[Ghostavo]

I've been tempted to upgrade my GPU for a while.

My current rig has the following:
CPU: Intel Core i7 860
GPU: Radeon HD 4890 1GB
RAM: 8 GB

My monitor's native resolution is 1920x1200, so that's the target to play at, and my budget is between 200 and 300 euros.

I've been thinking of a GTX 760, but I figured I might as well have some advice.

[The E]

The 760 is a solid card, and the Radeon 7950 is its equivalent on the red side. Not kidding about the equivalency here, both cards are more or less identical in terms of power use and performance, so it pretty much comes down to factors like which brand you like, or which bundle is more attractive (The 760 seems to be bundled with Arkham Origins, while the 7950 comes with Blood Dragon, Bioshock Infinite, and Crysis 3).

It should be noted, however, that the 9k series Radeons are about to be released at the end of the month, so my advice would be to wait until we know what's what with those.

[Fury]

The 760 seems to be quite a bit cheaper than 7950 though, unless AMD has cut prices recently. But they are indeed about equal. And I have to echo The E on waiting for next-gen Radeon and GeForce cards. Oddly enough there's nothing on rumor mill about anything special in them, except that Maxwell GPU's (NVIDIA) has integrated ARM CPU. We'll see how things go with next-gen GPU's.

By the way, next bunch of Radeons won't be called 9000 series. AMD has once again adopted new naming scheme.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-radeon-volcanic-islands-r-200,24158.html

[Ghostavo]

Is there any significant difference in those cards between the 2GB models and the 4GB models? Is the difference worth say... 40 euros?

[Fury]

4GB is largely worthless until next-gen games start popping up, the ones designed for PS4 and Xbone. But as long as the same games are also coming to older consoles, you're more than safe with 2GB. When that changes, 4GB might become useful.

However, I am of the opinion that discrete GPU's will eventually go the way of discrete sound cards. I do not know if AMD's Kaveri APU will support DDR4 or not but when AMD does release an APU with DDR4 support, I don't think there will be much incentive to buy discrete GPU's anymore. Just like there isn't much incentive to buy discrete sound card these days. But, until then...

[The E]

However, I am of the opinion that discrete GPU's will eventually go the way of discrete sound cards. I do not know if AMD's Kaveri APU will support DDR4 or not but when AMD does release an APU with DDR4 support, I don't think there will be much incentive to buy discrete GPU's anymore. Just like there isn't much incentive to buy discrete sound card these days. But, until then...

I'm not so sure about that. There's a hard upper limit on what you can put into an APU or SoC-style board, and while there is a lot of power in there, a discrete GPU will always be able to deliver more computing power.
APUs are going to be a big deal for Dell, HP and other manufacturers looking to build budget to midrange mass market PCs, but the enthusiast build-it-yourself set is going to be a bit more skeptical about them, I think.

[Grizzly]

4GB is largely worthless until next-gen games start popping up, the ones designed for PS4 and Xbone. But as long as the same games are also coming to older consoles, you're more than safe with 2GB. When that changes, 4GB might become useful.

However, I am of the opinion that discrete GPU's will eventually go the way of discrete sound cards. I do not know if AMD's Kaveri APU will support DDR4 or not but when AMD does release an APU with DDR4 support, I don't think there will be much incentive to buy discrete GPU's anymore. Just like there isn't much incentive to buy discrete sound card these days. But, until then...

I have a discrete sound card myself, and the difference is defintely noticable, and well worth it IMO. Especially if you use Stereo headphones, as a Discrete soundcard with Dolby Headphone + Stereo headphone is a much better combo then those surround headphones you can buy (which have integrated soundcards). It's one of those "Once you've used it you can't live without it" things.

However, if you don't really care about such a thing, then onboard works just fine. So I can see your point about APUs: If you don't care about high resolutions, high framerates or high quality stuff, APUs can do the trick for most games. "Good enough computing".

[Fury]

A lot of the raw power difference between discrete GPU and future APU's will be mitigated by efficiency from technologies that bring fast system RAM, CPU and GPU working together unlike we've had up to now. Look up AMD hUMA, it's a technology that can never be fully utilized with discrete GPU's. And I suspect AMD will be improving HSA with many more additions like hUMA.

While discrete GPU's will keep their raw performance advantage, at some point we'll hit very noticeable diminishing returns where discrete GPU will simply no longer be worth it. The first step towards that are PS4 and Xbone, which both utilize HSA, hUMA and who knows what other technologies AMD/Sony/MS have cooked up to improve efficiency. The same technologies will be used in Kaveri, or its successor Carizo in 2015. Second step is to get DDR4 RAM into PC's which will play significant role towards eliminating biggest bottleneck integrated GPU's have, memory bandwidth. Importance of memory bandwidth is further reduced by DirectX 11.2 and OpenGL 4.4 in the form of tiled resources.

Another comparison we can draw is the current raw performance difference in AMD and Intel CPU's. While Intel still overpowers AMD in performance, is the difference anything you're likely to care about? Not really. We're approaching that turning point in integrated GPU's. While I have no idea what Intel's plans are in the graphics front, I am pretty sure they're not sitting idle watching AMD APU's outperforming their Core products in graphics.

[The E]

I agree that hUMA is a big leap forward for integrated graphics, but it's going to require some rather fancy footwork on the part of the driver to make it work. The next few years will be interesting, as the industry adjusts to the increased power of the next console generation, with the big selling points of PC hardware in recent years (higher framerates, higher resolutions) being matched by the consoles on a "good enough" basis. As for DX11.2: I don't see it being a big factor, given that it is intimately tied to Windows 8.1 with no backport to 7 in sight.

[Fury]

I have a discrete sound card myself, and the difference is defintely noticable, and well worth it IMO.

I've had nothing but trouble with discrete sound cards. My old Audigy 2 ZS worked properly only in Windows XP. Anything newer and it was entirely up to the card's mood how it decided to work that day.

When I got my Intel P35 PC I stuck with onboard audio for quite a while. Then decided to try out Asus Xonar D2X. Difference in audio quality is very clear, but so were audio problems in games. The card's drivers simply weren't up to the snuff as far as gaming was concerned. And this was regardless of whether Asus' version of environmental effects were enabled, I forget its name.

Then comes my Intel Z77 PC. Once again I stick with onboard audio, only to notice that it has improved quite a bit since P35. Despite technical specifications of the codec have remained unchanged, chips themselves and motherboard design has improved over time still. Time passes and I decide to try my Xonar again just for ****s and giggles. To my surprise difference in audio quality was no longer readily noticeable, but it sounded slightly different. Perhaps the Xonar does produce better sound, but I could no longer tell it was anything but different. But unfortunately problems in games remained, so I remove the Xonar once again.

The root cause lies with C-MEDIA, whose chipset the Xonar uses. C-MEDIA is doing piss poor job with improving their drivers and hardly ever update them either. Unfortunately Asus' customer support on the matter doesn't receive good grades either, but what can they do when their hands are tied.

So I suppose if you want discrete sound card for gaming purposes, Creative is your only choice. One can only hope Creative has learned from its past mistakes and now actually provides good quality drivers. I even thought about getting one of those new Creative cards, but then I decided the Z77's onboard audio is quite good enough. And my headphones is Logitech G35, plugged via USB so sound card won't matter to me as far as headphones are concerned.

As for DX11.2: I don't see it being a big factor, given that it is intimately tied to Windows 8.1 with no backport to 7 in sight.

People have to upgrade sometime. Otherwise Windows 7 becomes another Windows XP and nobody wants that.

[Mongoose]

I do!

[Ghostavo]

So if I read correctly it's:
I should wait for the next gen.
If not, both the GTX 760 and HD 7950 are interesting, 2 GB versions.


I'm probably only going to upgrade 3 or 4 generations from now as you can see by my former card, so I'd wager that doesn't change much.

By the way, does anyone have any experience using 3D Vision?

[Klaustrophobia]

haven't used it, but once or twice looked through the list of supported games and pretty much all of them had errors noted.