Vid Card question

[Max]

I'm running an EVGA super clocked 760 GTX 2 GB. It runs AH3 quite well with a FR of 50-59 with shadows disabled. That said, what would I gain by upgrading? The NV 1070 series is out of my budget but the 1060's are within reach.

Hang with what I have or upgrade? If the latter, what would I be gaining, obvious to the human eye?

Thanks

[popeye]

You could turn shadows on if you want them.  That would be obvious.

I have a GTX 1060 6GB, and run 4096 textures 2560x1440, with graphics mostly maxed except tree detail at about 50% and Post Lighting turned off (don't like fuzzy icons); frame rates 60ish to 120ish.

(BTW, the Graphic Detail section of online Help is for AH2.)

[BoilerDown]

If you can't afford a 1070 but want to, I would keep saving, the prices are higher than they should be right now due to the various cryptocoin farmers, but eventually this cycle will crash and then there will be a glut of used cards on the market, which will also bring down the price of new cards.

[Pudgie]

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-graphics-cards-see-price-increases-starting-month-due-memory-shortage/

There is this issue to contend with as well so if you plan to pull the trigger you may want to look at doing it very soon if cost is a factor..................

FYI.......................

 

[Krusty]

Shadows make a visual difference that I really miss when I have to turn them off. The low-level shadows can look stepped (like un-aliased bitmap pixels) but the more you turn them up, the more immersive and awesome it looks both inside and outside the cockpit. Only problem is it takes a lot more power to do that.

If you ever wanted to do some footage recording, streaming, etc, then a good performance buffer overhead of what you need to run the game is going to serve you well, too.

[haggerty]

I have a 1060 6GB and with everything maxed I get 144 fps on 1920x1080

[Chalenge]

If you can't afford a 1070 but want to, I would keep saving, the prices are higher than they should be right now due to the various cryptocoin farmers, but eventually this cycle will crash and then there will be a glut of used cards on the market, which will also bring down the price of new cards.

If anyone is still doing this they are burning more money in electricity than they will ever recover in coinage. It just doesn't make sense anymore.

For this same reason you can add a few grains of salt to the wccftech report.

[EagleDNY]

Frankly I get full res on my GTX 970 -- AH3 doesn't really require the total high end on video hardware. 

[jskibo]

If anyone is still doing this they are burning more money in electricity than they will ever recover in coinage. It just doesn't make sense anymore.

For this same reason you can add a few grains of salt to the wccftech report.

Not really.  I mine 1.21 ETH a month ($346 at today's price) and my electric bill is $42 over normal Non mining.

GTX 1080 market hasn't seen the swings of the 1060 / 1070 or AMD market as its memory sucks for ETH mining

[zack1234]

What has the GPU to do with your electricity bill?

[AAIK]

He is talking about mining digital currency using the GPU cycles and the corresponding cost to running it.

Bitcoin mining is way past that, but other; newer currencies are still possible/profitable to mine that way it seems.

[zack1234]

Currency from cycles on a Graphics card?

[Bizman]

Currency from cycles on a Graphics card?

Sort of. It's kind of solving gazillions of mathematical formulas in hope to be the first to solve a certain one and be rewarded. Like finding a needle in a haystack on a country fair. Find it and get the prize.

The reason video cards are being used instead of just the processor of the computer is that a high end video card has much more processing cores to do the calculating than a CPU has. A CPU consists of a few cores optimized for sequential serial processing while a GPU has a massively parallel architecture consisting of thousands of smaller, more efficient cores designed for handling multiple tasks simultaneously. So if a quad core processor can simultaneously calculate four tasks, a video card can do four thousand.

Not too long ago I read an article where they set a high end gaming rig to mine Bitcoin for a month. The result was, that the investment wouldn't pay itself in due time unless they'd hit a jackpot which is as rare as winning the first price in Lotto. As jskibo said, ETH seems to be more profitable at the moment until they mine it empty, too.

[Denniss]

Most miners actually don't use high-end cards but mid-range Radeon Rx400/500 - that's why those had become overly expensive with availability often near zero.
One may also use high end cards like Vega but with all others you have to undervolt and underclock to trim them for efficiency.

[jskibo]

Quite a few variables depending on your electricity costs and card availability.

ETH still profitable, but I wouldn't invest in new hardware to mine it at this point.  Few other coins like Zcash and Monero as well.  Also with the Claymore miner, dual mining can be more profitable (ETH + Dcred)

Nvidia cards are more power efficient per hashrate, AMD mid end cards hash higher per card cost.

ETH uses the memory more than the core.  In fact, single mining with ETH, the core is so underutilized, it can be underclocked quite a bit (-100 to -200) and power dialed back to 65% without impacting mining hashrate.

For ETH, GDDR5 memory timings are perfect and that's why 1060, 1070 and 1080ti cards get sucked up quickly, driving prices higher.  GDDR5X doesn't work as well.  There are tweaks, but not enough to justify paying more for less hashrate than the 1070's.