Video card ceiling?

[kturcotte]

I currently have an Nvidia 970 installed. This allowed me to run Final Fantasy XII in 4k without any problems, but all other games I had to go back down to 1080p or suffer serious framerate issues. Will a stronger/faster video card help with this (Possibly even the upcoming Pascal), or would I really not see any performance boost?

Intel Core i7 4790k
Nvidia 970
16 GBs DDR3 RAM
64 bit Windows 10

[alfio8788]

PCSX2 relies more on a good CPU rather than GPUs so i think it wouldn't change much even if you had the best card on the market

[refraction]

Upscaling may show a difference however. It would be worth checking your GPU RAM usage when running in 4k, I'd suggest a tool like GPU-Z for checking this. If it goes over 3.5Gb, that is your slowness issue, if you don't come near that something else is going on.

[kturcotte]

Yup, I would say that is the issue. Runs fine and only hits about 1500 MB when using 1080p resolution. Would a beefier video card with more RAM allow me to play in 4k then? Nvidia 980, or should I wait for Pascal?

[gregory]

Big upscaling is quite heavy on the GPU bandwidth too. I would suggest to wait for Pascal.

[refraction]

The main problem is the 970 has a very slow memory path once you hit 3.5gb, it's slower than normal DDR3 memory as well, so you notice huge drags in performance, any other 4gb card would probably perform better, but as said, pascal is around the corner, so it's probably worth waiting until then

[alfio8788]

Didn't think about such a thing by far this time, i sent the reply in a hurry...I'll keep that in mind with my next emulation machine

[Topken]

In this case the problem is with the 3.5gb+0.5gb design of the 970 and ONLY the 970 Nvidia really screwed the card over by going that route.

[dogen]

In this case the problem is with the 3.5gb+0.5gb design of the 970 and ONLY the 970 Nvidia really screwed the card over by going that route.

The 550 ti and 660 ti were the same.

[JonyeGway]

I have a 970 and run Skyrim with like 100 mods and full Realvision ENB. Tops out just under 3gb in the most demanding areas and is completely stable. Just have to be conscious of the 3.5GB vram limit. I usually just run PCSX2 at 3x because it's hard to notice much improvement above that.