nvidia gts 450 1gb vs nvidia gt 440 2gb vs ati 6770 hd 2gb

Pereza0

So, im updating my pc ram, psu and graphic card.

Having some trouble with the last one

from these three

gts 450 1gb vs gt 440 2gb vs ati 6770 hd 2gb

which one would be the best choice?

(they are all within budget, so just pick the one you would choose if you could have one for free)

I would like to run Skyrim on high settings, on 1280x1024, though that might be a lot to ask for

Elimination

Well the 440 is garbage, so don't even consider that one. More video ram does not = better performance unless you are running at very high resolutions. All three of those cards fall into the lower-middle range category. I'd personally say the 450, my younger brother has one and it seems to do well for him. Runs things on high ish settings at 1440x900 resolution. I have had no experience with a 6770 so I can't speak for that one. But I have 2 6950 2gb's in Crossfire and love them, so I am liking AMD these days.

What CPU are you running? And what resolution will you be gaming at?

Pereza0

1280x1024. would be cool, but i dont mind using 1024x768 if it means getting more render distance and better lighting.

Im planning to upgrade to 3 or 4 or maybe more gb ram

Sadly, my cpu is core 2 duo 2.4 ghz, hope.its enough

Hahnsoo1

I have the GTS 450, and I'm very happy with it. It's a lot of card for a nice price. I'm pretty sure it will run Skyrim on high at 1280 x 1024.

Pereza0

Yeah, so im kind of leaning towards that one....

Thanks guys!!!!

Effef

Any one of those cards will destroy 1280x1024. The 440 is sort of outclassed by the other two.

SanderJK

I have a HD6770, and it does fine with Skyrim on high on 1280x1024. It doesn't do good enough for all high in SWTOR though. (Shadows and Anisotropy need to be turned down)
With a Core2Duo, you'll mostly be CPU limited in games.

zilo

You almost never need 2gb of video ram unless you're running multiple monitors and some crazy huge resolution. The only game I can think of that would use 2gb on a single 1920x1200 screen is Crysis 2, if you download the high res texture pack- in which case the game would still look better with the faster card than with the high res textures.

If you have a fixed budget, always get the faster card with 1gb of vram vs the slower card with 2gb.

Pereza0

Hmm just curious, as long as it satisfies the minimum requirements, the cpu shouldnt affect the performance too much right??

Klein

Just to note: I am running a radeon 4850(a bit worse than the 6770, which is a rebranded 5770, which is basically a 4870) and I can run nearly every game I have on high at 1920x1080 resolution. Don't be too worried about having to turn down settings to low.

Effef

Pereza0 wrote:

Hmm just curious, as long as it satisfies the minimum requirements, the cpu shouldnt affect the performance too much right??

Depends on the game. Skyrim won't be too much bothered by it, but something like GTA4 that uses a ton of CPU will be limited.

Gaslight

Actually, from what I understand Skyrim is more CPU dependent than many games, at least for certain things: I've read that it relies more on the CPU than the graphics card in drawing shadows, for example. Now I don't know that for a fact, just putting it out there.

Elimination

Gaslight wrote:

Actually, from what I understand Skyrim is more CPU dependent than many games, at least for certain things: I've read that it relies more on the CPU than the graphics card in drawing shadows, for example. Now I don't know that for a fact, just putting it out there.

its true, the game engine is actually really poorly opitimized and puts a lot of things on the CPU that should be put on the GPU instead (like what every other game in the universe does.) and it isnt optimized properly for quad cores or above either. Its quite a pain.

Cymril

Yeah, your CPU is going to be a bottleneck there.

But the good news is that won't be a problem for most games, although I can't say anything about Skyrim, I'm running a fairly similar set up to what you have there (3.0 ghz core2duo, GTx 560ti), and the system handles everything I throw at it without any problems. SWTOR beta ran mostly high settings at 1680x1050 completely smooth. Most games I can push to max at that resolution, in fact. But I should note I haven't had a chance to try some of the newest games on it, outside of SWTOR (roommate bought Skyrim on 360, and I only just now bought it on steam, and BF3 can't run on DX9) Diablo 3 ran maxed out as well.

The only problem comes when the CPU gets taxed, and when it does it starts to really hurt performance. For example, I can run League of Legends everything maxed out at 60fps (granted, this isn't hard) but to ~stream~ league at a playable framerate (~20-25fps), not even in HD, I need to drop everything to medium and 1280x720.

So anything not too CPU intensive (FPSs, most MMOs) will run like a dream, but like I said, I've yet to try Skyrim, so I can't really say how it'll run.

As for your question, I'm not too sure about ati's cards, but you really want the 450 over the 440, like zilo said above, more video ram only really helps at very high resolutions/multiple-monitor set ups. And in nvidia's naming scheme, the split between the x40s and the x50s is the difference between the cheap/low level tier, and the start of the enthusiast tier stuff.

kaliyama

Now the answer is Radeon 7970...

Draeven

have been looking for a new video card my self, and came across these 2 websites that are slick.
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_value.html
http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=&card2=
I think im going to get a getting a hd 6670.

Pereza0

So i am getting my 450 gs today, though id like to share an interesting thread i found about Skyrim for pc in a tech-savvy forum

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/116046-25-skyrim-major-frame-rate-drop-cities

Thanks and good luck!!