I'm not a huge gamer anymore. I just want to play Doom 4. GPU advice for my old X58 based system?

T

Treppiede

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 12, 2003
Messages
184
Gentlemen,
I'll try to keep it concise.

Here's my system (I know, old):
...and I have FOUR GPUs at my disposal:
I would love to max out the gaming capabilities of this system.

Question is: can I do it with any combination of my existing GPUs, or should I sell all of my GPU cards and buy a newer one? Wouldn't the newer one be limited by the rest of the system's components?

I haven't played in years. I would like to play Doom 4 and some older FPS titles that I missed over the years (FarCry 3, Crysis, etc).

Thanks in advance! I've been out of the game for over a decade, so I am quite out of the loop. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
 
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I think you should sell all your gpu and buy a gtx 1070 or amd 480 if you can wait till the end of June. You didnt mention budget but the 1070 would be my choice. i also think you will be fine with that system if anything just over clock the cpu if you feel cpu bound.
 
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I've got an old x58 i7-980x system @ 4Gz and 12 GB of RAM that I just put a 1080 FE in replacing 3 GTX 680s while I put together an i7-6950x rig. Wow, what a leap. I can run Doom (I assume you mean the latest one) totally maxed out in game in 3x 1080P surround and get an average of about 87 FPS, never going below 60 FPS in my testing. Just beautiful, fast and fluid. Can get similarly impressive results with Tomb Raider, totally maxed in game 3x 108P surround and about 58 FPS average. I have a slight overclock on the 1080 FE that's looks to be getting me about a 10% boost. A 1070 would prov
 
Your system is still quite powerful (as someone who also has been on X58 for an exceedingly long time, but will be stepping up to X99). In theory you could run a few of those 7950s together, but for both power and performance I think you'd be better off selling the whole lot of older cards you have, and investing in one of the upcoming GPUs.

I would be best to wait until both the Nvidia 1070 and the top versions of AMD's Polaris 10 (ie RX 480? 480X? 490? The name scheme may be different this time) arrive. Then you'll be able tosee how much you wish to spend and the price/performance winners of the new generation. Either way, it will be a major step forward in both efficiency/heat and performance compared to what you have now. Personally, I'm thinking that the AMD Polaris cards (likely the highest-end one of this line) may be the one to beat from early benchmarks and the announced prices, but we'll have to see if Nvidia wishes to compete especially on price.
 
I'd just put 2 of the 7950's in crossfire and see how you like the performance. That should be a good experience at 1080p.
 
Treppiede said:
Gentlemen,
I'll try to keep it concise.

Here's my system (I know, old):
...and I have FOUR GPUs at my disposal:
I would love to max out the gaming capabilities of this system.

Question is: can I do it with any combination of my existing GPUs, or should I sell all of my GPU cards and buy a newer one? Wouldn't the newer one be limited by the rest of the system's components?

I haven't played in years. I would like to play Doom 4 and some older FPS titles that I missed over the years (FarCry 3, Crysis, etc).

Thanks in advance! I've been out of the game for over a decade, so I am quite out of the loop. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
Sell your GPUs and get a modern one. It doesn't need to be the best of the best. I played through Doom on my identical x58 system with just a 970 at 4K. Frame rates were mid to high 20s all the way through but it NEVER dipped below this. Very smooth.

Sell your GPUs and get a 1070 or a 480 when they come out and it will be more than enough. If you get a 480 you'll probably have money left over too.
 
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Doom isnt that demanding. My 290x is running maxed settings at 80-120 fps and I'm also at 1920x1080. A pair of 7950's should easily be able to do 60 fps. Nothing wrong with selling your old cards and getting a new 1070 or 1080 but I dont think you necessarily have to.
 
I didn't think Doom supported Crossfire or SLI at this time. Or has there been a patch?
 
Treppiede said:
Do any of you guys have any thoughts on how much of a bottleneck the PCIe 2.0 x16 on my X58 Sabertooth will be for the GTX 1070 or RX 480?
Click to expand...

Likely not much. From why I've seen/read it's been about 1-2% max difference from PCIe 3.0x16 to PCIe 2.0x16 on a single GPU. I'm in the same boat as you with my X5670 and am planning on an GTX 1070 hybrid watercooled card to keep my boost clocks maxed during gaming.

Here's a good run-down for you to review: Impact of PCI-E Speed on Gaming Performance
 
Napoleon said:
Likely not much. From why I've seen/read it's been about 1-2% max difference from PCIe 3.0x16 to PCIe 2.0x16 on a single GPU. I'm in the same boat as you with my X5670 and am planning on an GTX 1070 hybrid watercooled card to keep my boost clocks maxed during gaming.

Here's a good run-down for you to review: Impact of PCI-E Speed on Gaming Performance
Click to expand...
This is encouraging, thanks man. Reading the review.
 
Your best bang for your buck will be a gtx 1070 or 480x. Either will be plenty for new doom. I run on my 2500k @ 4.2ghz and a stock 290 at 1440p using near ultra settings and still find it playable. Getting 40-60fps
 
On a tangential note, have you tried (or currently run) your CPU overclocked?

I sound like a broken record on these forums, but a X56XX Hexacore overclocked to 4.2Ghz+ will run neck and neck with pretty much any modern processor. I can tell you from experience that my [email protected] is faster than my 4960x (this of course changes when the latter is overclocked).

You have a great motherboard and a chip that should easily be able to do 4+ Ghz. Personally, I plan to pick up a 1070 non reference (or perhaps 2x480x depending on crossfire scaling), and will continue to use the x5660 as my primary gaming rig)
 
Personally, stay away from SLI (and possible CFX) on Doom. Last time I played it, SLI was not fully supported and only one of my GPUs were utilised. If you FORCE the option through the driver, the game will run with boosted FPS, but it gets a new 200ms input lag that makes the game impossible to enjoy. They (Id) have mentioned this may be patched eventually, but to my knowledge, it has not.

A single OC'd Titan X got 60FPS average with ~45FPS minimum at 4K with MOST settings maxed. A single 1070 is complete and total overkill for this game at 1080p. I would guess that if you are happy to turn down your settings, one of those 7950s would run the game acceptably. I tested the game on a friends OC'd 770 (roughly equivalent to an OC'd 7970) and it played at medium-high settings and got minimums of 45.
 
KazeoHin said:
Personally, stay away from SLI (and possible CFX) on Doom. Last time I played it, SLI was not fully supported and only one of my GPUs were utilised. If you FORCE the option through the driver, the game will run with boosted FPS, but it gets a new 200ms input lag that makes the game impossible to enjoy. They (Id) have mentioned this may be patched eventually, but to my knowledge, it has not.

A single OC'd Titan X got 60FPS average with ~45FPS minimum at 4K with MOST settings maxed. A single 1070 is complete and total overkill for this game at 1080p. I would guess that if you are happy to turn down your settings, one of those 7950s would run the game acceptably. I tested the game on a friends OC'd 770 (roughly equivalent to an OC'd 7970) and it played at medium-high settings and got minimums of 45.
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He can sell all the cards now and then basically get a free 1070. To me its a no brainier ATM. Or even a single 480X if you want to be frugal
 
caltech31 said:
On a tangential note, have you tried (or currently run) your CPU overclocked?
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Not yet, I will probably do it eventually.

I sound like a broken record on these forums, but a X56XX Hexacore overclocked to 4.2Ghz+ will run neck and neck with pretty much any modern processor. I can tell you from experience that my [email protected] is faster than my 4960x (this of course changes when the latter is overclocked).

You have a great motherboard and a chip that should easily be able to do 4+ Ghz. Personally, I plan to pick up a 1070 non reference (or perhaps 2x480x depending on crossfire scaling), and will continue to use the x5660 as my primary gaming rig)
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I am glad to hear this. Our CPUs are nearly identical, good to see that the X58 is still doing so well. Thanks for the help.
 
MacLeod said:
Doom isnt that demanding. My 290x is running maxed settings at 80-120 fps and I'm also at 1920x1080. A pair of 7950's should easily be able to do 60 fps. Nothing wrong with selling your old cards and getting a new 1070 or 1080 but I dont think you necessarily have to.
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It needs a certain bit of horsepower no doubt, and it has really good threading surprisingly. But some overclocking would do wonders.
 
Ok, so the cards I'm selling work great, but I'm picky and I want to test them one by one before selling them. What's a good way to test GPUs and put them under a little stress nowadays?

Thanks!
 
Treppiede said:
Ok, so the cards I'm selling work great, but I'm picky and I want to test them one by one before selling them. What's a good way to test GPUs and put them under a little stress nowadays?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
3Dmark benchmark loop, fur mark, I'm sure there are others, even a game benchmark loop, just something to really get it trying hard
 
You have a 1080p monitor so the RX-480 should work beautifully.

If you plan to get a higher-resolution monitor in the next year or two that answer changes to the 1070.
 
GTX 1070 would suit you and your gaming needs just fine with a bit of overhead in the event you decide to expand your gaming needs outside of the latest version of Doom.
 
Just to let you know that 7950 CX is a little faster then the 780Ti in performance which i ran that set up for BF 4 under window 8/ 8.1 but upgraded to the Tri X 290 X New Edition because of it's price at the time $260 brand new and offers close to the same performance as the 7950 CX .. the icing on the cake will be RX 480 CX because it should offer more performance for the same amount or less power usage over my 290x.
 
The most demanding level is the foundry, and its fairly early on. Once you get to that map, adjust settings and then forget.
 
I'd sell all four of those cards while people still care about mining once again.

Then buy a used 980ti or something similiar.
 
Also sporting X58 hexcore and 12gigs of ram. I purchased a 980ti classy early this year and the game runs smooth at any level. Wished I could have waited for the 1080s but there were other games I wanted to play at the time and my 2gig GTX 285 wasn't cutting it.....

I don't think you could lose by getting one of the new 10xx series cards
 
I just got the game running on my Media Centre, an i5 6400 with an overclocked HD7970 on my 1080p TV. In order to get a locked 60FPS (as in, Vsync turned on, 60FPS minimum) I run the game mostly medium settings, with an 85% resolution scale. It still looks great, but there is a definite difference in quality between my 4K, twin Titan system and this one.
 
I just installed and played new Doom on my crappy old i7-920 @ 3.8 Ghz with 6 GB RAM & gtx 660 SLI and it ran quite well @ 1080p.
 
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