Need to upgrade, but whats my bottle neck?

[Gr4vitas]

So the rig in the description is my current build. It's been playing every game maxed out fine up until a few days ago when I bought arma 3, maxed out I'm only get around 30fps and it drops from there in heavy action in cities etc.

 

Anyway my bottom line question is, whats my bottle neck? I'm thinking graphics, and if so where do I upgrade to from here? I'm not looking to spend more than maybe 200-230 ish on a new graphics card, I've been out of the loop a while and I think its about time to upgrade something here.

[wevsspot]

Your graphics is definitely the bottle neck.  But you'll need to sell your 6970 and add the proceeds to the $230 you have budgeted to even get close to a good graphics card upgrade.

 

You probably need to be thinking along the lines of a R9 280X or R9 290 if you want AMD.  Or a GTX 770 or GTX 780 if you want nVidia.

 

It might also be worth waiting to see what the latest AMD and nVidia gpu solutions will look like a little later this year if you can hold off that long.  Otherwise the four options noted above would be significant upgrades to your current GPU.

 

What resolution are you currently gaming at?

Any plans to upgrade monitor(s) in the future to higher resolution?

How much eye candy, AA/AF do you want to use?

[Gr4vitas]

Your graphics is definitely the bottle neck.  But you'll need to sell your 6970 and add the proceeds to the $230 you have budgeted to even get close to a good graphics card upgrade.

 

You probably need to be thinking along the lines of a R9 280X or R9 290 if you want AMD.  Or a GTX 770 or GTX 780 if you want nVidia.

 

It might also be worth waiting to see what the latest AMD and nVidia gpu solutions will look like a little later this year if you can hold off that long.  Otherwise the four options noted above would be significant upgrades to your current GPU.

 

What resolution are you currently gaming at?

Any plans to upgrade monitor(s) in the future to higher resolution?

How much eye candy, AA/AF do you want to use?

 

 

I see, that's kind of what I figured based on the quick research I did, its crazy how this old as dirt card still hangs with current $250 cards. My only real end goal is just to be able to play current games (arma 3 /  battlefield 4) maxed out with 50+fps. 

 

I guess I'll probably just wait for the new stuff to come out, I don't even know what the new stuff is lmao, I've been out of the scene for too long. I'm not in any rush, and just bought an xbox one so I really don't have the funds currently anyway. I'll look into selling this 6970 while I wait for the latest stuff from amd and nvidia.

 

I'm at 1920x1080 res, no plans for higher res.

 

Pretty much all the eye candy, I've got arma 3 on 8x AA right now. (max) and thats where I'd like to play it at.

Edited August 11, 2014 by Gr4vitas

[El_Capitan]

Definitely with wevs, graphics card is the bottleneck. Emphasis on "card".

 

Arma III is a very graphics demanding game, especially if you want the best image quality. At 1920 x 1080, you'll need two GTX 780's in SLI if you want to have 8x FSAA (which will cause some blurring), and FXAA Ultra (to get those blurs to go away), and at 1080P, depending on how many objects you have in view, you'll have FPS averaging in the 52FPS to 72FPS.

 

However, that's way out of your budget. You may have to settle for lowering your AA for increased FPS.

[potatochobit]

6970 is not a bad card

you should lower your expectations or be prepared to invest more than 400$.

 

FPS drop can mean many things

the game is coded bad and buggy, especially if it was just released

driver issues

it uses physx and you have an AMD card