.

So, for me, the choice is obvious... 1050-Ti.

[Silfir]

Your information is appreciated. Your condescending tone is less so.

What on Earth brought this on?

Is this about the GT 730? All I wanted was to give you an idea how it stacked up to the cards you're considering at the moment. If it sounded like I called you stupid for having one: that could not have been further from my intentions. I have no idea when and how you got it and why.

Is this a thing you do often? Ask for explanations, and then go "tl;dr" on people who make an effort to write one? I kind of want that time back now.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

What on Earth brought this on?

Is this about the GT 730? All I wanted was to give you an idea how it stacked up to the cards you're considering at the moment. If it sounded like I called you stupid for having one: that could not have been further from my intentions. I have no idea when and how you got it and why.

Is this a thing you do often? Ask for explanations, and then go "tl;dr" on people who make an effort to write one? I kind of want that time back now.

I asked 'what will the extra cash actually get me', you proceeded to go and bash everything that wasn't at least on par with the 1070, implying that anyone that didn't have one 'shouldn't bother gaming', and basically looked down your nose at anyone remotely considering cost vs power. At least that was the impression that I got.

So, in short, if what I am understanding is correct:

• If you have a 1080p monitor, don't bother with the 1070 because not only can the Mk. I Eyeball not tell the difference, neither can the monitor itself.
• If you have a 1440p monitor, then playing something like Fallout 4 at max settings might chug from time to time if you look very carefully, but odds are against realistically seeing it as your eyes cannot tell the difference between 30 and 60 FPS, the extra buffer is simply there so that FPS dips which inevitably happen don't dip down into the noticeable range.
• If you have a 4k monitor, you'll need to either dial back your video settings to 'reasonable' or upgrade to the 1070.

In other words, the only time you will actually see any visible performance impact when comparing a 1050 Ti and a 1070 is on a 4k monitor, or on a 1440p monitor if you squint really hard while pushing your graphics settings to the ultramax on the latest generation high-graphics games like Fallout 4.

Your focus on AAA titles and arrogant dismissal of anyone who doesn't play on ultramax settings is what caused my response, for which I apologize. Your information was really quite valuable, and was both useful and helped me determine which card to obtain. And I really do appreciate that.

But your attitude was the quintessential 'arrogant l33t gamer'.

[Silfir]

I definitely bashed the GT 730. I absolutely did not bash the GTX 1050 Ti, other than saying that it doesn't offer a good performance/cost ratio when you compare it to the RX 470. Since you're saying Nvidia cards do better on Linux than AMD's do, it's a perfectly sensible option.

I have no idea how you got anything of the rest, given that I wrote the following:

You don't buy GPUs based on SLI or VR ready or anything like that - you consult benchmarks to find out how powerful they are, compare that to how much you [sic] cost, then figure out which the most cost-effective card is that meets the standard of gaming you want for yourself.

I even pointed out straight after that the GTX 1050 and RX 460 are also worth getting, just in case you wanted a cheaper option than the GTX 1050 Ti.

And I called the GTX 1070 a "muscle car". Doesn't that show that I think of it as a luxury item?

I'm sorry, I really think you rolled a 1 on your reading comprehension check there. I also really don't think it's a good idea to get caught up in "average user vs. l33t gamer" tribalism. It just causes bad blood. (I do think "your eyes cannot tell the difference between 30 and 60 FPS" is nonsense, but that's not a discussion I can see going anywhere good.)

[Gnoman]

I asked 'what will the extra cash actually get me', you proceeded to go and bash everything that wasn't at least on par with the 1070, implying that anyone that didn't have one 'shouldn't bother gaming', and basically looked down your nose at anyone remotely considering cost vs power. At least that was the impression that I got.

So, in short, if what I am understanding is correct:

• If you have a 1080p monitor, don't bother with the 1070 because not only can the Mk. I Eyeball not tell the difference, neither can the monitor itself.
• If you have a 1440p monitor, then playing something like Fallout 4 at max settings might chug from time to time if you look very carefully, but odds are against realistically seeing it as your eyes cannot tell the difference between 30 and 60 FPS, the extra buffer is simply there so that FPS dips which inevitably happen don't dip down into the noticeable range.
• If you have a 4k monitor, you'll need to either dial back your video settings to 'reasonable' or upgrade to the 1070.

You have several major misunderstandings.

First, the notion that you can't see higher than 30 FPS is pure myth. You might find it to be a subtle difference not worth caring about, but it exists, and your eye can see it. The theoretical capability of humans is around 1000 FPS, while most studies of the practical limitation put it around 150. Further, it is extremely rare to find a monitor that is capped at 30, so the monitor is also capable of noticing the difference.

Second, framerates above whatever you consider to be important, or even above the refresh rate of the monitor, are extremely handy, because most games WILL lag at some point, and there is a huge difference between taking a 20 FPS lag hit at 30 (reducing it to an unplayable near-slideshow for a few seconds), and a 20FPS hit at 120 (reducing it to 100, which you'll never notice)

Third, your eyes can totally see the difference between 30 and 60 FPS

Fourth, it isn't just "Fallout 4 at max settings at 4K" that will overwhelm a 1050. Plenty of current titles will do so, and selecting your card just on the basis of what is currently out is not necessarily a good decision- newer games will assume that capability is there, and build to those requirements instead of catering to older hardware. This is the reason a 730 is now obsolete in the first place.

[Triaxx]

I know I can't tell the difference between 30 and 60 FPS. Put something side by side, and I'll get the answer wrong most of the time as to which is which. Everyone's eyes are different, so gross generalizations in either direction aren't helpful. I know some people who get headaches if they're not getting 60FPS. I can play games down to 10 without issue, but don't notice if they go past 30.

[Erloas]

The difference in FPS isn't equally felt across all games, not even necessarily similar games.
The origins of the 30fps had to do with watching film and the fact that you can "slip" in frames that don't match the ones around it and people don't really notice. Which has a lot more to do with how the brain basically skips over things that it doesn't expect to see. Of course the same thing also shows that the eyes are fast enough that they do pick up things on those frames even if we aren't really conscious of it.

A big difference between games and movies is what you are looking for and what sort of information is "important" to your brain. Some small thing moving quickly on the edge of the frame is of no real consequence to a movie, and if it is they'll use a que to to draw your attention to it. But in a game that same situation could be a lot more important and you are actively looking for things like that. And in those cases it isn't so much that at 60 fps you'll see it that much earlier than at 30fps, it is that your eyes scanning for things like that will pick up the "jumps" that you would normally tune out.

I know I can't really play anything without v-sync enabled because the screen tearing gets to me very quickly.

On the not FPS side of things, there are a lot of settings in games that can make the game playable on slower machines. But in many of those games if you can turn all of those settings on it can almost be like a completely different game. And obviously if you have a very high resolution then you'll have to cut back more, but some games can still have problems on "regular" resolutions if you try to turn on all the effects and don't have a great video card.

[factotum]

The main problem with games only playing at 30fps isn't what they look like, it's input lag. When you make a control input to a game that's running at 30fps, you can't possibly see what the result of that was until the next frame is rendered, so there's a delay between activating the control and seeing the result which can cause problems in twitch games. I don't play games like that myself (I even play first person shooters slowly and carefully) so I don't really see the problems, but that won't be the case for everyone and for all games.

[wumpus]

One obvious issue between 30fps and 60fps is if your eyes get locked tracking one object/reference/background and another object/reference/background is moving against it, your eyes will suddenly notice the "jerkiness" that they would otherwise miss. The best example I've seen (since 3dFX made a demo for this so long ago) was the opening sequence in Oblivion [Elder Scrolls IV]: the game played well at 30fps (for me, anyway) but the introduction had towers zip by the slowly panning keep. Since your eyes were following the keep, the towers appeared to stutter along. Just another examples of obvious bugs left in an otherwise great Bethesda game.

While movies get away with being 24fps, it requires cinematographers to carefully frame each shot. I wouldn't expect sports shot at 1080p (30fps) to work nearly as well.

Also, don't forget the lag. I'm guessing most of the "lag issues" are due to each frame being pipelined: expect any reaction to your input to wait more than one frame (thanks to both hardware and software issues). This time can add up.

[Erloas]

Usually (or maybe previously...) input lag was generally considered how quickly the display changed to what it is receiving. Usually TVs are the worst about this because it doesn't matter in general TV watching, if the screen is a full 1 second behind the signal coming in you would never notice but for games it is a huge difference. And the more circuitry that is required from taking the input signal to what the display actually needs the longer it is, usually HDMI is better than coax. VGA to a CRT was, but VGA to a LCD was much slower. Of course that's all old now, no one has CRTs and VGA is pretty much gone. But you still tend to have monitors with lower input latency than TVs.

Of course really you have to take the whole system into account. Generally though input (mouse and keyboard) and processing times are very fast so you'll never notice those.

Found this on wikipedia

Testing has found that overall "input lag" (from controller input to display response) times of approximately 200 ms are distracting to the user.[6] It also appears that (excluding the monitor/television display lag) 133 ms is an average response time and the most sensitive games (fighting games, first person shooters and rhythm games) achieve response times of 67 ms (excluding display lag).

When you consider that 30fps is 33ms between frames and the average LCD has a refresh rate of 60hz, or 16.7ms between frames you've used a decent portion of that before you even get to the display input lag. Of course you can also see where if you have a faster input monitor you might not notice the same frame rate compared to a slower input monitor. Although "input delay" is not really the sort of spec anyone prints on their TVs or monitors unless they are very specifically targeted at gamers. Also worth noting that input delay and btb or gtg LCD response times are different and also play a role in everything, those specs tend to be much more common.

In the end though the biggest issue with FPS, as others have mentioned, is not what your average FPS is, it is what it falls to during times of stress. There are many demo/testing programs out there that will record/display FPS while it runs a set sequence and you can see where some scenes they're running at 200fps and others were it drops down to 20-40fps. And of course usually the biggest hits to FPS comes when the most action is going on and when it is most important. So aiming for 30-40FPS at average means its really going to start dropping when you get into the most action packed parts of whatever game you're playing.
And being able to run a few levels of AA, higher detail levels, and various other post processing effects is usually very much worth it.

To me it doesn't make any sense to spend the money to upgrade if you're not going to be seeing great improvements. Spending $300 to see a 10-15fps increase at the same settings when you can save up a bit more and do $600 and see more than double the FPS increase at higher settings makes more sense.

[Godfathachris]

Cool what sort of processor are you putting in it.

[Beleriphon]

For me I'm building up a new system and I'm definitely looking at the GTX 1070 as my GFX option. Its less about bashing games over the head now to make them cry like a baby, and more about making sure my GFX card is up to par to run games very well in five years. My existing system can run default Skyrim on an older GFX card. When Elder Scrolls 6 comes out I want it to run at the highest possible settings, same thing with other games coming out in the next few years. I don't have a 4K monitor, but I want to make sure I can run any game I want with decent settings.

Also, I want to play WoW at like 200 FPS just because the idea of doing so makes me giggle.

[wumpus]

Also, I want to play WoW at like 200 FPS just because the idea of doing so makes me giggle.

If you just want to giggle and go back to more reasonable settings, I'd suggest cranking it down to 640x480 and minimal graphics and see just how many frames your CPU can spit out (with almost no graphics).

Note that with a GTX0750 card it really won't cost you anything to simply throw away extra frames (that thing is extremely efficient). With a an AMD 480 card (more power, not sure about cost) you might want to only render what you can see.