Perpetual graphics card purchasing strategy

di11on

Hi folks,

I'm thinking of upgrading my graphics card and have been reading the various discussions and comparisons of the various cards.

But here is a question... if I were to treat this not as a single purchase but as a recurring purchase - what is the optimal strategy? Say I want to always have a card that can play the latest games (or lets say 95% of the latest games to eliminate the outliers) at, say > 40 fps. What would the optimal strategy be?

To simplify things you could say, if I always bought the GTX x60 series, how long would it be till I had to buy a new GTX x60 card vs how long if I always bought GTX x70 etc.... then, on average, how much to I have to pay per year to be able to play games at >40fps?

Does such an analysis exist?

ED E

It'd need to be a "tic toc" or "tic tic toc" system of GPU GPU CPU/ram. Infinitely upgrading cards in a pentium 4 box won't work out so well

di11on

Sure - you'd have to do the same calc for each piece/combination of software... but assuming you weren't been held back by the other hardware at any point in time, you can workout the optimal replacement strategy for the gpu.

My feeling is that it would be the GTX x60 range

ED E

Id say x870 would be my target but AMD just changed the naming convention so is it x70 or x70X?

Really the tech world moves too fast to plan like that. Have to re-evaluate each cycle.

btkm8unsl0w5r4

It all really depends on what resolution you plan to game at. 1080p is a totally different proposition to 4k. A 970 will be good for years and years at 970. Maybe best to think about SLI (especially given direct X 12 sli improvements) Get a good card and when it falls below par get another the same at a significantly lower price than the original.

Taylor365

I'm on a 7870.

Has handled most things well at 40-60fps.

I'll probably upgrade to a r9 290x or r9 380x depending on which is cheaper when the latter comes out.

Cuddlesworth

Always aim for slightly higher than mid end gear. Never buy the top shelf stuff unless somebody else is paying. At this stage upgrade the graphics card every 2 years or so, the processor/ram/mobo every 4 or 5.

For example I'd have the equivalent of a mid range first gen I5(Nehalem), running at about 2.8ghz turbo. And I have rotated through a 4870 and 7870 in the last 4 years. Both cars picked up for around 150-200 Euros.

Its only recently that the processor is really struggling in games and I need to start jacking down the graphics settings.

I think I'm getting a FX-8350 machine soon, so that with some small overclocking will be the replacement.

Luck100

My strategy is to always go with the price/performance sweet spot at the upper midrange. In the last few years that was the GTX 670 and then the 970 on the NVidia side. The weaker cards are not good enough for my needs and the stronger ones are poor value. NVidia vs AMD is a more personal decision as there is more in play than just numbers.

The worst thing is to think you need to buy something "future-proof". With GPUs you'll do better by hitting the price/performance sweet spot and selling/upgrading in two years, rather than overspending for a premium model and holding it for 4 or 5 years. If I had gone with the GTX 680 rather than the 670, I'd still be replacing it at the same time - after a couple of years the difference between the two is rounding error compared to what a new card at the same price level will do. Same will be true with the 970 vs the 980 in two or three years.

ShadowHearth

I usually aim to cards that are between mid range and high ends. I did bought my last gpus the high end when it was launched ( 680 ). I just wanted to get the feeling off " I want highest gpu you can get" out of my system. Its still a beefy card and gives a run for its money to all games I throw at it, but my next gpu will be the good old fashioned - best bang for your money. If I would upgrade now, it would be 290x or 970. 960 is way too weak and 980 is way to expensive for not a massive improvement ( nothing new there with high end stuff )

Solitaire

Good to see I'm the only one still plodding along with an i5-760+HD6850 @ 1080p setup, which I've had practically since launch :P

To be fair, this Christmas was the first one in a long time where my eye was wandering on to HWVS' GPU page... 270 was getting down to some very tempting prices, quite a bit less than the pittance i paid for the 6850 back in the auld days...