7950 Dying/Dead - Need Replacement

[RussianSensation]

I was talking about 1920x1080. In one benchmark that you posted, it looks that you need two GTX 980 Ti (SLI) and an i7 5960X and so on, just to keep the framerate above 60 fps. Nice. That PC is not at the price point of the GTX 960 2GB buyer.

Which benchmark was that?

You know that you do not have to install HD textures packs and game mods and push all the game graphics settins sliders to "Ultra", right?

For a game like Skyrim? It looks ugly without HD texture packs and I am pretty sure the whole fun of playing that game for years at a time is mods. Besides the point, even without mods, HD7970Ghz crushed a GTX680 so how in the world would a GTX960 be a better experience than a 290 in Skyrim -- that was alluded to earlier in the thread and hence my reply. I will gladly accept being wrong if there is data that shows that a card with 50% less GPU horsepower is somehow better for Skyrim.

user 1:
"I can't speak for the 970, but with my 290x I get frames rates of at least 60 - 75 on my 1080p monitor. I have an ENB and over 100 mods.
I am totally biased, but that extra .5 G is going to help tremendously if you're using ENB and things like grass mods."

user 2:
"970 has 3.5gigs of vram which is definitely something to take into consideration because this texture mods eat your Vram unless you do some serious optimisation. I use close to 4gig Vram with mostly 2k textures..sometimes over that. That's when you experience reduced fps performance and stuttering."

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods...ussion_amd_vs_nvidia_for_skyrim_modding_more/

That rules 960 2GB out for me when in the OP's budget, it's possible to get a $230 R9 290 4GB.

Also, since there is a lot of foliage/grass in Skyrim, being able to apply SSAA/MSAA is a huge benefit to reduce shimmering. TXAA is a blurfest so it's not going to produce a great picture. With SSAA and/or MSAA, the extra 50% GPU horsepower of the 290 is going to be a huge benefit even at 1080P for this title.

 

[Leyawiin]

/sigh. I've as recently as last winter owned an R9 290 and I currently own a GTX 960 2GB. I've logged about 1,500 hours in Skyrim over 4 years (hate to keep repeating myself but oh well). The R9 290 is great "IF" you use a framerate limiter to prevent the vertical sync overshoot stutter/judder (that occurs in certain isolated but regularly experience areas). The GTX 960 2GB is fine with the same quality settings with the HD textures installed on on my 1920x1200 60 Ghz monitor. They both stay at the same FPS in the same areas - gameplay is identical. I use script related mods that have no effect on a GPU but I don't used texture mods. If you do a 3-4 GB card would be a wise investment.

As for the R9 290 being considerably better in general - well of course. It should be since its in an entirely different category and costs $70-$100 more. Shit.

 

[BHZ-GTR]

Wait And I suggest To You Buy New VGA is Coming (R9 380X , GCN 1,2) is Better

 

[MeldarthX]

/sigh. I've as recently as last winter owned an R9 290 and I currently own a GTX 960 2GB. I've logged about 1,500 hours in Skyrim over 4 years (hate to keep repeating myself but oh well). The R9 290 is great "IF" you use a framerate limiter to prevent the vertical sync overshoot stutter/judder (that occurs in certain isolated but regularly experience areas). The GTX 960 2GB is fine with the same quality settings with the HD textures installed on on my 1920x1200 60 Ghz monitor. They both stay at the same FPS in the same areas - gameplay is identical. I use script related mods that have no effect on a GPU but I don't used texture mods. If you do a 3-4 GB card would be a wise investment.

As for the R9 290 being considerably better in general - well of course. It should be since its in an entirely different category and costs $70-$100 more. Shit.

What areas if you don't mind as i've got a 290; run skyrim without major issues with several mods; including high rez texture mods *have to have those imho* would love to see if I can replicate those.

Second at this time 960 2gb isn't a good buy either way with way things are going; specially with the 380 4gb only a few dollars/pounds more or the 960 4gb; again not worth the price as its the same price as the 380 4gb which is faster*

If you can find 290s for deals still they are the best to look at; if not next step up is 390 which is the best card in its price range.

 

[Seba]

Read here:

If you have the game and an AMD card an easy test is to go to Anise's Cabin near Riverwood. Go into the basement and activate the Arcane Enchanter. If you have an AMD card your character will not bend down to use it smoothly unless you are using a third party FPS limiter set to 60 FPS to prevent the overshoot that causes the judder. Nvidia cards don't have this issue (and I've tested it on four different PCs, numerous GPUs and three different monitors).