GTX 970, R9 390 or R9 390X for T:ANE?

[BarryRiedl]

Graphics card died so looking at replacement options.
Hadn't been using T:ANE much due to somewhat poor performance so looking to have the new card be a decent upgrade.
Budget is $300-$400 and the cards in the thread title seem to be the options within that range.
Wondering what T:ANE performance people are getting with these cards (and with what shadow, water, etc. settings).
Was leaning towards the R9 390 or 390X ($40 difference) but read that T:ANE seems to better optimized for Nvidia cards, and that some people have had issues with R9 390 cards.
Is that still the case?
The rest of the system is still decent I think:
Intel i7-2600K 3.4 Ghz
8 GB RAM
WD Black 1TB 7200 RPM Hard Drive
Any response appreciated.

Barry

 

[johnwhelan]

nVidia are bringing out Pascal processors shortly, Newegg.com have one or two GTX 980s at just over the $400 mark, I would expect to see a few more bargain 980s around. If you can hold out PASCAL might offer better price performance but the desktop version is rumoured to not be ready for June.

The difficulty is how much is enough? A GTX 980 will do, a GTX 970 might do and that's the problem sometimes it makes sense to overkill rather than hit the mark because if you aren't satisfied with a 970 its still quite a chunk of money.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html

Cheerio John

 

[simulatortrain]

I've been happy with my 970.

 

[Therock]

I'm also satisfied with my 970GTX SSC

 

[clam1952]

Likewise quite happy with my GTX970.

 

[PC_Ace]

Have to say I love my older generation Tahiti-based 280X which is measurably faster than its successor, the 380X (since it is based on a different GPU and has faster memory bandwidth than the new one.)
That said, my replacement will almost certainly be NVidia-sourced this time around and I'll probably skip the 900 series in favor of a newer, more powerful and efficient Pascal unit.
AMD have some seriously competitive new silicon coming up too, with their upcoming Polaris GPU architecture, but that probably won't make its debut until closer to the end of this year.
There's a lot of merit in being patient and skipping a generation or two, especially since the replacements are usually demonstrably faster for the same or similar cost.

 

[Lataxe]

The GTX970 I bought, to replace a once top-of-the-range AMD GPU that was three years older in design, runs T:ANE a lot better than the AMD card did; on a 2560X1600 monitor. It seems to achieve 30fps (to which I limit it) the great majority of the time with all routes and settings that are "high" albeit not "ultra-high". I suspect that a GTX980 would do better - if you really wanted ultra-high settings and 60fps.

The rest of my PC is now 4 years old: an Intel i5 processor overclocked to 4.5Gz with a Corsair LX SSD hosting Trainz. Getting an SSD made a great improvement to all versions of Trainz, especially in route loading time; and in making the switch between different driver views more or less instantaneous. An SSD loads the hundreds of Trainz files that make up a route/session must faster than even the fastest spinning discs.

Lataxe

 

[clam1952]

Interestingly a GTX680 ran TANE like a snail with my i7 3770K but works very well with an AMD Phenom 1090T x6,
put a GTX970 in with the i7 and that's fine. Guess the GTX680 prefers the older PCIe 2.1 mobo. Performance is not far off the i7 / GTX970, food for thought....

 

[boc61]

I am using a 680 with an i5 2500 with a PCIe 2.0 motherboard and TANE runs pretty well on medium settings and shadows low or off. (I prefer off ). In fact I think it runs better that TS12 did. I can push things up a bit and still get decent performance on less demanding routes.

I was going to have a new machine built this month and get either a 980 or 980ti in it, but I'm going to hold off and see what the new NVidia cards offer.

 

[BarryRiedl]

As the GTX 970 works well for people I'm leaning towards this:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U2ON9B6/ref=twister_B00OAXPYXG?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
According one review it should be near equal to a stock GTX 980.
I agree it would be best to wait for cards with the new architecture but unfortunately need a replacement for a dead card now.
I've skipped more than a few generations as the new card will be replacing a Radeon HD 6850 (which came with the PC).
Thanks everyone for the replies so far.

Barry

 

[BarryRiedl]

After some more looking I have ordered the card I linked to above.
Thanks everyone!

Barry

 

[pdkoester]

I'd think waiting for the GTX1070 is something to consider. On the other hand, the EVGA with AC 2.0 is awesome. I have the GTX980 version. So quiet...

 

[d0g]

While I can't speak for Intel cards, I am quite happy with TANE performance on my rig. It's 2 years old and certainly not the most powerful out there, but I've got an AMD R9 270x card and an FX-8320 8-core CPU, with 8 gigs of RAM, running in 1920x1080. I am able to keep the draw distance slider at 4000 and keep most sliders on normal or high, with shadows off. I think I toned down water quality, too. I don't personally care too much for shadows and I rarely pay attention to what the water looks like. I get some stutter when moving around in Surveyor, or when darting around in Free Roam mode in driver, but otherwise, performance is great. Much better frame rates than TS12. I've heard TANE prefers Nvidia, but being on the AMD side of the fence, I haven't had any issues yet, personally.

 

[PC_Ace]

Just watched the GTX 1080/ 1070 launch video from NVidia on Twitch TV. Very impressive performance and efficiency as expected.
Priced from US$379 (1070) available June 10th to US$599 for the 1080 available 27th May worldwide - these look like sensational value for both performance and efficiency.

http://techreport.com/news/30094/nvidia-makes-the-gtx-1080-official

Both come with 8Gb of VRAM (GDDR5 on the 1070 and 10Gb/s GDDR5X on the GTX1080).

Either one of these should allow T:ANE users to play with all the stops let out!

 

[wilts747]

Whether you spend $50 or $500 an inadequate power supple or a poor quality lead can reduce the lot to that of the built in graphics on your motherboard so buy wisely and enjoy because you can be assured that there will always be something better on the market next week but as you know wait for it and you achieve nothing. Peter