Video card recommendations

[ReadyMan]

Thinking of upgrading my current video card, a GTX 670 with 4GB of memory if I see some good sales this weekend.
Had it for about 6 years, which is the longest I've gone without upgrading.
I havent kept up with the video card progression, so wouldnt know what the "sweet spot" to target is (a 1070 or ?).


Anyone have a recommendation (Nvidia only) that will support 3 monitors ( 3 24" monitors for 5760x1200 ) ?
Would like to keep it around $400 if possible.

Here's my other specs:
CPU: i7 3770k @3.5GHz stock w/Phanteks PH tc14pe cooler
MB: Asus Maximus V Gene
PSU: Corsair 750w
OS: Win 7 64bit
RAM: Gskill 16gb @1600

[fliptw]

1060 6 GB and up.

[Krom]

1060 6 GB and up.

Seconding this. Brand doesn't particularly matter, just avoid paying the founders edition tax (cards with the reference cooler shroud cost more).

The larger dual/triple fan open air coolers generally perform better assuming your case can keep up. For the 1070 and 1080 the reference blower prefers silence over performance and the card will thermal throttle under load unless you ramp up the cooler with a custom fan profile.

Don't bother too much with factory overclocks if it costs more than $20-40 over a base design, GPU boost 3.0 behaves quite differently from previous iterations and renders most factory overclocks irrelevant. I run MSI Afterburner on my 1080 and only adjusted the power limit to 105% and gave it +50 MHz on the core, which basically only unlocks an extra 4 boost bins which my card happily uses resulting in a fairly consistent 2012 MHz core frequency under load. Without the +50 my card settled at around 1973-1986 MHz, the official boost of my card is 1823 MHz out of the box, so it was already beating that by ~150 MHz without touching a thing. Although worth noting my particular card does outperform others under load because it is a MSI Sea Hawk with a closed loop 120 MM water cooler on it so it never thermal throttles since the GPU core rarely goes over 53C, and running cooler also makes it more efficient so I get more out of my power limit than a hotter card would.

Similarly, don't bother with cards that have more power phases or better power delivery, GPU boost 3.0 again being the culprit here, the cards run into their practical thermal limits and bios enforced power limits well before stressing the stock power delivery hardware.

The other thing worth noting is I've watched GPU-Z on the second screen and I've seen the memory usage reach as high as 7 GB. So if you want to keep your card running for longer, opting for an 8 GB 1070 over the 6 GB 1060 would buy you another year or two of smooth sailing before running into memory limits.

EVGA has the best US based support and warranty service, but their ACX 3.0 coolers had a couple of hitches (failure to adequately cool the VRMs required a bios update to modify the fan profile). If you get one, be sure to grab and install one of the thermal pad kits they will ship to you free of cost. They aren't absolutely necessary but will give you extra peace of mind and when properly applied will squeeze out a slightly higher efficiency from the card. The failures that have been reported are generally overblown internet reactions, but the thermal pad kits they offer are free extra performance so there is no reason to turn them down. Although note that every card EVGA shipped after November 1st has the pads preinstalled, so assuming whoever you buy it from hasn't been sitting on their stock for longer than that it should already have the kit on it.

[ReadyMan]

Thank you for the recommendations. I'll watch for the 1070 8gb over the weekend sales!

[Krom]

One more thing I can recommend looking out for if you have a 1070 class or better Nvidia card in your rig. Get a gsync monitor next time you are in the market for one. My BenQ XL2420G gsync monitor is the greatest thing in displays since color.

As smooth as Doom 2016 looks at 60 Hz, it looks 140% smoother pinned at 144 Hz and a 1070 on a 3770k will get you there.

[ReadyMan]

Good idea.
I'm still with the triple monitor setup (3 24" @ 1920x1200)
Not sure how that new monitor would fit in with what I have....

[ReadyMan]

I'm sold on the 1070, just need to find the right one.
However, I noticed that these cards come with 2 display ports, 1 DVI and 2 HDMI

I'm currently (with my 670) using a triple monitor setup connected to my card with with 2 DVI cables and 1 HDMI cable.
My LA2405wg monitors have a DVI-D port, and a DisplayPort,

Any recommendations on what to connect to the 1070 with? I'll need at least one new cable (to replace one of the DVI cables).

[Krom]

DisplayPort, but don't spend more than $10 on it. Plus its higher bandwidth than any of the alternatives so further down the road you can support stuff like 4k displays or 240 Hz @ 1080p.

[ReadyMan]

so a couple display port to display port cables, and a display port to hdmi?....and forget the DVI I'm using?

Found these on amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Go ... isplayport


and
https://www.amazon.com/DisplayPort-Anbe ... port&psc=1

[Krom]

I actually have one of the exact DP cables from your first link, it connects my secondary Dell U2412M monitor.

You only need one, the existing DVI and HDMI cables you have will be sufficient for the remaining two monitors. You still get one DVI and one HDMI out from most of these cards.

One thing worth mentioning, connecting 3 displays to a geforce will cause the card to run at higher clock speeds than its typical idle. Not really a problem if you turn off/sleep your computer when you aren't using it, but the difference in power consumption and heat output is fairly significant otherwise. My 1080 idles down to 210 MHz (reaching 5% of its tdp/power) when it is just sitting at the desktop, but connect a third display and it refuses to clock under 1200 MHz (~21% tdp/power). I get around it by having my third display driven off my old GTX 980 but not everyone wants to keep a second older geforce around for physx acceleration. (As ridiculous as it sounds, running a second video card actually saves some power in this instance, the 980 idles at 7.1% of its 165w TDP, and the 1080 idles at 5.4% of its 180w TDP, so roughly 11.7 and 9.7 watts each, compared to the 1080 alone with all three displays consuming roughly 38w.)

[ReadyMan]

ok thanks.
I turn off my machine at night/when I'm not at home.
I think I'm sold on the asus 1070 here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HDUVJ1I/re ... 9HLMM?th=1

and when one of my monitors dies, I'll upgrade to the monitor you mentioned above

[ReadyMan]

The Asus 1070 Strix arrived and I installed it with no issues.
Took me a few minutes to figure out that the 6+2 power connector from my Corsair 750w PSU would work in the 8 slot connector on the card (my nvidia 670 used 2 6 slot connectors).
Seems to be running well now.
Gotta do some tests to see how good this card can run with my i7 3770

[Krom]

I'm also using a 3770K CPU, and I hit the CPU limit in some games with my GTX 1080. Far Cry 4/Primal, Doom 2016, Rise of the Tomb Raider, etc. And that is with Asus multi-core enhancement enabled and my multiplier set to 40, so when I hit a game all 4 CPU cores hit 4 GHz (still default voltage) and stay there. I could overclock further since even the motherboards automatic overclocking pushes a bit over 4.1 GHz, but its diminishing returns at that point. It is why I'm planning on building a new machine around a i7-7700K next year when they come out.

You won't be quite in as bad a shape with a 1070, especially since you don't have a 144 Hz g-sync display to feed, but it is something you will have to keep an eye on. Doom and Rise of the Tomb Raider are pretty good at singling this out, all you need to do is compare Doom between its OGL and Vulkan modes, and ROTTR between its DX11 vs DX12 modes. The benchmarks don't quite catch it, but in some areas of the bigger hubs DX11 mode in ROTTR dips into the 50s, while in DX12 mode it stays close to 70 or even into the 80s. Doom is generally more forgiving and spends the vast majority of its time pinned to the 144 Hz refresh limit regardless of the selected rendering API, but Vulkan is still slightly more resistant to dropping under the cap in CPU heavy areas.

[Tunnelcat]

My GTX1070 is doing quite well for me now at 1920X1200, even running ABZU, Rise of the Tomb Raider and HITMAN. The price is a good sweet spot too, it's even cheaper than a GTX 980Ti and performs much better. I can't even hear the fan when it starts spooling up under full load, which I haven't really hit yet. It's my 5 year old i7 960 3.6 CPU that's the bottleneck right now, but I'm still not noticing it. Maybe in the future once HDR monitors become the norm, I'll have to upgrade my entire system.