Which graphics card to get? Had decided on Zotac 670 4GB, now unavailable till August

[Black Panther]

Please check my system specs below avatar. You can see my current pc, and next to each heading the parts that I currently have for the future build and the parts which are "coming soon".

Thing is that although everything can be delivered next week, the Zotac 670 4GB has been postponed to early August

I have these choices to make:

1) Leave everything as is, and get all the "coming soon" stuff including the 670 4GB early August; or
2) Order another 670 but which will have 2GB vram (or any other graphics card) to get delivery within the next 10 days or so (just not the Asus 670 2GB CUII TOP because it's even worse because it's got no ETA). And the Evga 4GB isn't available either; or
3) Cancel the order for the graphics card and instruct seller to deliver everything else (so at least I can start building this pc) and then I'd order some graphics card later after summer.

Now I had really decided on a card with 4GB of vram. My favorite games are Bethesda ones (like Skyrim, Fallout3 etc...) where I have the choice to use high texture mods, modify the ini file to have more grids loading and the like. Basically I'm the type to gloat more over graphic performance than actual gameplay

Using the 5970, just setting ugridstoload to 5 in the ini file makes my fps drop down to the teens instead of 50+. Putting AA at 4x instead of zero makes fps plummet to the 20's (and no I never dared trying ugridstoload and 4xAA at the same time ) And that's also leaving out any texture mods whatsoever.
I game on a 2560x1440 monitor, so that puts more strain on the vga....

I was thinking about option 3.
It will give me time to build using onboard graphics, check that everything's well, overclock and fine-tune, and in the meantime use the pc for crunching. During the summer months I won't be having much time to play anyway.

What would you suggest?

 

[cadaveca]

I suggest waiting until July 1st before buying a VGA, and catch some July 4th sale!

Crap, you are not in the US..I keep forgetting. I'd stil lwait until just after the 1st, and the HD7970 GHz Edition cards hit store shelves.

Idea #3 it is!

 

[D007]

All I know is when I have the money to buy it, I buy it.. Because if I don't, I'll blow it something else..lol..
If you're like me, buy it while you still can.. XD

Hold off on the gpu for now I'd say, since it's not what you really want.
But, for all you know in regards to everything else, you might have to RMA it due to some problem and yada yada.. That might loose you a month in waiting time. If you want to make sure it's all ready for the date you want it ready by, and money isn't an issue, I'd get what you need. If money is an issue at all, you might consider waiting for some deals, though I wouldn't expect much.. I highly doubt we will see much of a drop soon. The demand has been very high.

Whatever you do, don't get something you don't want. If you need to wait for a release of something you want, I'd wait for it. Or I'd beat myself up later.
Besides you always have the 5 series you can use, until the card you really want is available and that isn't a bad card at all.

GL and nice build.

 

[radrok]

I voted 3 because there is no point in getting less than 3GB VRAM nowadays, I am of course talking for 2560x1440/1600.

NVIDIA is cheaping out on RAM quantity and I don't like it, they just seems to give the barely minimum necessary on components (VRMs too), and it makes me rage.

I'd say wait for the 670 4GB to get back on stock or just get a 7950/7970 even though NVIDIA has an edge on Skyrim.

 

[NdMk2o1o]

I chose:

Get everything delivered, cancel the VGA order, decide later which VGA to get

Just use your 5970 until

a: you find something you really want without making a spare of the moment decision

b: find the 4GB in stock somewhere else

 

[D007]

It's a pointless upgrade the 5970 is on par with the GTX 670. Anandtech shows FPS gap of like 1-5FPS on most games. The only game which sees a noticeable benefit is Badman and that is because its physx native.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/598?vs=587

lol on par with the 670... huh?! I get what your trying to say but I declare Shenanigans!

 

[Dent1]

lol on par with the 670... huh?! I get what your trying to say but I declare Shenanigans!

I accidentally deleted my previous post.

Civ and Skyrim does bizarrely poorly, to the point where I think the 5970 was reviewed with dodgy drivers or a mishap in the review. But on average they seem quite close.

 

[Black Panther]

lol on par with the 670... huh?! I get what your trying to say but I declare Shenanigans!

I accidentally deleted my previous post.

Civ and Skyrim does bizarrely poorly, to the point where I think the 5970 was reviewed with dodgy drivers or a mishap in the review. But on average they seem quite close.

Woah woah hold the phone there guys

This is not exactly an upgrade from my 5970...

I was gifted an i7, mobo, ram and an aftermarket cpu cooler.
So instead of dismantling my current pc and using the i7 bundle instead, I decided to pass on my current pc, 5970 and all, to my daughter (at least it remains in the same house and I know she takes care of her hardware like I do) and purchase separate hardware and build a new pc around the new bundle.

At the moment I just want a graphics card which will be 'worth moving on' from my 5970. I know my current pc holds me back with the E8400 @ 4Ghz (that'd be solved with the i7 @ 4Ghz) and that high textures are limited with the 1GB vram utilizable by the 5970. That's why I'm seeking to future-proof with a 4GB card.

[Edit: btw Civ V really runs poorly on my current system. I don't even remember playing it. I bought it on Steam, got a slide-show, and immediately uninstalled it. I was thinking it's the cpu...
The same goes for Metro 2033 on my current system. I refused to play it at anything less than my monitor's native resolution, and the game became a slide-show, so I quit.]

I'm not excluding AMD either.
As long as the price is fair and it offers 3GB vram or more. And isn't a dual gpu card.... (which has a further disadvantage in that you can't disable crossfire)
It took AGES for AMD to release a good driver properly utilizing dual gpu for recent games like Skyrim, Alan Wake etc...

And I've still got a ticket open with them to at least enable The Sims 3 game to run on the latest drivers (it only runs on the 5970 using 9.12 drivers released some 2 years ago!) Which is indispensable now since after I pass my pc to the kid the main game she plays is the Sims 3... imagine her disappointment if she has to choose between the game geting her pc to shut down or getting half the fps in other games and having all youtube videos go to a solid green window (not solid green whole screen) after a couple of seconds!