Quick doubt about graphics card

Hey guys,

So I'm looking at some Christmas promotions, and came across 2 options of graphics cards:

Option number 1: GeForce GTX 745 4Gb DDR3

Option number 2: AMD Radeon HD R9 270 2Gb DDR5

All other specs are almost the same: (16 Gb RAM DDR3, 4th generation Intel Core i7-4790, 1TB hard drive). I don't have specs on the motherboard. It's a Dell computer from XPS series.

Do you have any comments about the graphics cards? Any sugestions?

Another question: what is "INTEL® SRT 32Gb Solid State Drive"?

Thank you in advance. I'm very concrete considering anything more sophisticated on computers, so, if you could keep it so simple that a 4 year old could understand, that would be very apreciated.

Cheers!

I've never heard about GTX 745, must be a card only used in ready-built PCs (Dell, HP etc)?

I would go with option 2: R9 270 should run most games in 1080p at okayish fps according to AnandTech.

Solid State Drive, SSD, is basically a data storage device like your hard drive but 'faster' and more expensive GB/Dollar.

Try to summon Budwise, his knowledge about these things is limitless.

r9 270 is so much better than gtx745 ,r9 270 is good enough for playing coh2 but i don't think this one and i7 4970 do matched, maybe you would consider a better vga card like 280x or gtx 770 .

The Intel SSD is probably just for caching. I'd get a 250GB, or larger, as a main drive.

GPU wise i'm with hacker9001.

At least get the 270x, it's not much extra.
The 770 would be an upgrade in other games but only equivalent in Coh2.
i7 is pointless for games if you're looking to save money.

r9 270 is so much better than gtx745 ,r9 270 is good enough for playing coh2 but i don't think this one and i7 4970 do matched, maybe you would consider a better vga card like 280x or gtx 770 .

It's an Dell offer, I don't know for sure if they match either - I just believe that they should know stuff and make it good. I'd love to make a better gaming PC, and I'm considering on doing some Frankenstein approach with trustable and much more knowledgeable people than me. Problem is, Dell support here is really good, and that can't be overstated.

Dell offers usually are "closed", i.e. they can't be changed apart some details like extended guarantee or office plus. They offered some time ago alienware devices, but I think the low sales didn't compensate the rather bad bureaucracy and taxes that electronics pay here. I may be talking bullflower though.

The Intel SSD is probably just for caching. I'd get a 250GB, or larger, as a main drive.

GPU wise i'm with hacker9001.

There's the 1 Tb HD as main drive. Much, much more than I need.

Try to summon Budwise, his knowledge about these things is limitless.

I'll try some chanting and breaking a old CD reader as sacrifice, but maybe paying some girls to serve as vestal virgins (the virgin part is subject to interpretations on what virgin is) could be more effective.

i7 is pointless for games if you're looking to save money.

That's an interesting information; could you be so kind as to elaborate on the subject? I don't know kittens about the differences between i3, i5 and i7 from a gaming persepctive, and just presumed (as all gullible customers) that the higher the number, the better for all things.

The i7 adds 4 virtual threads (not cores) to the i5, what is known as hyper-threading. They rarely help most games to get better framerates, but at some point newer games can and will offload work to them, things like PhysX or 3D audio processing. To pay additional $$ for the i7 over the i5 is not really justified in your case. That $ would be much better served investing in a faster GPU such as a 280X.

Now, on to the iRST SSD. I have a Z68 board that has a 20GB mSATA slot. It is used to cache the frequently used apps or games that I play, not used as a boot drive at all. What it does is caches the files accessed by the 1TB HDD, so that the first time you open CoH2, it must load from the HDD - which is going to be sloooow. The NEXT time you open CoH2, it will be able to pull most of the files needed from the iRST SSD, and that will make it load significantly faster than from the HDD - we are talking 3x,4x faster here. It will not be as fast as a traditional SSD, but it will be close, and since it is not a boot drive, it won't fill up like a smaller 120 or 240GB SSD will with games now requiring up to 30-40GB just to install.

Safe bet is to go with the i5, add the 32GB SSD and save for the 280x. CoH 2 is very unforgiving when it comes to a slower video card. Anything less than a 7970 is just not playing it like it is meant to be played.

an important point: you can not maintain 60 fps on coh2 with any vga card if you do not have an over 4.0 ghz cpu !

Hey guys,

So I'm looking at some Christmas promotions, and came across 2 options of graphics cards:

Option number 1: GeForce GTX 745 4Gb DDR3

Option number 2: AMD Radeon HD R9 270 2Gb DDR5

All other specs are almost the same: (16 Gb RAM DDR3, 4th generation Intel Core i7-4790, 1TB hard drive). I don't have specs on the motherboard. It's a Dell computer from XPS series.

Do you have any comments about the graphics cards? Any sugestions?

Another question: what is "INTEL® SRT 32Gb Solid State Drive"?


Cheers!

Alright so we only have the two options since it is a Dell offer.
Well then, go for the R9 270. It is a lot better than the 745. Yes it has less VRAM (2gb instead of 4) But it's VRAM is faster and 4GB is only really needed if you play with really high numbers of pixels like 4k display.

And as WalkingTarget explained the SRT is just a cache for your 1TB HDD. It will take files most often used and place them in cache for quicker loadtimes. I do not think you have much control over this however.


Guys yes the i7 is overkill for this computer but read OP again, it is a Dell XPS they always go crazy overboard with RAM and CPU in comparison to the GPU on the XPS series.

@hacker9001. VGA card? That shit is still around?