Thanks for the info Dan. The only question that we didn't cover was the price range for the upgrade. IF your looking maybe in $2-250.00 range, that opens up to some serious performance possibilities on today's generation of cards. My recommendation in this bracket is the R9 280x or R9 290. It goes toe to toe with the 770/780 respectively in both performance & price. Yet it yields benefits that NVidia does not have at the moment.
While, what I'm about to list, isn't prevalent in our current titles... IF it gets implemented in future titles we are keeping our eyes on, it could mean big benefits in gaming experience and less stress on you CPU to work more efficiently since the GPU will take over a lot of the work. Some of the key benefits to going AMD are as follows;
Mantle - This is taking directly from here...
www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/software-technologies/mantle#overview"Mantle reduces the CPU’s workload by giving developers a way to talk to the GPU directly with much less translation. With less work for the CPU to do, programmers can squeeze much more performance from a system, delivering the greatest benefits in gaming systems where the CPU can be the bottleneck.
What it means for gamers...
Now that Mantle has freed up some extra CPU capacity, we expect Mantle will lead to better games, and more of them, since Mantle makes game development easier.
That’s not all Mantle will do for gamers. By shifting work to the GPU, a mid-range or older CPU isn’t the same handicap it was before. With Mantle, the GPU becomes the critical part of the system, and GPU upgrades will have a bigger impact than before."
Unfortunately, while I don't see rFactor (I've asked), Assetto (there heavy in the DX camp) or some of the other titles taking advantage of this I do hope Bug Bear or BeamNG might consider it. It's going to take next generation of racing titles to see this really come into to play. But Sid's Civilization series (if you play it) will be utilizing it. Also MS shares a similar vision of the it's upcoming DX12 as Mantle, so we could see a great blending of the two down the round.
True Audio- Taken from here...
www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/software-technologies/trueaudioWhat it means for gamers
"By leveraging AMD TrueAudio technology, game developers now have the ability to recreate acoustic environments with incredible fidelity, and to bring them to every gamer. With AMD technology inside all the most popular “next-generation” gaming platforms, including the PC, gamers across the entire industry will finally enjoy the best audio today’s technology can offer."
It's going to be a great audio experience once developers get on board. It's already out in a couple games I've tried and it really does change the way you hear things if you're using a surround system...or headphones. And they don't even have to be 5.1 Surround either to benefit from it. This is one technology that has me really excited. If your not a developer, and I'm not, I didn't realize that there is actually a processor resource usage table that they have to go by. Audio gets what ever little scraps of headroom there is left. By moving an "audio processing code* to a portion of the left over GPU memory and bandwidth, audio can be greatly increased in depth and quality.
This one really excites me for racing titles. Being able to hear the guy behind you shift gears and tell exactly if that was on left or right side, hearing them pushing their tires or hitting a rumble strip. Catching the slight change of engine noise to the left or right of you, knowing that they are looking to pass, you can adjust your line without even having to watch the mirrors anymore. Man that would be awesome...
My recommendation is a 280X. Most manufacturers offer display port, 2 DVI & one HDMI. Plus AMD's Eye-Finity is native for 5 screens out of the box and not a sometimes temperamental "surround" solution like NVidia has.
My personal preference on the actual card? I'd stick with XFX ( they have the best no questions asked/per say/ lifetime warranty out there) or Gigabyte. I'd avoid Sapphire (processing fees and "upon determination of failure" procedures) or HIS (even their own people won't buy it) I have a friend that is putting together a report of the "warranties" of many companies and it's actually pretty interesting info that'll I share here when it's released.
One other factor, Photoshop 6 & rest of ADOBE suite is now optimized for open CL instead of CUDA, so you will see better performance with an AMD card vs NVidia , if you upgrade to it (PS).
If your willing to spend more, then the 280x is truly the best bang for the buck card right now. If your needing to spend less, then let me know what you budget is, and I'll research what would be best for you.
Thanks for the question, please feel free to ask if you have any more
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