Purchasing a new computer for Dolphin - some help with specs please!

[tential]

(12-12-2014, 01:59 PM)goldedark007 Wrote:

(12-12-2014, 01:21 PM)KHg8m3r Wrote: Looking at the reviews, someone knows what they're doing and specified what the motherboard and brand of GPU:
"Gigabyte Z97-HD3 motherboard that only supports Crossfire, cheap Zotac GTX 760 graphics card"

So then is that good or bad? Z97 is what I need but you say that the graphics card is cheap?

GTX 760 isn't necessarily a cheap card. It's a bad card for the price. (It's a cheap card to an enthusiast. But that's because many enthusiasts spend a LOT of cash on their GPUs. The GTX 980 is going for over $500 right now, the GTX 780Ti was $700 at launch. Enthusiasts spend money on GPUs, especially when it comes to Nvidia GPUs. Personally, I wouldn't touch the GTX 760. Because I don't like midrange cards. I'd only purchase an R9 290 and only for $240 or less. Sadly, you missed the great Black Friday deals of the R9 290 being available at $200 which was an essential buy to any gamer who needed a new GPU).
You're paying an "Nvidia premium" for the privilege of owning Nvidia. Something Nvidia can charge because they have brand image. Similar to how they could charge $1000 for a single GPU (GTX Titan) or $3000 for Titan Z. Nvidia generally can charge whatever they want, and people will simply buy what's in their price range irregardless of performance.



GTX 760 60%
R9 270x 57%

GTX 760 performs 5% better than the R9 270x.
Price?
GTX 760 $170
R9 270x $150
GTX 760 costs 13% more than the R9 270x.

It's not a good price/performance ratio purchase. Most Nvidia products currently arent, Kepler (GTX 700 family) has literally been ignored by Nvidia in recent games. It's performance relative to the R 200 series of AMD GPUs has actually been dropping.
Furthermore, AMD has just released another driver improving performance. Many review sites did reviews on this and aren't showing amazing performance gains (at most 10%) but they've only been testing AMD's flagship cards (R9 290x). Some users have reported massive FPS jumps in certain games on their HD7000 and it seems the driver update effects midrange users better than flagship users who already have top end hardware.
-------------
Would I purchase the GTX 760? It's a waste of approximately $10-12 to have an Nvidia branded products (I can explain that calc if you want but not really necessary). Since I make every decision mathematically, I wouldn't do it. But some people would spend that $10-12 to have an Nvidia branded product. Up to you.

[Nobbs66]

Well, the new Maxwell cards are just destroying everything in their price range. The GTX 970 is a monster for $350

[tential]

(12-13-2014, 02:08 AM)Nobbs66 Wrote: Well, the new Maxwell cards are just destroying everything in their price range. The GTX 970 is a monster for $350

You did see the graph I just posted right?
Well then again, no one actually cares about looking at benches. They just post things without facts.

GTX 970 costs $50 more than the R9 290 and only offer like 2%-3% more performance.

It's in no way a "destroyer" of anything. Maxwell is a great perf/watt but raw performance? Nope.

Maybe Big Maxwell in the form of 980 Ti will be great but the price on it will make it not worth it.

R9 300 series engineering samples have been leaked and look better.

I'd only get the GTX 970 if I wanted an ultra small mini ITX build (or HDMI 2.0 so I'd purchase it since I am going to move to 4K gaming.)

[KHg8m3r]

It also depends on your preferences. Nvidia cards are pretty stable and have been for a long time, and push out patches and updates fairly fast. AMD cards are slightly less so, considering they only just had a patch to fix a butt load of bugs and other issues.

Also, in Dolphin, Nvidia cards perform better in OpenGL, and AMD performs better in D3D. Also, Nvidia has better driver support for Linux systems.

As for why the review stated that the 760 was cheap was because the brand of the card, Zotac, is viewed as a lower quality brand compared to say a Galaxy or MSI branded card.

Obviously you prefer AMD cards over Nvidia. But even looking at your benchmark, the 970 beats anything from AMD besides the R9 295X2. As for the 760, it's a good buy for people who don't want to have to mess with AMD's catalyst control center. For anyone who's never used it before, it can be quite confusing.

Overall it's up to the OP to get what he feels the most comfortable with. If they don't mind paying some extra dough for a prebuilt system, then that would be a good system to get starting into the world of PC gaming. However, if you want to save a few bucks, then spec out the system and build it yourself. It's just like LEGOS with electricity (I heard that from someone and it's a really great metaphor)

[tential]

(12-13-2014, 03:28 PM)KHg8m3r Wrote: It also depends on your preferences. Nvidia cards are pretty stable and have been for a long time, and push out patches and updates fairly fast. AMD cards are slightly less so, considering they only just had a patch to fix a butt load of bugs and other issues.

Also, in Dolphin, Nvidia cards perform better in OpenGL, and AMD performs better in D3D. Also, Nvidia has better driver support for Linux systems.

As for why the review stated that the 760 was cheap was because the brand of the card, Zotac, is viewed as a lower quality brand compared to say a Galaxy or MSI branded card.

Obviously you prefer AMD cards over Nvidia. But even looking at your benchmark, the 970 beats anything from AMD besides the R9 295X2. As for the 760, it's a good buy for people who don't want to have to mess with AMD's catalyst control center. For anyone who's never used it before, it can be quite confusing.

Overall it's up to the OP to get what he feels the most comfortable with. If they don't mind paying some extra dough for a prebuilt system, then that would be a good system to get starting into the world of PC gaming. However, if you want to save a few bucks, then spec out the system and build it yourself. It's just like LEGOS with electricity (I heard that from someone and it's a really great metaphor)

Exactly how I describe it, it's like Legos with electricity.

But I don't prefer any brand. I don't have brand bias, it's literally the lamest thing ever in hardware ever (And many people do it). I switch between whatever offers best price/performance ratio. Currently, that's AMD due to Nvidia having a great brand image, they can charge quite a high premium. We'll see when the GTX 980Ti vs the R9 390x what card offers best price/performance again and that's what I'll pick up. Currently leaning towards Nvidia though since I use dolphin and don't care about paying the premium, but I like to inform people that they are paying a premium for that brand name. R9 390x is supposed to have superior 4K performance (not surprising considering GTX980 isn't even doing well in high rseolutiosn compared to R9 290x) and if it does do well at that resolution I'll definitely pick it up.

[kirbypuff]

I don't prefer any brand of GPUs, I always choose a GPU based on price vs. performance vs. acoustics (fan noise).

But I must say this : If you're running Windows (OS) and want the best performance in Dolphin with EFB to RAM, get an AMD Radeon R9 card. Any R9 card will do. Even the lowest-tier R9 - the budget 270 non-X is "overkill" for Dolphin.

R9 Radeons perform so much better than NVIDIA cards it's not even funny.

With the latest AMD "Omega" driver, using the Direct3D backend, EFB to RAM is *insanely* fast.