Thinking of buying a GTX 590

[SymphonicX]

Please talk me out of it....it's £600 - but I really want one. I am currently on the GTX460 and I love it. It overclocks SO well (like 175mhz extra!) But I've got so many reasons to justify buying one...And you know, with Pirate Bay you can kinda make these things sorta pay for themselves *cough*

if anyone has one and hates it, now is the time to tell me.
Or if you know something I don't....like I need to buy a water tower to cool it or something.
323fps on Crysis 2....phew!
But really its more for Adobe stuff like After Effects - speed up ram previews etc...but you know, PC games are the shizniz now, I'm almost completely off consoles...

Thoughts? What's your gfx card, and what kind of performance can you push out of it?

Here's some details of what I can get atm:

Crysis 2: 40fps
Mafia 2: 25 fps (!!!)
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood: 25fps
Morrowind with high textured mods running at 1920x1080: 59fps
Oblivion: 60+fps
Portal 2: 40-50fps


Am I just being a spec whore?
I'll come clean on this, the real reason I want this card....one word...."Skyrim".

[Rancid Carcass]

I'll come clean on this, the real reason I want this card....one word...."Skyrim".

I've been here before with Oblivion, spent the best part of £300 upgrading my PC to run it at more or less max settings. It was great and amazing, but the novelty does wear off eventually once you seen everything, still a great game but would I do that again? Well, I'm opting for the 360 version this time round...

The important thing to remember is you're essentially paying £600 for a game - and is any game really worth that much?

[AcesandEights]

Well, I'm opting for the 360 version this time round...


So am I. Generally I'll opt for consoles versions for these sorts of games anyway, for stability purposes and the lack of needing to worry about gfx cards and specs. I leave my computer for games I can't enjoy on consoles. That said, having recently gotten a new laptop I'm considering picking up a few older games I've played on console just to experience modded versions of those games.

[SymphonicX]

So am I. Generally I'll opt for consoles versions for these sorts of games anyway, for stability purposes and the lack of needing to worry about gfx cards and specs. I leave my computer for games I can't enjoy on consoles. That said, having recently gotten a new laptop I'm considering picking up a few older games I've played on console just to experience modded versions of those games.

Yeah I have thought about opting for the 360 version but I've seen the light with PC gaming - the light being the far superior graphics and performance of the PC versions of games....

I don't think, for instance, that Battlefield 3 on the consoles is going to look anywhere near as good as those preview videos which were obviously captured from PC....

like the xbox, that runs most games at an upscaled ratio of 640p - whereas my PC is running it full 1920x1080 and the difference, I'm sure you know, is immense...!

So yeah back to the point about essentially paying £600 for a game - you're right, the novelty will wear off but where I come back to the thought is that when that game is over and done with (and all the mods we've mentioned are out, done, and gotten bored with - which will far exceed the life of the xbox version...(morrowind is still being modded to this day!) then I can just get another stonking game which will guarantee to run at super settings....

Plus there's the adobe after effects benefits....

[Eyebiter]

Sounds like a waste of money. If you already have a Nvidia GTX460, you don't need a GTX590. The benefit you would derive from the $1,000 upgrade is negligible.

[SymphonicX]

Dunno about that, the 460 is good - but it's not perfect....the 590 is running these games at resolutions that far exceed my display's resolution - so at the same res the performance is about 6x better on paper...!

I'm still looking around for one....but I do need a new fridge more.....argh

[Tricky]

I guess it depends on what you have planned for the rest of the year dude, if you have no holidays, expensive car repairs etc coming up and you can buy it without putting yourself in the shizzle financially, then why not! :cool: I'm looking at upgrading my processor soon as thats whats really starting to lack on mine, but I keep putting it off as its the whole hassle of changing my main board & re-installing everything...

[SymphonicX]

I guess it depends on what you have planned for the rest of the year dude, if you have no holidays, expensive car repairs etc coming up and you can buy it without putting yourself in the shizzle financially, then why not! :cool: I'm looking at upgrading my processor soon as thats whats really starting to lack on mine, but I keep putting it off as its the whole hassle of changing my main board & re-installing everything...

Yeah its not so hard with a component like a graphics card...I need to do a processor upgrade too....well I don't need to - I can just put another one in there so it'd be quite fun to be running dual quad core processsors...

But that's another £600 bill...the thing that's really stopping me is that everytime i spend money on something extravagant, something breaks in my car or my house and I end up digging into overdraft - but at the moment everything looks dandy (fingers crossed) but sods law prevails eh!!!

I'll give this one a week or so and revisit it, I reckon. My Macbook pro cdrom drive just died so I defo need to replace that first....ugh.

[Tricky]

I know that feeling all too well, it seems that everytime I get a bit of cash gathered together with the intention of having a holiday or treating myself to something, I suddenly get car trouble which immediately wipes out all my savings, and my wages arent all that great to begin with so its extremely frustrating! I'm just glad I dont have kids and all the bills that come with those so I can still be a little selfish from time to time!

[SymphonicX]

I know that feeling all too well, it seems that everytime I get a bit of cash gathered together with the intention of having a holiday or treating myself to something, I suddenly get car trouble which immediately wipes out all my savings, and my wages arent all that great to begin with so its extremely frustrating! I'm just glad I dont have kids and all the bills that come with those so I can still be a little selfish from time to time!

Yeah with my mortgage it feels like I've got kids anyway...! the other month I bought a second hand macbook and the NEXT DAY my bathroom gave in and leaked downstairs to the neighbours property....so that night had to rip up my whole bathroom to get to the problem, then refloor is, reseal the edges and sand the skirting, repaint, blah blah - that happened the day another builder was booked to do a roof repair which got shelved when we saw a wooden support beam had rotted away, costing us a grand!!

Never should have bought the macbook!!! argh.

[Eyebiter]

SymphonicX do you have enough cash stockpiled for an eight month emergency fund? You should consider saving that $1000 instead of spending it on random electronics that will be obsolete in two years.

[SymphonicX]

SymphonicX do you have enough cash stockpiled for an eight month emergency fund? You should consider saving that $1000 instead of spending it on random electronics that will be obsolete in two years.

I usually have just about enough to maintain whatever problems arise - usually only one at a time - I certainly don't have 8 months wages saved up for this kind of thing - that couldn't happen with my outgoings really...! I got about 4 months saved up at the beginning of the year but the car repairs (£600) plus the roof (£300) plus new guttering (£300) plus new fascia boards (£300) plus a new lintol support beam on my porch (£700) plus a complete rebuild on the side of my porch (£250) plus painting the whole property (£100) plus bathroom refloor (£240) plus materials for bathroom (£250) has meant, to be honest, that four months wages went in about a week....! Oh yeah and I paid off my council tax for the year £1290....

I'm selling my xbox and all the games to pay for at least half of the gfx card - then I'll put the rest of it in myself from my pay packet - so it won't influence the small savings I have left!

Definitely my most expensive month ever so far!!

---------- Post added at 05:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:14 PM ----------

But you know, this £600 graphics card is going to hold its value for a couple of years - not massively, but when the GTX 2 million comes out I'll be able to sell the 590 and reclaim a good chunk of it on the upgrade, keeping me up to date, and meaning my expenses only reach to buying essentially a mid priced graphics card every few years but actually having the best one - rather than my usual of the second cheapest one!

[Tricky]

Plus graphics are reaching a ceiling now, visuals really arent going to make huge leaps like they used to do, so a high end graphics card now is likely to be good for a few years at least. I think the biggest leaps in gaming now will be in AI and the size of the worlds you can explore, plus view distance, which comes down to processing power and RAM rather than graphics cards.

[SymphonicX]

Plus graphics are reaching a ceiling now, visuals really arent going to make huge leaps like they used to do, so a high end graphics card now is likely to be good for a few years at least. I think the biggest leaps in gaming now will be in AI and the size of the worlds you can explore, plus view distance, which comes down to processing power and RAM rather than graphics cards.

Yep, agree and hope you're right about that! The issues I'm facing right now is my lack of SLI capability - I've seen rumours that my MB will support it but a lot of official looking stuff that says I can't - so without SLI capability I have the choice of running ONE gfx card only, so might as well be the beefiest one on the market...

I love that you brought up the map size thing, I've always wanted to see an entire country in a game....all I gotta do is stick another quad in my MB and I'll be running dual quad core 2.83 ghz which should more than hold up against massive map sizes, draw distance etc...

Here's my latest news on the gfx card:

My xbox, and all the accessories and games are on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190539915852&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT

I've gone in fairly high on this one - what do you think? Fingers crossed!

With those funds plus a cash injection from my own savings I've bought this:

http://www.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=03G-P3-1599-AR&family=GeForce%20500%20Series%20Family&sw=

It's the EVGA GTX 590 Hydro Copper - had to buy this one because I've heard other flavours are quite flakey and this one comes with a lifetime warranty, providing it's not overclocked - which, to be honest, seems pretty mad to overclock when it's that powerful.

Currently running a 1050w psu so basically it's all set - I won the ebay auction for the EVGA last night and am picking it up on Friday. I can post screen shots of how the games are running if anyone's interested...if not I'll just enjoy all the beauty by myself :)

---------- Post added 06-Jun-2011 at 03:31 PM ---------- Previous post was 01-Jun-2011 at 08:47 AM ----------

My epic-est fail ever.

Bought the card....dropped it down the stairs before plumbing it in...! Lucky I have insurance for just this sort of thing! Now a small delay before I get the working one and have a little dance at the nice graphics.


Ever heard a £750 piece of kit hit multiple stairs and shatter internally? You don't want to...!