heywood on 3/6/2018 at 12:37
What's your screen resolution? And do you plan on upgrading your monitor within the expected life of the card?
I have a GTX 1060. It plays current games decently at 1920x1080, but not always at the highest settings. For example, two of my favorite games of recent years were Dishonored 2 and Mankind Divided. Both were a little choppy until I settled on a mix of medium and high settings. But I recently purchased an ultra-wide monitor and now I can't play any modern game at native res.
To second what Sulphur said, you have to time the market these days because of the cryptocurrency miners. Over the second half of last year and first quarter of this year, the midrange and high end cards were constantly out of stock or marked up to 1.5x -2x MSRP. The supply opened up again about 2 months ago, and you can buy cards for MSRP now. But if the miners jump at the NVidia 11 cards, they could be unavailable for months after release.
Gears94 on 6/6/2018 at 04:25
Artifacts on the screen can be caused by overheating. When is the last time you cleaned the dust from your computer? Also are the fans on the GPU working? Could you also take a screen shot of the artifacts you see? If you plan on waiting to get a new card then might as well try and fix the one you have now.
nicked on 6/6/2018 at 07:32
Yeah I cleaned all the dust out and made sure all the fans were working. That made no discernible difference unfortunately.
I will try and get a screenshot when I'm back home. The artefacts look like small sections of an invisible checkerboard overlay randomly freeze for a few seconds while the rest of the screen continues. After a while, the screen then goes black. Sometimes it recovers, sometimes it restarts. It's got gradually worse over the last few weeks. Now it starts messing up almost as soon as the pc is on. Running a game just immediately kills it.
I'm not planning to get a new monitor or anything; perfectly happy with the rest of the setup for the time being. Current screen is at 1920x1080.
Sulphur on 6/6/2018 at 09:18
That sounds like it's dying, unfortunately. It could be just that the heatsink's detached or needs more thermal paste and so the card's getting too hot when anything like a 3D load's thrown at it, but enough of that without intervention and it's pretty sketchy how long the card's going to keep on keeping on. If you absolutely have to buy a card in the near future, a 1050 Ti would be the equivalent replacement for the 770, though I'd plump for a 1060 if it was within your budget and the normal MRP.
voodoo47 on 6/6/2018 at 10:01
yeah, that sounds like one of the memory chips dying (or needing a reflow). repairable if you know a hardware nut with all the tools at hand.
PigLick on 6/6/2018 at 14:58
yeh thats exactly what happened with my previous card. A 1050 ti is good but even just the basic 1050 will see you through going by my experience. I have 16 ram which may make a difference as well to performance.
Nameless Voice on 12/6/2018 at 01:25
Not exactly related to a specific card choice, but I'd recommend getting a card with a very good (probably manufacturer-customised) cooler, and paying a little bit more for it.
Your card won't make as dreadfully much noise under load, won't heat your room as much, and will probably live longer because it's not as hot. The last two are nice, but I'm mostly suggesting this for the noise part.
heywood on 13/6/2018 at 12:50
Noise level was a big factor in my decision, especially at idle/low load, and the quietest cards are air cooled with oversized axial fans. Among the current generation, the MSI cards with dual oversized fans seemed to be among the quietest, while being just as fast as competing triple-fan cards from Asus et al. I would avoid cards with single centrifugal fans, they are cheaper but noisier. I haven't tried a water cooled card, because of the all-too-common complaint of pump whine.
At the moment, nVidia GPUs are more power efficient than AMD, so on average they run a little cooler and quieter for equivalent performance.
zombe on 15/6/2018 at 06:43
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
... but I'd recommend getting a card with a very good cooler ... Your card ... won't heat your room as much
That is not how physics works.
That said, power consumption has risen quite a bit for me in importance. A silent sturdy cooler is a must. Cards with terribly high power consumption excluded from consideration.
But that is just me.