Was I penny wise and pound foolish? (Video Card Question)

Sassy_Gay_Unicorn

So I recently bought a new computer for gaming. MMORPGs are my genre of choice. 

In trying to stay within a budget I opted for  [1 x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 - 4GB [FREE Upgrade to EVGA Superclocked] - Single Card ] so that I could get an i7 processor:

1 x Intel® Core™ i7-4790K Processor (4x 4.0GHz/8MB L3 Cache) - Intel® Core™ i7-4790K

My reasoning was that I could later update the graphics card when they go on sale in a year. 

However, I constantly see the 970 being mentioned by other gamers, never the 960. 

Question: Is there a serious technology gap between the two? 

I will mainly be playing ESO, and hopefully The Division and Black Desert Online. I was hoping to play them at max settings, but now I am wondering if I have gimped myself. 

Thank you for your time.

tawess

Nope it is mostly just e-peen. 

A bit like having a super souped up M-B compared to the base edition. Sure the balck series does put out more grunt but how often du you actually use it.  

I´d say you did the right thing.  

Sassy_Gay_Unicorn

Thank you, @tawess !

Quizzical

Basically, if you take the GM204 chip in the GTX 980 and cut it in half, you loosely have the GM206 chip in the GTX 960.  If you take the GM204 chip and disable 3 of the 16 compute units and some other bits, you have the GTX 970.  They're the same architecture, but the GTX 970 basically has more of everything.

Whether it was a reasonable purchase depends on what your options were.  I generally wouldn't go for a Core i7 over a Core i5 if it means having to seriously cut back elsewhere, but a GTX 960 isn't bad.  Performance is commonly in the ballpark of a Radeon R9 380, so you're competitive with top end single-GPU cards from four years ago.

If you got a Core i7 without getting an SSD, on the other hand, then you seriously goofed and the GPU has nothing to do with it.

Though my experience is that when people who buy something random first and then later ask if it was a sensible purchase, it usually wasn't.

Ridelynn

Depends on how much you paid really, and what your budget is. I've seen 970's as low as $240US, which is a steal, but they usually sit around $320. I've seen 960's as low as $170US, which is really good, they usually go around $220US

Retail, the 970 is about $100US more than the 960, or an additional 50% more in price over a 960.  It's not quite 50% faster though:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1595?vs=1596

The 970 is a highly recommended card because, at 1080 resolution, it can pretty well max out most games today, and it doesn't break the bank at around $300+/- US. A 960 will still perform well, but you'll have to drop from MAX MAX to High in some newer titles (Division maybe, ESO probably not).

If you don't mind turning down a few settings off MAX MAX, but still generally being able to play on High settings, the 960 is a perfectly sensible card. Depending on how much it cost you.

Seelinnikoi

A R9 390 will beat the 970 and 960.

And it wont have the 3.5gb ram fiasco.

Ridelynn

Seelinnikoi said:

A R9 390 will beat the 970 and 960.

And it wont have the 3.5gb ram fiasco.

A Fury X will beat them too. I don't see the point. If your just considering performance as the only metric, a lot of things will beat a 970 and 960.

But I'm willing to bet there is availability and a budget to consider somewhere in all this.

IceAge

Well, in terms of performance, you lost around 30% "power" . That is quite a lot if you ask me. 

Never, cut your video-card budget. And I mean like .. never! 

- buy a smaller HDD in terms of G's or T's 
- don't go blindly and think that 16 GB of RAM is a big difference then 8, or it will be a better option then buying a better video card.
- don't buy that shinny cute nice awesome case. buy one which is doing the job.

Build a computer exactly in this order :  

1) CPU - yes, is the most important aspect of your computer. Go for higher Ghz per core.
2) MB - The motherboard must be on the same "line" as your CPU. Your CPU will work at his full speed only if your MB is ... "allowing" it.
3) Video Card - No reasons to explain why

So those are the most important aspect from your computer. You never cut your budget on those. Never!

Next will be : 

4) HDD - Go for SSD as a main Hard Disk. Why? Because SSD ... hello!
5) RAM - Some will put ram on 4 . I would have put it also, few years ago , but not in today's tech. 8 GB of ram is more then enough to do and play like whatever you want. You can upgrade to 16 if you want, just after you have the above and you still have cash left to spend on your computer.

Mentions : Don't be cheap on coolers, especially the CPU one. 

Rest, you can solo choose  

Cleffy

I think your decision was fine. It's about a $100 difference between the i7 and i5 with the i7 having about 15% higher stock clock. This is especially true when you consider where we are today and in the next 5 years. CPUs aren't going to go much further for the time being so its going to be a piece of hardware you can retain for quite a number of years. The GPUs finally got a die-shrink and will probably see considerable gains in the next few years. If you have the mindset that you are replacing your GPU in a year or two it makes much more sense to spend less on the GPU, especially when the cheaper GPU will play nearly all games on max settings during that time period.

The i7 is also a safe bet on where developers may shift their focus in the coming years. Especially for strategy games and mmorpgs which are more CPU-bound.

Vrika

GTX 960 is good enough card, and a wise purchase.

But buying it together with expensive I7 was foolish. I5 + GTX 970 would have costs the same but performed better.

breadm1x

Smart move.
When the new card's come out later this year u can upgrade the vid card easily.
CPU is a powerhouse. it kicks the every i5 out of the water.
Its faster then a 6700k and cheaper (same cpu just with an "better" intergrated vid card witch you dont need)
Peeps that say an i5 is better for gaming are peeps that cant afford an i7.

Sassy_Gay_Unicorn

Very illuminating thread, I appreciate each and every one of you who took the time to respond. 
I did go with an SSD, looking forward to that. I got upgraded from 8GB of ram to 16GB for free. 
Anyhow, thanks for helping an old dude out who has fallen behind the times.

Quizzical

Sassy_Gay_Unicorn said:

Very illuminating thread, I appreciate each and every one of you who took the time to respond. 
I did go with an SSD, looking forward to that. I got upgraded from 8GB of ram to 16GB for free. 
Anyhow, thanks for helping an old dude out who has fallen behind the times.

Getting a "free" upgrade from A to B only means that you would have had to pay for B even if you got A instead.  "Free" upgrades are almost invariably paid for by higher base prices.  A lot of sites that sell computers invariably have some special deal going that nominally looks like it's hundreds of dollars in savings.  But that's not a real sale in any meaningful sense.

In some cases, a site will take something that you could get for $1000 elsewhere, claim that it's nominally worth $2000 for no real reason in particular, but say that it's at a huge discount and you can have it for $1500 if you buy it today.

Where did you buy the computer, anyway, and what were the options?

centkin

You made the right choice.  You decided to future proof your machine by going with a video card that will perform adequately now with a processor that is better that you would NOT be upgrading if you bought the 970 vs the 960.  When pascal or the card after it comes out (however long you can hold out with the 960 before it starts to be an issue for you) you will get a much better card than the 970. 

Wizardry

I had to check and yes i have the same chip.I got it a year or so ago and i am very happy with it.It is or was a really good budget cpu,i play all games and i have a horrid gpu.
Only thing i remember was there were two variations of the 4790 one is a lot inferior from the other and a shotty business would have no problems panning off the cheaper one to customers.I believe the cheaper version was basically designed for those all in one computers but can find it's way into regular desktop machines.

I see the lower versions end with letters like 4790 S or T and then the 479 and then a newer version is the K series which is suppose to O/C better.

As for GPU's i got caught in that racket a long time,i never noticed big improvements with expensive GPU's.You have to be careful your mobo actually gets the most out of the GPU.

Gdemami

You wasted your budget on I7 which is something you do not need for gaming:

1) apart from strategy games, your CPU requirements will be very modest
2) performance gains over new generation of CPU(and GPU) are very small these days


Non-overclockable i5-4570S  + GTX 970 would be way more efficient.

Quizzical

Gdemami said:

Non-overclockable i5-4570S  + GTX 970 would be way more efficient.

Well that's a new one, even for you.  The "S" stands for "Slow".  (Not literally, but it helps if you think of it that way.)  The "S" version of an Intel desktop CPU means they take the same chip as a non-S version and clock it lower to reduce power consumption.  This doesn't make the chip cheaper; it only makes it slower.  The "T" version is clocked lower yet.  That's a reasonable thing to do if you're trying to fit a very small form factor and a 95 W chip might cause overheating.  It's about what Intel does with laptop versions of the same chips.  But it's not a reasonable thing to do in a normal gaming desktop.

Gdemami

Quizzical said:

Well that's a new one, even for you.  The "S" stands for "Slow".  (Not literally, but it helps if you think of it that way.)  The "S" version of an Intel desktop CPU means they take the same chip as a non-S version and clock it lower to reduce power consumption.  This doesn't make the chip cheaper; it only makes it slower.  The "T" version is clocked lower yet.  That's a reasonable thing to do if you're trying to fit a very small form factor and a 95 W chip might cause overheating.  It's about what Intel does with laptop versions of the same chips.  But it's not a reasonable thing to do in a normal gaming desktop.

You are free to provide some gaming(or in fact any)benchmarks....oh wait, you never do so because it would ridicule your theorycrafting...

Quizzical

Gdemami said:

Quizzical said:

Well that's a new one, even for you.  The "S" stands for "Slow".  (Not literally, but it helps if you think of it that way.)  The "S" version of an Intel desktop CPU means they take the same chip as a non-S version and clock it lower to reduce power consumption.  This doesn't make the chip cheaper; it only makes it slower.  The "T" version is clocked lower yet.  That's a reasonable thing to do if you're trying to fit a very small form factor and a 95 W chip might cause overheating.  It's about what Intel does with laptop versions of the same chips.  But it's not a reasonable thing to do in a normal gaming desktop.

You are free to provide some gaming(or in fact any)benchmarks....oh wait, you never do so because it would ridicule your theorycrafting...

You really need benchmarks to tell you that a higher clocked version of a chip runs faster than a lower clocked version of exactly the same chip?

Gdemami

Quizzical said:

You really need benchmarks to tell you that a higher clocked version of a chip runs faster than a lower clocked version of exactly the same chip?

I don't but you do...

(I have seen them btw.)

Ridelynn

I still can't believe this is even being discussed.

You could make the case that an S is "fast enough" - that's the same argument we often use for picking AMD. But that isn't what is being said. To say you need benchmarks to see a slower chip is slower is... ridiculous.

Gdemami

Ridelynn said:

I still can't believe this is even being discussed.

You could make the case that an S is "fast enough" - that's the same argument we often use for picking AMD. But that isn't what is being said. To say you need benchmarks to see a slower chip is slower is... ridiculous.

What is actually ridiculous is how you are placing evidence above (flawed) theorycrafting...

Ridelynn

Gdemami said:

Ridelynn said:

I still can't believe this is even being discussed.

You could make the case that an S is "fast enough" - that's the same argument we often use for picking AMD. But that isn't what is being said. To say you need benchmarks to see a slower chip is slower is... ridiculous.

What is actually ridiculous is how you are placing evidence above (flawed) theorycrafting...

You should actually read what you write sometimes.

Gdemami

Ridelynn said:

You should actually read what you write sometimes.

missing sarcasm tag...

Vrika

Gdemami said:

Ridelynn said:

I still can't believe this is even being discussed.

You could make the case that an S is "fast enough" - that's the same argument we often use for picking AMD. But that isn't what is being said. To say you need benchmarks to see a slower chip is slower is... ridiculous.

What is actually ridiculous is how you are placing evidence above (flawed) theorycrafting...

@Gdemami ;

Thank you for this post. It's been a while since I laughed this hard last time.

Ridelynn

Gdemami said:

Ridelynn said:

You should actually read what you write sometimes.

missing sarcasm tag...

Sure pal.