Minimum Card for 120-144fps on 144 Hz monitor in Rainbow 6 (low settings)

[Jackrabb1t]

Hi,

Have a not-new PC, would like to upgrade monitor to 144Hz, which would necessitate a new card.
CPU: i5-4690K @ 3.50 GHz
8gb RAM (do I need 8 more/ 16g total)?
ASUS Z-97 AR motherboard
Windows 7 Pro 64-bit

Now, I'm not expecting to play Rainbow 6: Siege on Ultra or anything. I'm fine with mostly low settings. Would be nice to play *without* AA, though that actually drops frame in R6.

To keep 120-144fps on a 144Hz monitor @ 1920 x 1080 - what would I need? 1070 8g VRAM? Is a 1070ti necessary? (What does 'Ti' change?) Can I get away with a 1060 6gb card? Do I need more RAM?

Thank you for your assistance, O wise ones.

 

[toyo]

There's a video on YT with a GTX970@1.5GHz (which is quite common for decent cards, the Asus Strix type) and an old Westmere Xeon holding 110-140fps on medium. I'd say with the 1070 you'll be very safe, since it's much faster than the 970, and with the 1070ti, even more so, basically 1080 territory if you OC it. Even the 1060 /w 6GB VRAM should be enough, since that's basically a 980, and would perform a bit better than the 970.
The 8GB RAM are worrying these days. Even 16GB are starting to show some age depending on how you use the PC. Windows 10 has a very nasty habit of caching pretty much everything in Standby RAM, which you won't even know unless you know what to look for. Once you "fill" the RAM (which is real easy even with 16GB), framedrops will be common, and some demanding games will be almost unplayable unless you empty the Standby cache. Apparently this is a bug to be solved, but I'm not holding my breath. If you can do 16GB, do it.

 

[Jackrabb1t]

The 8GB RAM are worrying these days. Even 16GB are starting to show some age depending on how you use the PC. Windows 10 has a very nasty habit of caching pretty much everything in Standby RAM, which you won't even know unless you know what to look for. Once you "fill" the RAM (which is real easy even with 16GB), framedrops will be common, and some demanding games will be almost unplayable unless you empty the Standby cache. Apparently this is a bug to be solved, but I'm not holding my breath. If you can do 16GB, do it.

Yeah, I figured 16g RAM is a reasonable upgrade. I'm still on Windows 7 (last spec line above), tho that probably doesn't change much. Thanks for reply.

 

[toyo]

Windows 7 actually might change things. The caching issue I described seems to be a "feature" of Windows 10, specifically the Fall Creators Update. I'm almost 100% sure previous Windows 10/8.1/7 didn't exhibit the aggressive caching behavior.
You still want the additional 8GB though. There's probably gonna be a point, maybe sooner than later when you will want to play some 2018/AAA game, and you might need Windows 10. Not to mention the ugly issues that can manifest from running out of RAM, like stuttering, lots of load times, lots of disk access etc. Games with "open worlds" like Assassin's Creed Origins stream data almost non-stop even with 16GB. The lower your RAM, the higher the chance it will drop frames, and it's annoying as hell. If you're also on a HDD, it's not gonna be pretty at all with new games and 8GB.

 

[Jackrabb1t]

Windows 7 actually might change things. The caching issue I described seems to be a "feature" of Windows 10, specifically the Fall Creators Update. I'm almost 100% sure previous Windows 10/8.1/7 didn't exhibit the aggressive caching behavior.
You still want the additional 8GB though. There's probably gonna be a point, maybe sooner than later when you will want to play some 2018/AAA game, and you might need Windows 10. Not to mention the ugly issues that can manifest from running out of RAM, like stuttering, lots of load times, lots of disk access etc. Games with "open worlds" like Assassin's Creed Origins stream data almost non-stop even with 16GB. The lower your RAM, the higher the chance it will drop frames, and it's annoying as hell. If you're also on a HDD, it's not gonna be pretty at all with new games and 8GB.

Sounds good, thank you, buddy.

 

[m&m's]

You still want the additional 8GB though.

R6 is fine with 8GB. It's even fine with 6GB. Having 16GB wont help him get more FPS on R6 unless he keeps 12 tabs open on 2 browsers. R6 on low settings only uses ~3GB.

@Jackrabb1t What is your current GPU?

I get ~75FPS with a GTX 760 with everything on low settings except medium shadows and T-AA 75. A GTX 1060 6GB should be more than enough for 120+FPS.

 

[Jackrabb1t]

^ This, actually lol. GTX 760. And yeah, I close everything else when I play R6 to minimize any strain. I get around your FPS currently as well, but want to get a 144Hz monitor. Would like to disable the AA since I don't mind the jaggies and like how it seems brighter and crisper, given that the AA makes the game blurry. Also, lowered field-of-view to ~73 degrees, as per Kixstar.

 

[m&m's]

Would like to disable the AA since I don't mind the jaggies and like how it seems brighter and crisper, given that the AA makes the game blurry. Also, lowered field-of-view to ~73 degrees, as per Kixstar.

Yeah a GTX 1060 6GB should be enough but if you can afford something better of course go for it.
You can actually have a crisp picture even with T-AA, you need to bring the sharpness setting to 100. Like I said my T-AA setting is 75 and with a sharpness setting of 100, it is crisp. I'd say it's 98% as crisp as with T-AA disabled. Regarding FOV, its only preference. Some pros use 90, others it's 80 or lower. I personally set mine to 90.

 

[phanbuey]

at these settings there is no such thing as a minimum card - that's for peeps with a frame cap/vsync since there is a point of diminishing returns... for high refresh go for the best you can get even if used/open box since as a high refresh gamer (as you know) you will always be chasing fps. That additional horsepower will give you more range in the tuning options you have.

You may also want to tune your ram, and OC your proc a bit more since @ 1080p high fps you don't really have a hard gfx bottleneck per se -- they all kind of bottleneck each other at the same time, so the lower you can get your latency on the CPU/RAM side the better for your gfx card push / respond to you in game.

 

[Vayra86]

I agree with @phanbuey in terms of what the thought process should be.

It should NOT be 'how can I get by on this game', it should be 'how much horse- and CPU power can I reasonably afford, because you do literally need all you can get to achieve +120 FPS at all times. CPU wise, you still have OC options and a decent CPU to achieve high FPS in recent titles, and I think for good balance the GTX 1070 ~ GTX 1080 range suits it best. There will be a small number of games that are going to be CPU limited in that case, and if so, only by 10-20% at best. The 4c/4t of your CPU is also a limitation in terms of multitasking; ie running browser and other background stuff while gaming is going to be detrimental to your desired FPS. But the GPU can be moved to a new rig in due time anyway. Until then, you can at least be certain that it is never going to be a GPU limitation holding you back in terms of FPS. And if you can shift the bottleneck to CPU, the most influential factor in dropping below 60 or 120 FPS will be the game/engine in question, not the rig.

16 GB for this rig and CPU I would STRONGLY advise against, because its DDR3 and thus a huge waste of money, with questionable benefits in many titles and only tangible benefits if you are a big multitasker WITH a many-core/thread CPU pushing the limit. A Haswell quadcore is not that - if you are limited, it will be on CPU and RAM in equal measure regardless.

If on limited budget, do not go lower than 1060 6GB - but keep in mind that you may also want to upgrade that component faster than you would a higher tier. Perf/dollar these cards are rather close together so there is no real difference; therefore you might as well get the more expensive card because it will have (much) better resale value and offers more performance from day one. And about IQ settings... experience has taught me that when you have the performance to improve visuals you will do it and you will enjoy it a lot.

Regards, a 1080p 120hz gamer No regrets going for a 1080 for this res, at high settings this card can dip below 60 FPS in demanding titles, even @ 1080p. For some frame of reference on 'performance'... What you will notice in due time though is that you will want the fastest CPU money can buy. It is the CPU + fast DDR4 that really improves min. fps. Just be prepared that even with the best rig you can build for gaming, sub 60 FPS will occur in certain situations/games. Blame the devs

 

[raptori]

Don't buy a card for one game , and for current generation of games in general don't go below GTX 1060 6GB.

 

[John Naylor]

I think this should answer your question... overclocked w/ MSI Afterburner it's 15% faster (130 fps)
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_1060_Gaming_X_3_GB/29.html

As can be plainly seem, VRAM is not an issue here...sure the 6GB 1060 is faster but that's because it has 10% more shaders than is on the 6Gb model.

• All games and cards were tested with the drivers listed above, no performance results were recycled between test systems. Only this exact system with exactly the same configuration was used.
  [*]All games are set to their highest quality setting unless indicated otherwise.
  [*]AA and AF are applied via in-game settings, not via the driver's control panel.

I have seen just 1 game where the 6GB version of the card has had any significant advantage over the 3 GB version at 1080p. If ya count pixels, then if 3 GB isn't enough for 1080p, then for 4k (4 x 1080p), it must follow that 12 GB is unsatisfactory for 4K and we simply don't have access to any "gaming cards" with that amount.

Before the price surges, I woulda said spring for the 1070 for other games and potential upgrade to 1440p, but can't justify the cost increase:

3 GB 1060 $269
6 GB 1060 $359 (33% increase in price for 3% performance increase in R6, only 6% performance advantage across entire 18 game test suite).
8 GB 1070 $609 (126% increase in price for 39% performance increase in R6, 46% in 18 game test suite).

 

[Recon-UK]

No issues running it at 130hz with R9 Fury, i actually get around 140FPS but i have a Sapphire Nitro OC++ model, it's ahead of a stock Fury X.

 

[John Naylor]

The Sapphire Tri X OC was 2% faster than the stock Fury in TPUs testing and gained another 4.5% when overclocked.
https://tpucdn.com/reviews/Sapphire/R9_Fury_Tri-X_OC/images/perfrel_1920.gif

121.2 fps x 100/98 x 1.045 = 129 fps... so your experience is right on the numbers.

 

[Vayra86]

As can be plainly seem, VRAM is not an issue here...sure the 6GB 1060 is faster but that's because it has 10% more shaders than is on the 6Gb model.

I have seen just 1 game where the 6GB version of the card has had any significant advantage over the 3 GB version at 1080p. If ya count pixels, then if 3 GB isn't enough for 1080p, then for 4k (4 x 1080p), it must follow that 12 GB is unsatisfactory for 4K and we simply don't have access to any "gaming cards" with that amount.

When on a budget, a 1060 3GB is of course not going to break your experience compared to a 6GB card. HOWEVER. It really is not accurate to think or say that a 4K res will require 4x the VRAM. In fact, it is very much different from that. What eats VRAM are different actors, textures and assets because each one that you display or load will take up VRAM and bandwidth and those are generally the same between different resolutions. All that increases with resolution is the displayed detail of that texture / the size of that texture, but not all the (post) processing that comes with it. If you cannot load enough data into VRAM, you will be taxing the bandwidth of that VRAM more frequently and intensely, and the 1060 3GB does not have much bandwidth to spare - in fact, the entire Nvidia line up is bandwidth limited in that sense, though well balanced with the core. But the lower you go into the product stack, the less accurate that balance becomes, because you (need to) tweak settings for acceptable FPS.

Following that line of reasoning, as the average recommended VRAM is going up (and it is, rapidly today with each new game coming out for consoles that have 6GB+ even for 1080p), you will tax the bandwidth of a 3GB card that much more, rapidly increasing the likelihood of stutter. And when you play at high FPS/refresh, stutter becomes that much more noticeable.

John and I have butted heads on this before, but for evidence you can look at previous gen cards like the 780ti which, while not having delta compression, does have 3GB + similar core capability and chokes on that a lot. The chances of finding more games/engines that don't play well with 3GB is increasing.

 

[T4C Fantasy]

I would get a 1070 ti for 144hz and it will last longer in the future because its a better gpu