Any GPU experts out there?

[Jon Clarke]

A while back I posted a topic relating to what is the huge difference between specs and price for the same named GPU, but unfortunately got little or no joy in replies.

 Take for example the fact that a 1060 is now a couple of hundred pounds (UK) cheaper than a 980Ti 6GB. Or that there is a several hundred pound difference in the various manufacturers prices for the 1060 and 980 Ti. Some seem to have 2 fans, others single fan but the specs look the same to me..

When someone recommends an upgrade to your GPU and suggests a 1060 0r 1080, which actual version is considered the best and what are the differences. I cannot make head nor tail of it.

 I would appreciate any answers so that I know what to look for rather just a model number which then appears to have loads of price differences.

[Jon Clarke]

This is the type of thing I am talking about.

[Nick Cooper]

If you only want the graphics card for FSX or P3D, I would suggest that you don't upgrade.

The whole industry is geared up to persuade you that the next generation card is vital

to maintain performance so that you will buy it.

Fair enough perhaps if you have the latest game that recognises the card, the latest

Direct X version and contains the software to get the best out of them.

None of this applies to FSX or its derivatives.

I would think that your 780, which is a mighty card in its own right will do for some time to come.

 

As a general rule with Nvidia, the last two numbers are the key, *50, *60, *70, *80.

Unless you have a sophisticated benchmark I doubt if you can tell the difference between the

overclocked, special editions and the reference version.

 

When seeking opinions, it is also useful to bear in mind that there are very few people who are honest

enough to admit that they just bought the latest and most expensive bit of hardware and that it didn't

make a blind bit of difference to their flight simulator.

[Jon Clarke]

Thanks Nick. I understand that my current GPU performs well and was labelled as a "Baby Titan" at the outset of it's market appearance. What I don't comprehend though is the huge price variance between manufacturers and whether the least cost is a poorer version and the highest is the absolute best in all aspects.

 I am not currently intending to upgrade but the question was more aimed at seeing if anyone out there knew what the differences were, as a guide to a future purchase. My current 780 is a Zotac but I have no Idea if I would be getting more bang for my bucks if I had bought another brand £200 more expensive but the same "generic " name i.e 780.

 

 

[Nick Cooper]

Indeed and I will keep an eye on the topic also, for I had always thought it was mainly

marketing ploys to sell basically the same product for an inflated price.

[John Dow]

Well, I had a GTX 660 until recently when I upgraded to a GTX 970.

 

The GTX 660 gave me nearly the same fps at 1080p resolution, but...   I now run a 3840 x 2160 monitor and the 660 struggled.  The GTX 970 handles it quite well.  I get 50 - 70+ fps over ORBX countryside such as rural Australia and a little less over the European scenery.  If I upgraded to the 1070 I might get a bit more but almost all the limiting factor for my FPS is now the CPU, not the GPU.

[Jon Clarke]

Thanks John. So CPU is the answer rather than GPU in most circumstances. P3D also has Tessellation factored in so I am assuming that a good GPU becomes more relevant since tessellation involves transfer of things like mesh data over to the GPU rather than the CPU.

PS Don't mention FPS ! Nick will despair. Only joking Nick.

[Nick Cooper]

[Adam Howarth]

36 minutes ago, John Dow said:

Well, I had a GTX 660 until recently when I upgraded to a GTX 970.

 

That's a shame John, I had in mind to offer a trade from a Titan X I had lying around for some training from you. Oh well

 

I have experience in GPUs and have a relationship with Nvidia.

 

I would suggest that in P3D, there is ways to fill the compute cores with tasks, even on pascal generation hardware which is the latest, to the brim. Especially the shading in P3D. Tesselation does not add much to the demand, but shading does in P3D. 4K resolutions add allot of processing too.

 

I would certainly challenge the notion that GPU generations are not giving anything. This is entirely different to the CPU world where little is gained clock for clock. Here are the facts:

 

* Performance per watt and performance per clock cycle is continuing to increase in each generation. In particular the thermals, massive differences in recent Maxwell, pascal generation chips

* The number of compute cores continues to increase

* Clock rates are on a steady climb too

* Depending on what your measuring, a 980ti in many types of measurements will be significantly faster than a 1060, but it will be far worse in power per watt. Needless to say the Pascal generation Titans kills a 980ti easily as does a 1080.

 

Basically when you have a high end GPU, you can do two things as a manufacturer to sell cheaper GPUs:

 

1. Sell the ones which fail testing (no chip ever gets 100% yield when fabricated) with some bad cores and so on, as a lesser grade product

2. Do a whole other chip with less transistor density where you can sell more of them for a given 300 mm wafer size in the fabrication of it

 

My main point to the OP is this - it's not a conspiracy and there is real value there with the products, and reasons for each generation as being better. You get what you pay for. P3D can be run where you still can fill the most capable card on the planet and need to run SLI as a means to achieve more compute power - it depends on settings but at max, you can set it to be GPU limited thats a fact. It's totally different to CPUs which are more or less, ho hum clock for clock in each new generation. Especially now with Intel adding a third step in their tick tock strategy with Kaby Lake, we now have three steps to Intels strategy not two. And more isnt better. Kaby Lake I can't get excited about, but NVIDIA's Pascal, was a major leap ahead of Maxwell.

[ZK-OKQ]

I have to agree with Nick. I recently had to change my card, my 580 died. I replaced with a Asus GTX970 4GB for half the price of a Titan 980 (1080) I can fly in Orbx PNW  in P3D or FSX without any problems whatsoever. Smooth as and settings set at a very good level.

[Ripcord]

There are times when a card dies and it is time to get a new one, and so this discussion will always be relevant in that context.  Like Julian this time arrived for me (a couple years ago now).  I went out and got a GTX 970 with 4GB and it is all I ever needed (still running P3D v2.5).  The computer shop had one that was collecting dust on the shelf and they gave it to me for a song, so I was pleased. 

 

[Stewart Hobson]

I've been running FSX with an EVGA FTX770 4GB for quite awhile now and don't really plan to replace it unless it dies or I switch to P3D.  No complaints and the price was right at the time.

[Iain Emms]

Don't know a great deal about the cards but last year this is what I bought  a KFA2 Hall of Fame 970 GTX for P3DV3 and im more than happy with this card.

Specification:-GPU: GeForce GTX 970 (GM204)- Core Base Clock: 1228MHz- Core Boost Clock: 1380MHz- Memory Clock: 7010MHz- Memory Size: 4096MB GDDR5- Bus Type: PCI Express 3.0- Memory Bus: 256-bit- CUDA Cores: 1664, im just running it at the Base clock and as I say over the moon with it.

cheers

Iain

 

 

[TheGreenToad]

On 17.9.2016 at 9:09 AM, jjaycee1 said:

Take for example the fact that a 1060 is now a couple of hundred pounds (UK) cheaper than a 980Ti 6GB.

 

The nVidia 10 series (1080, 1060 ...) is the newest series, the 9 series (980, 970, 960 ...) is the previous one. A newer series means a newer architecture (improving things like performance, power consumption, temperature or adding newer hardware features like DX12/13/14... compatibility). The last two digits are the model within the series, the higher the number, the more powerful (with the 980Ti being something like a 985, i.e. more powerful than a 980). When comparing two series, you can only really compare the cards with the same model number, i.e. the 1080 is more powerful than the 980. This is why the 1060 is less powerful than the 980Ti and thus cheaper. But keep in mind that "more powerful" does not necessarily mean that you will always see an improvement, how that "power" affects you has a lot to do with how you use the card.

 

On 17.9.2016 at 9:09 AM, jjaycee1 said:

Or that there is a several hundred pound difference in the various manufacturers prices for the 1060 and 980 Ti. Some seem to have 2 fans, others single fan but the specs look the same to me.

 

Let's take the 980 Ti here. Basically they are all the same, meaning they have exactly the same graphics chip on board. The difference between the various models are the level of factory overclocking (you will see different clock speeds with different models, just like with CPUs), and mostly cooling solutions. Some have stronger cooling, some have quieter cooling, some have water cooling. So performance wise they are very similar (depending on the level of overclocking).

 

On 17.9.2016 at 9:09 AM, jjaycee1 said:

When someone recommends an upgrade to your GPU and suggests a 1060 0r 1080, which actual version is considered the best and what are the differences.

 

Well, that depends on what you want to achieve. If you want it quiet, you'll choose a card with a quiet cooling solution. If you want to overclock your card as much as you can, you'll want strong cooling. If you just want any 1060, you can buy the cheapest one you find. As I said above, each 1060 has the same graphics chip, and they're all quite similar performance wise.

 

On 17.9.2016 at 9:49 AM, jjaycee1 said:

My current 780 is a Zotac but I have no Idea if I would be getting more bang for my bucks if I had bought another brand £200 more expensive but the same "generic " name i.e 780.

 

In this case, you won't really get more "bang" for the additional £200, but perhaps a much quieter card. Again, each 780 has the same GPU and thus about the same performance.

[Benny]

I was prepare to upgrade mi rig lately due to some problem.

 

But the problem was solve, at least for now. To make sure it was not my old 590 my friend landed me his 960 (i think) for a weekend.

 

No real difference in FPS or smoothness in FSX, at all.

 

My real problem was my OC, yep. It became unstable at 4.5ghz, but was stable for a long time at around 4.4... I thought so.

So I went back to stock speed and slowly and gradually went up to it's sweet spot, 4,1, yep, now I have better FPS-smoothness then I ever had!!!!!! even at 4.4ghz

 

So I guess the CPU was stable at 4.4 but in some ways was rushing.

 

So until I move to P3D or something break, I'm keeping my rig. I don't even have the patch installed for Dubrovnik and I'm over 30fps all the time.

 

Ben

[Jon Clarke]

Thanks to all and a special thanks to The Green Toad for a layman's explanation of what the actual differences are. I now think I understand what the variations of a particular model represent and hence the price differences.