So i’m looking at getting a custom made PC and most parts i’m settled with but i’m not sure on what graphics card to get. It’s for uni and it needs to run the Unreal engine plus a few 3D design programs such as 3Ds Max and ZBrush. So far it looks like:
Motherboard - MSI Z97-G43 socket 1150 OR Gigabyte GA-Z97-D3H (looked at Asus B85 Pro, H97 Pro gamer, Z97-c and Asrock fatal1ty H87 but the first two were recommended)
CPU - Intel i7-4790k
RAM -8gb Kingston hyper x fury ddr3 1600 MHz OR Corsair 8GB DDR3 1600 MHz vengeance (single stick as i’ll buy another one once I have the money for 16gb RAM
PSU - 600+ (not sure which one yet)
Graphics card - Nvidia Geforce GTX 750 TI 2 gb OR something like Gigbyte GTX 950 windforce 2x OR Zotac GTX 950 dual fan 2gb
Any opinions are wanted so feel free to say what you think. I hope this setup will last for all 3 years and of uni and cope with all the use of the Unreal engine and any 3D modelling packages so I don;t want to buy lots now and then find it’s not good enough later on in the year. The graphics card is the main worry as I only wanted to spend jst over £700 which is manageable with a GTX 750 TI GPU however is it worth getting the 950 instead or even an AMD GPU. I was also recommended to get a 4gb one for more cores and go for a GTX 7 model e.g. 970 (although that would be too much money). Any help would be great before I spend all my spare money. Thanks in advance for the help.
I dont think one should avoid one brand or the other, im fine with my GTX970, but i see AMD its going to get great stuff with DX12 and vulkan, like that async shader thing that nvidia cant do(seems so), after all, it was AMD who started this trend with mantle.
Thanks everyone so far for the suggestions. From looking into it with more detail I think I should spend the extra now to save myself in the long term so as vblanco said i’m probably best going with a 4gb GTX 970 GPU and I think as I have to use the PC for game engines, 3d modelling and some music, having 16gb of Corsair Vengeance Pro (2 x 8GB) RAM will go down nicely. Should be pretty decent right?
I would stay from SLI - I recently updated my machine and to be honest SLI has been a bit of a waste. I moved from AMD to nvidia but i think either a 970 or 380 r9 would offer good value for money. They both offer good overclocking options.
It is not a waste… especially with DX12 right around the comer. When its released totally 100% remove the sli bridge. infact if you have windows 10 and 3dmark with dx12 api test, run the test with sli and then remove bridge and run the test again, and your sli config will be slower in a dx12 setup than if it were separate. im quite sure this is because dx12 uses pci planes to communicate rather than the bridge.
IMO A 4gb GTX 970 GPU is probably the worst card to buy right now, overpriced and under-powered. (Also false advertised too, it’s only 3.5gb with slow .5 gb and also has only 52 ROPS and not the advertised 64 ROPS yes it does make a difference especially when you are playing a game like gta5 or developing a game like that for that matter) I mean after all you are buying a card to last some time, you don’t want to have to buy a new one after a short time.
I had a 970 and traded it because when developing my game and tools, i would frequently hit that 3.5 limit and have stuttering, i took it and traded a dude with some cash and a 770 for the 970 and my performance has been better overall and the card has 2gb less vram and significantly slower than its successor. Obviously im limited but i no longer have stuttering.