Gaming card for single 1920x1200 monitor, silent preferred

[IronWing]

I'm looking for a new card to play the new Doom. I'd like to be able to play at the highest quality settings my monitor will support. I'm brand agnostic. The quieter the better while still allowing good performance. Thank you for any suggestions.

Motherboard: Asus P7P55D-E Pro
2 x PCIe 2.0 x16
3 x PCIe 2.0 x1
2 x PCI
Processor: i7 Quad Core 860@2.80 Ghz
RAM: 8GB
Monitor: single Dell UltraSharp U2412M, 1920 x 1200 maximum resolution
ATX case with plenty of room
Win 7 Home Premium

 

[Bacon1]

Price?

$200 -> 480 4gb (or $250 for 8gb)

$400 -> 1070

 

[tweakboy]

760 gtx

 

[MrTeal]

I would say if you can wait, get an aftermarket 480.
TPU just reviewed Palit's new 1080 and it looks like the absolute best you'll do for performance at low noise right now (only 30dB at load), but it will probably be significantly bottlenecked by your CPU. A $200-250 GPU like a RX 480 or possibly a GTX 1060 would be much more of a sweet spot for your system.

 

[Lyfer]

I would definitely start out with a CPU upgrade first. The highest I would pair with that CPU is a used a r9 290.

 

[Silverforce11]

Wait a week. Custom RX 480 and 1060 should be coming soon.

 

[Thinker_145]

If you want to play games at "highest" settings you need to do something about your CPU first.

The cheaper method is to overclock it. You will need to buy a $50 third party cooler for your CPU, install it and learn how to overclock. This can be a pretty daunting task for a beginner like you seem to be. However your CPU is capable of giving an absolutely enormous performance boost with overclocking and you have the right motherboard for it.

If you can't do this then you will have to buy a new CPU, RAM and motherboard alongside a graphics card. If you are not restricted in budget then you should absolutely do this.

 

[atticus14]

I figured I'd comment since i have a similar system and resolution.

I don't know how good the recent Doom demo is as an indicator of performance, but I played it on ultra at 1920x1200 TSSAA 8X with my i7 920 @3.4 + R9 390 @ 1150/1600 and had a good experience, seemed to stay right at 58-70 FPS indoors and 80ish outdoors. The only thing I turned down is blur to medium, because I just don't like it in faster paced FPS games, I only left it on just to see how they implemented it.

I think there is a Vulkan release coming that may help those of us on older platforms even more. I'd definitely aim for a AIB 480

 

[RussianSensation]

I'm looking for a new card to play the new Doom. I'd like to be able to play at the highest quality settings my monitor will support. I'm brand agnostic. The quieter the better while still allowing good performance. Thank you for any suggestions.

Motherboard: Asus P7P55D-E Pro
2 x PCIe 2.0 x16
3 x PCIe 2.0 x1
2 x PCI
Processor: i7 Quad Core 860@2.80 Ghz
RAM: 8GB
Monitor: single Dell UltraSharp U2412M, 1920 x 1200 maximum resolution
ATX case with plenty of room
Win 7 Home Premium

You got lucky because Doom isn't very CPU intensive if the goal is 60 fps @ 1080p. However, for many other games, your CPU is a major bottleneck.

Even a 4.0Ghz Nehalem i7 bottlenecks an R9 390/GTX970.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=38321281&postcount=15

For Doom specifically, R9 390/RX 480/GTX970 is a good card. For an overall GPU recommendation, I'd rather recommend the upcoming $149 RX 470 4GB + spend $30-40 on a CPU cooler and overclock your processor to 3.8-3.9Ghz. Otherwise, be on the look out for fire sale sub-$200 GTX970. Before you commit, wait for GTX 1060 to come out as it may force some price drops on RX 480 or at the very least you'll have more info.

In many modern games, your CPU will be up to 50% slower than a modern i7 6700K with an R9 390/GTX970 level card. Start saving up towards a full platform upgrade.

 

[IronWing]

The CPU has this cooler on it and the BIOS allows for all sorts of overclocking parameters to be entered. The machine was factory tuned for silent operation so the CPU is set at base clock. With the case fans selected for quiet operation and the sound dampening materials in the case, I'm not sure how much I'd be able to bump up the clock speed without running into thermal problems. On the other hand, the current video card, a Powercolor HD 6750 w/ 1GB GDDR5, is passively cooled by the case fans so maybe there is sufficient case cooling to allow some overclocking.

Side question: some of the cards specify 8-prong or 6+2 prong power feeds. Looking at the cables available in my case I have 6+2 cables available. I would simply hold the two connectors together and push them into the 8-prong receptacle on the card, correct?

 

[Yakk]

I think there is a Vulkan release coming that may help those of us on older platforms even more. I'd definitely aim for a AIB 480

Any rumored date on the Vulkan patch release? 480 looks good in this case.

 

[MrTeal]

The CPU has this cooler on it and the BIOS allows for all sorts of overclocking parameters to be entered. The machine was factory tuned for silent operation so the CPU is set at base clock. With the case fans selected for quiet operation and the sound dampening materials in the case, I'm not sure how much I'd be able to bump up the clock speed without running into thermal problems. On the other hand, the current video card, a Powercolor HD 6750 w/ 1GB GDDR5, is passively cooled by the case fans so maybe there is sufficient case cooling to allow some overclocking.

Side question: some of the cards specify 8-prong or 6+2 prong power feeds. Looking at the cables available in my case I have 6+2 cables available. I would simply hold the two connectors together and push them into the 8-prong receptacle on the card, correct?

Yep on the PSU. If you are that much into silent operation and do have a bit of a budget, I would really consider a platform upgrade. You can overclock the CPU, but you'll pay a price in terms of addition heat and thus noise. A Skylake based system would give much better performance than what you currently have within the same thermal envelope, and would be a much better match to a new GPU.

What do you use your computer for when you're not gaming?

 

[IronWing]

What do you use your computer for when you're not gaming?

Everything else is pretty low resource usage: photo editing, some audio editing (Audacity), Google Earth stuff, office suite. I don't watch a lot of movies and only dabbled a bit in video editing. Other than gaming, the photo-stacking program (Helicon Focus) is probably the most resource intensive thing.

 

[Thinker_145]

The CPU has this cooler on it and the BIOS allows for all sorts of overclocking parameters to be entered. The machine was factory tuned for silent operation so the CPU is set at base clock. With the case fans selected for quiet operation and the sound dampening materials in the case, I'm not sure how much I'd be able to bump up the clock speed without running into thermal problems. On the other hand, the current video card, a Powercolor HD 6750 w/ 1GB GDDR5, is passively cooled by the case fans so maybe there is sufficient case cooling to allow some overclocking.

Side question: some of the cards specify 8-prong or 6+2 prong power feeds. Looking at the cables available in my case I have 6+2 cables available. I would simply hold the two connectors together and push them into the 8-prong receptacle on the card, correct?

The single most important thing for CPU overclocking is the CPU cooler and this looks like a decent one to me. You seem to have all the right hardware to overclock so why not just give it a try? The worst case scenario is that temps will be too high with overclock and you will simply have to resort to default settings, you are not going to burn anything in the process.

While it is true that even overclocked your CPU will still bottleneck modern cards but that shouldn't discourage you from buying a good card right now because if you manage to overclock a good amount then your CPU won't exactly be terrible and you can always upgrade your platform later on.

In order to give a GPU recommendation we need to know your PSU wattage and manufacturer if possible. And of course your budget for the GPU. I personally would recommend the 8GB RX 480 as a minimum for the sort of requirement you have.

 

[Arachnotronic]

I'm looking for a new card to play the new Doom. I'd like to be able to play at the highest quality settings my monitor will support. I'm brand agnostic. The quieter the better while still allowing good performance. Thank you for any suggestions.

Motherboard: Asus P7P55D-E Pro
2 x PCIe 2.0 x16
3 x PCIe 2.0 x1
2 x PCI
Processor: i7 Quad Core 860@2.80 Ghz
RAM: 8GB
Monitor: single Dell UltraSharp U2412M, 1920 x 1200 maximum resolution
ATX case with plenty of room
Win 7 Home Premium

Wait for the 1060 to launch and then compare it with the RX 480. Doom seems to prefer NV cards, so I'm thinking a GTX 1060 6GB will be the way to go.

 

[IronWing]

In order to give a GPU recommendation we need to know your PSU wattage and manufacturer if possible. And of course your budget for the GPU. I personally would recommend the 8GB RX 480 as a minimum for the sort of requirement you have.

Here is the power supply: Antec CP-850 850W Power Supply.

$300 would be absolute top on price and $200-$250 would be better.

 

[Thinker_145]

Here is the power supply: Antec CP-850 850W Power Supply.

$300 would be absolute top on price and $200-$250 would be better.

8GB RX 480 is perfect for you then.

 

[wilds]

Used Sapphire R9 290 Tri X's are a feasible alternative if you don't mind the extra heat output. I almost sold mine before coming to my senses. It is an extordinarily quiet card with a lot of grunt.

Anandtech's Review: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7601/sapphire-radeon-r9-290-review-our-first-custom-cooled-290/4

I see them all over the place on Ebay for reasonable prices. I am keeping mine to use in another build. It is whisper quiet in games. The problems are that it uses more power power than the RX 480, and the Tri-X cooler is gigantic.

 

[obidamnkenobi]

So much similar to my situation, lol. Ancient i7-920 + 6950, 19x12 monitor, I want a quite card, and I want to play doom I started thinking about upgrading parts, but decided on a full new system. I'm trying to stay $150-200 for GPU, but will probably go bit over.

From what I've seen the minimum for ~60 fps in doom is a 960 or 380X, maybe the 380 is ok. These are also relatively low power, and thus noise. If you want constant over 60 at max you need more power (I'm not so picky).
http://www.pcgamer.com/heres-how-your-graphics-card-performs-in-doom/
The asus strix and MSI gaming cards of 960 and 380X are very quite in all reviews I've looked at, and ~$200. I'm tempted, but have decided to wait and see what happens when rx 470 and 1060 come out.

Hoping for any of these scenarios:
470 is equal to 380/X and <$200 for custom card
380X drops to <$150
480 4GB custom drop to ~$220 once 1060 is out.

I think all these would be decent options for Doom, but more $ getting more performance obviously.

 

[Headfoot]

Yep on the PSU. If you are that much into silent operation and do have a bit of a budget, I would really consider a platform upgrade. You can overclock the CPU, but you'll pay a price in terms of addition heat and thus noise. A Skylake based system would give much better performance than what you currently have within the same thermal envelope, and would be a much better match to a new GPU.

What do you use your computer for when you're not gaming?

+1 for this. If you're that hard into silent operation and not merely low noise operation you will benefit by a platform upgrade. New platforms use significantly less power compared to that 860