Out of Pod Experience

So, I'm building a dedicated eve pc so the family can have the house machine back and I've come down to two GPU choices.

ATI HD 6770, 1GB

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1gb-msi-hd-6770-pcie-21-(x16)-4400mhz-gddr5-gpu-800mhz-800-cores-hdmi-d-sub-dual-link-dvi-i

ATI HD 6750, 2GB

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-281-SP

Both at a price I can slip past the missus.



My question is,

Would it be better to go for the slower but with double the memory HD 6750. Or would I be better off with the faster HD 6770 but with half the memory of the other one.



I'm not really an expert on these things so any advice would be appreciated.




Many thanks

I spelled it wrong. I meant Gnu advice.





Anybody? Or would there be a more suitable Nvidia card?

Eve needs the pinnacle of graphics technology to work

rofl 70-80 pounds? dude a good gpu costs 600 pounds ud have to go back to the 90's for tht money

Sony do engineer their gear well. I'd only ever buy a Viao or Thinkpad. They can get in all kinds of trouble and still stay in one piece!


Yep 70-80 quid. I don't need a good one, just a working one. The 6750 is EVE's recommended spec so I figured it'll do the job.

What I don't know is which is more important for running EVE,


Card speed or memory?






Edit. this will be going into an i3 system with 4GB ram.

Oh, by the way, it's 2GB of DDR3@1600 on that 6750, whereas the 6770 has 1GB of DDR5@4400.
The 6770 is about 35% faster raw power wise going by equivalent gflops tech specs, and at least 10% faster when averaging a lot of practical test results in actual systems including overclocked models and different platforms used in.
You will only ever see the 2GB 6750 maybe start to perform better if you go for a 3-monitor setup in high resolution on each, with some texture-rich game set on very high texture detail. Not even then, though, especially if you have your system's memory at 1600, but maybe with system memory at 1333 (and I assume you have at least 1333 dual-channel DDR3 in your i3 machine, or don't you? if you have it at 800 or somesuch, you might notice it faster).
If EVE is what interests you, and you're planning to only use max 2 monitors in FullHD each, you'd probably better buy the 1GB 6770.

Thanks chaps. That's great advice. Yes, I only play EVE. In fact, I've only ever played games with spaceships. Elite->Wing Commander->Freespace etc.

Thinking about it, most of the environment is just empty space so memory probably isn't so crucial.





Thanks again!





ps. good point on the DDR5, I missed that looking at the specs.

Eh, the "empty space" is a big texture too, just like every little ship, planet, structure and even asteroid has its own textures too.

Just the welcome/login screen already uses up ~350MB of video RAM for max graphic detail in a 1600x1024 borderless window mode resolution on a 1600x1200 desktop.
Inside the game proper, ~430MB for hangar view with a frigate in it, up to ~640MB by simply undocking in a non-crowded area (station has quite a bit of texture on it), ~670MB by also opening a full body view of a pilot on top of that view just outside a station, but only ~560MB in an asteroid belt with nobody else in sight. Then it's ~680MB-700MB after docking and entering CQ, walking around it.
However, just press ESC for the menu then ESC again to go back to the CQ view, and it suddenly drops to just ~350MB, quickly going back towards 500+MB by just walking around.
Again, that's with each and every graphic detail you can adjust ingame completely maxed out.

1GB should generally be quite enough though.
Worst case scenario, the video card starts allocating some normal system memory to supplement its lack of onboard memory, and your system memory should be almost as fast as the memory on the 6750 anyway, so the 6770 maintains an edge in speed even if your actual video RAM requirement goes up to nearly 2GB.

No exaggeration at all. Measured ingame minutes ago with GPU-Z.
I have a 1GB old style 460 GTX, and that's my EVE graphics setup.

P.S.

Most of that is not actively used, the best LOD textures for ships seldom get used more than a couple at a time, and when they do become needed, the time to switch them from "cache" in the main system RAM to active video RAM is quite insignificant.
I've been to Jita more than enough times, and I never had any issues with noticeable hangups even with only 4GB of system RAM (out of which 2+GB are normally used before even starting EVE by the OS and various apps I have running constantly).

P.P.S. On the other hand, I seldom use 2 clients at the same time and usually only use a single monitor.
I plug in a second once in a while, but not lately - my main screen is a 21" CRT running in 1600x1200@85Hz, and I only have TN panel LCDs extra - the difference in image quality is so striking that I can't stand looking at any of the LCDs at the same time as the CRT, and I don't want to use 2 LCDs either.
Maybe later, when I buy 2 large IPS panel ones, then I'll switch, but that's not planned for the immediate future yet.
But I digress.

Jeez! The more I look into GPU's the less I understand!

Where I'm at now is I'd ideally like to run an extended desktop across three screens. I have one 24" 1920x1080 with dvi-d and vga input plus two screens 1280x1024 dvi-d/vga inputs.

I'm looking at the hd 7750

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/atiradeongraphicscards/amdhd7750series/11202-00-20g.html

It has a Displayport, a Dvi and a hdmi. Will this run three screens? I read somewhere that the dvi and hdmi are the same output just a different termination.



If I scratch my head anymore I'll go bald