Graphics How much grunt for 1080p living room system?

I'm still working on the idea of a HTPC/Living Room games machine to replace my aging consoles. I've been doing a bit of reading into Mini-ITX which might well end up being the route I go down, just for the sake of space under the TV.

Seeing as how this is going to be feeding to a 1080p TV for the forseeable future, I'm looking for a bit of advice with which way to go with regards to a GPU for the build.

I'm out of touch with it all now, but from past experience I think I want to go with nvidia. The last card I bought was a 460, which is still sat in the PC-I-can't-get-to-because-the-room-is-full-of-baby-stuff. Ideally I want the raw grunt to churn out great graphics for games, but it's not necessary for any resolution above 1080p.

I bought the latest copy of Custom PC to try to get up to speed, but I'm still not sure. They seem to be giving lots of love to the new 760, but is this overkill? I want something that's visually going to do as good a job as the next-gen consoles in an ideal world. Am I asking for too much?

Any help on this would be fantastic, cheers folks

 

It depends on the games that you'll be playing on it - if it's BF3 or Crysis 3 you're after then a 760 would be a great choice. If it's less graphically intensive games you're thinking of playing then you'd get away with less

 

It'll be for the likes of BF3/4, upcoming Fifas, anything current really.

I was mostly wondering if newer, more powerful cards are really gearing up for much higher resolutions, and whether getting something like a 760 would be overkill for the relatively low res I'm aiming at.

Thanks

 

Really depends what you're playing, how you're playing it (if you need everything set to max etc) and of course the biggie, budget.

Then after that things like size of the space you've got to work with, what style you want etc.

 

In an ideal world, whack it up to max obviously Budget is the issue, and while I'd consider going to ~£200, I really wonder if I'll reap any real-world benefit going for something like that over one that costs ~£150 for example.

i.e., at 1920x1080, at the same settings (high-ultra), how much gain will I get fps-wise with a £200 card over a £150 (or lower) one. I know it's subjective, and game-dependent, but given that I'll be playing sports and FPS (and indie, strategy and less demanding stuff), it's really just knowing my options that'll help.

 

When I built mine I wanted to be able to play at 1080P resolutions just like I can on my main PC.
So I built my Main PC again in a smaller case
560Ti handles just about everything I require of it without issues.

 

What are the rest of the specs etc?
If you can spend £200 and want to max out games for time to come, then spend £200
At the moment I doubt there will be much difference, but I assume this time next year, the £200 card will be faring a little better than the £150 (this also touches on whether you want to get something now and then just leave it, or if you're happy to mess about with it more often, in which case you could buy a slightly cheaper card, then sell it and buy again after a while, and so on)

 

Fair point It's likely to be an i5 Haswell with a bit of luck, and while I won't sell and replace the whole thing, I'm more than happy to tinker and replace if needs be As it stands I'm going to be saving over the coming months to do a build this side of Christmas, so my budget's not entirely decided yet, but it'll be less than 1K whatever happens - SWMBO will see to that

With hindsight it's not the greatest question I could have asked, I realise, I'm just so out of touch with it at the moment that any help is a big help.

 

I have a htpc /gaming machine in the lounge. Its mainly used for steam big picture gaming on an xbox pad.

I use a GTX 460 and an i5 750 with 4gb ddr. Seems to deal with most things at 1080p very well but cant always max the settings out.

 

Assuming you want a balance of a decent framerate and "high" settings anything from a HD7850 to a GTX760 would be more than adequete.

If you want absolutely max settings (+Max AA) in every game AND 60FPS constant even a overclocked 780 won't be enough (45FPS in Crysis 3 for example).

Personally I would try to bag a second hand HD7870 / HD7950 / 660 / 660TI

Decent 1080p performance and should cost £100-170

 

I built my HTPC for non-gaming applications. I'm using an AMD APU 3670k, which is a first gen APU, and even with it's little iGPU I was able to play some modern games at medium settings with no AA with reasonable 1080p framerates. Even Skyrim (totally stock, no mods) was doable.

Got a 7770 for Christmas and slapped it in there and it runs most current games fine if you're not looking to max everything out. From couch distance you won't notice the lack of AA or some lower quality effects. It's a great option for a cheapish system.

Other than that, a GTX 760 and an i3 Ivy Bridge/Haswell CPU would be more than enough to run any current game maxed out at 1080p.