PC Upgrade advice

[DarklordKyo]

I was thinking of using my Christmas money from later this year to upgrade my PC, and I would like to pose a few questions. First of all, and I realize this is probably a stupid question but, which is better between the NVIDIA GTX 670 and 960? Whichever one ends up better, would either be powerful enough to surpass (at least) the minimum for Dead Rising 3?, and are what they say about the 960s getting 4 GB of VRAM true? (the latter is mostly because I want to get The Evil Within at a glorious 60 FPS, and the dedicated VRAM is the only thing that keeps me from the recommended specs). Lastly, would there be any bottlenecking problems if either card was the only upgrade I make?

To put things into perspective, the following is a summary the specs of the Kyo Cave Batcomputer (courtesy of Speccy):

Operating System
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
CPU
AMD FX-4300 70 °F
Vishera 32nm Technology
RAM
8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 799MHz (11-11-11-28)
Motherboard
MSI 970A-G46 (MS-7693) (CPU 1) 87 °F
Graphics
BenQ GW2750H (1920x1080@60Hz)
2048MB ATI AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series (XFX Pine Group) 112 °F
Storage
931GB TOSHIBA DT01ACA100 ATA Device (SATA) 87 °F
Optical Drives
hp CDDVDW TS-H653R ATA Device
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

P.S. How hard would it be to go from and AMD card (drivers, required downloads, etc.) to an NVIDIA one? I'm thinking of converting because of various reasons (namely the NVIDIA-exclusive particle effects in some games like Mirror's Edge, Red Faction Armageddon apparently blue screening on an AMD card, and Watch_Dogs apparently requiring an NVIDIA rig if you want to be able to at least run it).

 

[DoPo]

First of all, and I realize this is probably a stupid question but, which is better between the NVIDIA GTX 670 and 960?

Well, according to nVidia it's the 960 but not by a massive amount

Spoiler: nVidia

[http://international.download.nvidia.com/webassets/en_US/shared/images/products/shared/lineup-full.png]

videocardbenchmark.net [http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html] seems to agree - at the time of writing, GTX 960 (with a mark of 6,034) is at position 16 and GTX 670 is at position 21 (with a mark of 5,383) in that list.

Whichever one ends up better, would either be powerful enough to surpass (at least) the minimum for Dead Rising 3?[/url]

The minimum is listed as GTX 570 and the recommended specs say GTX 670. I think you're safe on that front.

and are what they say about the 960s getting 4 GB of VRAM true?

I don't actually know. I looked this up and there were reports from just about a month ago of these 960s being scheduled for March. I can't seem to find anything by nVidia or anything like that. Weirdly, I can only find stuff from a month ago - I sumbled upon a couple of forum discussions from that time, as well.

P.S. How hard would it be to go from and AMD card (drivers, required downloads, etc.) to an NVIDIA one?

OK, I've never tried it, myself, nor have I seen anybody try it, however, it should be as simple as installing the new video card and the drivers. Possibly also uninstalling the old drivers. I've not tried it because I've never had one PC where I switched the video cards from one brand to the other. Same with the other people I know. I don't see a reason why replacing the card and the drivers shouldn't work, however.

 

[DarklordKyo]

Assuming you get this DoPo, what about the bottlenecking question? Given my specs, will the card be too powerful & make the rest of the system bottleneck the whole thing?

 

[Albino Boo]

Your CPU is way under powered to run The Evil Within. You will comfortably run dead rising 3 but you will get under 20 FPS if you are lucky with your CPU. If you want to run the evil within at 60 fps you will need an i7.

 

[DarklordKyo]

snip

what about the bottlenecking question? Given my specs, will the card be too powerful & make the rest of the system bottleneck the whole thing?

 

[Albino Boo]

snip

what about the bottlenecking question? Given my specs, will the card be too powerful & make the rest of the system bottleneck the whole thing?

You will be able to run dead rising 3 without bottlenecking but more recent games recommended specs means that you will see bottlenecking from you CPU. The Evil Within recommended specs is an i7 http://www.pcgamer.com/the-evil-within-system-requirements-demand-some-serious-hardware/ , you will not get 60fps out of your rig even with a gtx 670/970.

For rig guides take a look at this http://www.logicalincrements.com/

 

[gorfias]

This site seems to think the GTX 960 about 20% faster.

I have an an I7-2600K that ran on it's HD graphics and later added an AMD card. It wasn't hard to do.

Best of luck.