GPU upgrade helpFollow

My GTX 970 has been working great for me and falls within your budget.

If you're running a 570 right now, you probably don't need to upgrade your power supply, but you might hit up a PSU calculator anyway just to make sure.

Other than that, from a pure performance standpoint, your biggest upgrade is likely to be a solid state drive. You can't put a ton of games on one of those, but MMOs that tend to be heavy on loading times really see a major benefit from being on an SSD.

Individual zones load much faster too. Takes me 2-3 seconds to teleport anywhere, compared with the 10+ seconds for everyone else. That doesn't seem like a lot, but it means that zone loading doesn't mess up immersion for me at all - the transition is so short I barely notice it.

Add another +1 for a 970 here, I have EVGA so theres the 3 year warranty on it as well (thats super sexeh)

Just based on your listed system specs, your CPU is holding back your GPU. Since the two work together to bring you performance, generally one of them isn't working to it's full potential because it has to wait for the other to keep up(they like to keep in step). In your case I feel like it's the CPU that is holding you back.

I'll just give you the info you need to make an informed decision on your own. If you want to find out whether or not your CPU or GPU is holding back your performance, you would follow these steps...

Disclaimer: This is meant to be a guideline to show you how to isolate the culprit. You shouldn't overclock your system unless you are comfortable with it, have ample fans and airflow in your case, ect. This is just the methodology so you'll understand it.

Step 1: Run a benchmark at your current(default) settings. I'd suggest something like 3DMark. Run the benchmark maybe 3-5 times and take an average of the scores.

Step 2: Slightly increase your CPU clock speed(.1 to .2 GHz at a time), run another batch of benchmarks for an average and compare to the previous scores.

Step 3: Repeat steps 1 and 2 until there is no discernible difference between scores.


Once you arrive at scores that are nearly identical, you have found the sweetspot for your GPU. The point at which your scores stop increasing with CPU adjustments is also the point at which your GPU has become the performance bottleneck. You're only as strong as your weakest link and in your case, I would point at the CPU.

You have a bunch of options here and I'll list them in the order they make sense to me(both logically and economically)...

1) Lower your settings.
You didn't really say whether or not you're looking for better performance in general or if you were looking for eye candy mode. If it's the former, consider lowering your resolution and scaling back your settings a bit. Striking a balance between quality and quantity is always a good thing and it's free

2) Overclock your CPU
If it's something you're comfortable doing then it's also going to be the most cost effective option. A case with good airflow and a decent CPU fan are well within your budget and while you might not leap into eye candy, the difference will be noticeable in more than just your gaming. FWIW my GTX 480 wanted 4.1ish GHz before it would top out. I'm not sure your CPU can push that high, but you would certainly get all you could out of your GPU this way.

3) Upgrade to a new CPU
This might also require upgrading your motherboard so it could possibly be as expensive as a GPU upgrade. I still like this option better than a GPU upgrade because you get your performance in other places than just gaming too.

4) Upgrade your GPU
I list this last for the same reason I went through the testing methodology. You're only as strong as your weakest link. If you overclock your CPU and your benchmark scores increase, your CPU is the bottleneck. It's gonna hold back your GTX 570, it's gonna hold back my GTX 980 and if you had money to burn, it would hold back a Titan Z.

Sorry for the rant, but if you made it through then you probably have all the info you need to make an informed decision if you haven't already.

tl;dr
If you put a Ferrari body onto a Ford Focus chassis, it's going to perform like a Ford Focus. A damn sexy Focus, but a Focus none the less

The best option is a CPU, not a GPU. It's not that the GPUs you guys are suggesting aren't great cards, but the OP would get more performance on the whole(graphics and otherwise) with higher CPU clock speed. For the money spent, the difference between their CPU pushing a GTX 570 and a GTX 970 will be next to none.

My point here is that the processor is going to be greater value in terms of upgrade because it's the bottleneck. I'm not trying to say that it's a slow processor, just that it's not fast enough to keep up with the GPU that the OP has already. It's not specific to the processor, just processing in general.

I'm trying to think of an easier way to grasp this concept...

OK, imagine for a moment that FFXIV is a plate of pancakes. Your GPU is your fork and your CPU is your mouth. The GPU feeds pancakes to the CPU which is processed and pooped out onto your monitor

If you upgrade your fork(GPU) then you will be able to shovel more delicious flapjacks into your face. The problem is that you're limited by how much you can actually fit into your mouth. You can upgrade to a massive fork, but the pancakes will still just sit there doing nothing for you while you are still trying to chew what's already in your mouth. Does that make sense? Crappy analogy I know, but I think it gets the point across.

If the OP buys even the top of the line GPU, they're not going to get the performance they should out of it unless they have a CPU that can process everything it's spitting out. Since GPUs are dedicated to only graphics and physics, they're generally stronger out of the box than CPUs are. You typically are not getting the performance you could out of your GPU unless your CPU is overclocked or unless you have a mid level GPU paired with the high tier CPUs.

There's no real reason to have an 8 core processor for FFXIV. Not saying it's not useful for other things, but if the OP needed an 8 core they probably wouldn't need to ask for help here.

Anyone with an 8 core processor is welcome to check. Download process viewer or something similar and open it while FFXIV is running. You'll be able to see exactly how much of each core's processing is being used by the application. 8 core processors also tend to run at slower clock speeds. They're meant for multitasking, not speed. They also typically demand more wattage to run so that's where your heat is coming from.

Stick to a 4 core with high base clocks or get something that is unlocked so you can overclock it comfortably. It's old as hell by now(technology standards anyway), but the i7 2700k is still probably one of the best processors you can have for gaming because it is so easy to overclock and can be pushed up to 4.2 GHz pretty easily with good airflow and a half decent fan.

Quad core CPUs are barely starting to become standard for PC gaming. How many games do you know of that require 4 cores? How long do you think we have until games start demanding twice that many?

I'm all for making investments in the future, but the day we see 8 cores becoming standard is further into the future than you can pay for currently.



Edited, Aug 3rd 2015 12:22pm by FilthMcNasty

I have a haswell (4770K) and that thing has survived anything I've thrown at it so far at maximum settings.

My GTX 770 is still trooping along, but because I invested in a good chip when I did my build a few years ago, I've got room to grow with the video card before I run against the wall on the processor.

Yeah, CPU is the second most important component of any build. While they are still releasing new tech pretty rapidly, the software that they're being used to drive hasn't kept up. We've been at the point for a while now where we don't really need to make them any more powerful so we just keep making them smaller, cooler and less power consuming.

I should say that i am running (still) an AMD Phenom II 6 core 1090T processor. It has kept up fine with my old 550 ti and now my new 750 ti.