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Do you fully utilize your graphics card's performance?

R

raildogg

Lifer
Hey everyone, I was curious if we really need such powerful graphics cards for what we do (gaming, graphics work, university courses, etc). I just bought a graphics card recently to upgrade from integrated graphics and now I cannot find something to use it for! LOL.

Just tried Planetside 2 and didn't like it. I'll try other games but I've been playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein multiplayer for a long time now and nothing compares to it in terms of online shooters. The only thing I see in terms of PC gaming that is interesting is the upcoming Sim City 5. The RTS genre doesn't seem as appealing as before. Don't know of any good current games either.

So basically, I feel as this piece of hardware may not get utilized as much as I expected. Oh well, I guess its better to have it than not.

Do you guys fully utilize your video cards?
 
Most of my favorite games don't really push my system very much, but I keep my CPU and GPU busy 24/7 with Bitcoin mining and distributed computing projects.
 
A Mobility Radeon 5470 isn't hard to fully utilize. :/

Bumped the clock speed from 750 MHz to 925 MHz, which is a pretty nice overclock. Too bad good quality silicone is wasted on such a low end chip. 😛
 
2x 680's most of the time don't deliver the performance I would like. Lots of frame rate performance problems, surround is normally not possible at reasonable graphical settings. Rarely get the opportunity to run AA and maintain 60 fps most of the time.
 
I always feel like my GPUs are heavily under utilized except when i'm playing crysis 3.

Not that I mind that, having too much performance is much better than having too little. As soon as better slim bezel IPS panels are released i'll look into going surround.
 
dragantoe said:
do you actually have sli titans? i would love to see what the inside of your case looks like with those monsters
Click to expand...

There are others here with SLI Titans, I'm actually selling one of them already to another member, AdamK47.

Anyways, here they are:
34sgw7q.jpg
 
Annisman* said:
There are others here with SLI Titans, I'm actually selling one of them already to another member, AdamK47.

Anyways, here they are:
34sgw7q.jpg
Click to expand...

Thats one hell of a sexy pic right there.
Regarding my cards, yes I utilize them becuase I play modern games. 2 cards at 1080p are barely enough for modern games. So yes, more is always better and can be used. Try BF3 with your new card or Crysis 3.
 
No.

I'm strange that way. I got a 4870 a couple months after it came out, and same with the 6950. But apart from a short Civ V stint (which I no longer play because of the horrible multi-threading implementation with AMD cards) the games I play most are all Source. Dota, Portal, TF2, etc.
 
Try Battlefield 3 @ Ultra settings, that'll bring ur sysnto its knees.if all u play is return to castle wolfenstein (how old is that game??? 10years??) Ofcourse u didn't need to upgrade!
 
Very rarely do I get a game that pushes my card. I think Crysis 3, that's about it. Maybe BF3 if I go crazy with the AA. My card gets the biggest workout from mining bitcoins at 1.25GHz whenever I'm not gaming or doing intensive media work.
 
Eyefinity is the answer. Once you up the screen res to 5760 and beyond you find you need the raw power... With 1 monitor there isn't much that can take advantage of even one top tier GPU'S let alone 2 or 3.

120hz gaming is a worthwhile investment to help make your GPU's work for their keep and Eyefinity at 120hz is the ultimate IMO.
 
I don't game a lot but when I do I want it to be smooth, and when I upgraded to a 2560x1440 monitor my old 6850 was just not fast enough and I also wanted physX for BL2, So I bought a GTX 670 which runs all the games I play just fine. So the short answer is, yes.
 
Stu @ MSD said:
Eyefinity is the answer. Once you up the screen res to 5760 and beyond you find you need the raw power... With 1 monitor there isn't much that can take advantage of even one top tier GPU'S let alone 2 or 3.

120hz gaming is a worthwhile investment to help make your GPU's work for their keep and Eyefinity at 120hz is the ultimate IMO.
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ya Eyefinity definitely is the answer.
 
I play Skyrim mostly on a 120hz monitor. It seems to be a good match with my overclocked 7950. Crysis 3 is too much for my card honestly but I'm not building my system for a single graphics monster like crysis.
 
I find my 7850 is just adequate for my needs. It maxes out most of my games without AA at 1920x1200 without dropping below ~50fps. Any slower and I'd need to drop settings in some of the more demanding games that I play.
 
Maxed out ENB Skyrim (my current favorite being Project realistic), with complex DOF, complex indirect SSAO, etc is just as punishing, if not more, than Crysis 3 (given the bench numbers I have so far on a 7950). On the upshot, the game looks truly amazing (in fact, some of the lighting effects in Crysis 3 aren't really all that great, though I concede that the engine overall is superior). Add AA on top of that...
 
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I have an HD6850 and I most definitely run into a gpu power wall with it with many games. I also do folding@home when it is cold outside and that also could use near infinite gpu power if it was given such. The HD6850 isn't really all that old either, all things considered.

Once realtime raytracing and solid graphics (think chop down a random tree and see the wood inside it) is the norm and video cards can keep up easily, then there will be a gpu power glut after that. That is waaaay off in the future.
 
dagamer34 said:
Crysis 3 @ Very High with any AA would like to have a word with you.
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I run Crysis 3 at "high" with very high textures and use 2x SMAA and am quite happy with the performance. It'd be nice if I could max it out but the visual difference is very minor and I can't justify another $200 for one game.
 
Yuriman said:
I run Crysis 3 at "high" with very high textures and use 2x SMAA and am quite happy with the performance. It'd be nice if I could max it out but the visual difference is very minor and I can't justify another $200 for one game.
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This is the big issue here. Companies will pile on redundant/inefficient rendering methods to label their game a "card killer" at the highest settings, but I don't see a lot of people questing whether or not the performance cost is well deserved.

Just to take two new games for a example, Far Cry 3 looks very static and bland, as is the case with many multi-platform/console port games, and yet the performance stinks. It comes down to an inefficient SSAO algorithm, and yet people are some how impressed and upset when their rig can't put out 60FPS at these settings. They question their hardware rather than the software. The same can be said Crysis 3. Again, a very static world, pretty bland. I think the thing people are most impressed by are the textures, but textures don't take a lot of graphical power, just space.

For reference, here's a game from 2007 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHEUputjick
 
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