Finally, new graphics card on the horizon

[~Darkseeker~]

Think of it like this, the PS4 plays games at upscaled 960p locked at 30fps with medium/low detail and practically no anti-aliasing.

a GTX960 will play the games you mentioned at 60fps on high/ultra at full 1080p with at least 2x anti-aliasing which really is all you need at 1080p.



Plus, AMD CPUs get pretty hot when you overclock them, especially the old Athlon II and Phenom II, since at load they have a 145/150W power design at stock, pushing more volts into it to boost clocks causes the TDP to increase. for instance, at 1200mvs my 4.2GHz i5 (TDP 95W) actually uses 115W or there abouts at load. More power = more heat

The custom coolers on GPUs these days can handle decent overclocks on the core and memory. ASUS have the Strix/DirectCUII coolers, MSI have their Twin Frozr V, EVGA have the ACX 2.0, XFX have their 'double dissipation' coolers, and so on. Most of these brands pre-overclock their cards for you anyway, but they can all handle a more DIY approach.

 

[emperor76]

Think of it like this, the PS4 plays games at upscaled 960p locked at 30fps with medium/low detail and practically no anti-aliasing.

a GTX960 will play the games you mentioned at 60fps on high/ultra at full 1080p with at least 2x anti-aliasing which really is all you need at 1080p.



Plus, AMD CPUs get pretty hot when you overclock them, especially the old Athlon II and Phenom II, since at load they have a 145/150W power design at stock, pushing more volts into it to boost clocks causes the TDP to increase. for instance, at 1200mvs my 4.2GHz i5 (TDP 95W) actually uses 115W or there abouts at load. More power = more heat

The custom coolers on GPUs these days can handle decent overclocks on the core and memory. ASUS have the Strix/DirectCUII coolers, MSI have their Twin Frozr V, EVGA have the ACX 2.0, XFX have their 'double dissipation' coolers, and so on. Most of these brands pre-overclock their cards for you anyway, but they can all handle a more DIY approach.

I have noticed my computer has always struggled with keeping cool, although changing to a haf 922 case and adding an extra fan at the bottom helped loads, it's funny you mention the AMD's being a little power hungry, A friend of mine has a board with an i7 on it, he says he's upgrading as it doesn't have any more sockets supported any more, just finding out more information about it, could be the ideal chance to switch to intel, it's still gotta be better than mine

 

[~Darkseeker~]

I have noticed my computer has always struggled with keeping cool, although changing to a haf 922 case and adding an extra fan at the bottom helped loads, it's funny you mention the AMD's being a little power hungry, A friend of mine has a board with an i7 on it, he says he's upgrading as it doesn't have any more sockets supported any more, just finding out more information about it, could be the ideal chance to switch to intel, it's still gotta be better than mine

depends which i7 it is! The first generation core CPUs were pretty hot running (e.g i7-920), Sandy Bridge and Ivy bridge (2nd and third generation, numbers beginning '2' and '3' e.g. i7-2600k or i7-3770k) were pretty cool by comparison, and Haswell had some hiccups with quality control (bad thermal interface on i7-4770k lead to it being a really hot chip, they fixed his and renamed it the 4790k or 'devils canyon'). X99 CPUs (e.g. i7-5960X) actually run pretty warm compared to haswell/Z97 chips but they are higher TDP so it's to be expected.

Intel do tend to be better at staying cool though. the 1090T you've got was a bit of a beast in i's day, probably not so much anyore compared to bulldozer/kaveri or intel's latest offerings

 

[emperor76]

depends which i7 it is! The first generation core CPUs were pretty hot running (e.g i7-920), Sandy Bridge and Ivy bridge (2nd and third generation, numbers beginning '2' and '3' e.g. i7-2600k or i7-3770k) were pretty cool by comparison, and Haswell had some hiccups with quality control (bad thermal interface on i7-4770k lead to it being a really hot chip, they fixed his and renamed it the 4790k or 'devils canyon'). X99 CPUs (e.g. i7-5960X) actually run pretty warm compared to haswell/Z97 chips but they are higher TDP so it's to be expected.

Intel do tend to be better at staying cool though. the 1090T you've got was a bit of a beast in i's day, probably not so much anyore compared to bulldozer/kaveri or intel's latest offerings

I'll re-post when I find out exactly which one it is, I'm gutted with my board, I got my cpu when it was pretty new for £133 and an AM3 board which I soon found out doesn't support any cpu's past mine, if I want an FX, I'd have to change my board, and if I have to change my board, I figure I might as well make it an intel one.

 

[emperor76]

Just ordered my graphics card, I spent slightly more an got the 4gb version of the 960 strix, I was tempted by the 970, but at about £260, it was a bit much Asus Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 Strix Direct CU II Graphics Card (4 GB, GDDR5, PCI Express 3.0, HDMI, DVI-I, 3 x Display Port): Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

Thanks everyone for the help choosing the graphics card, now looking forward to putting Dragon Age 2 on full graphics!