Please advise - LF the best mac-ok GPU my 550v PSU can handle, ideally not over £300

Hi all!

When I built my system back in March I was considering a Gigabyte GTX 760 OC 4GB as possibly my best option here. Unfortunately life got in the way of my build (tsk!) and that brings me to today, where I still don't have a graphics card in my system and am wondering if I have better options available now we're 9 months further on.

My current build is below and I'm planning on adding a second SSD for OSX Yosemite in the near future, so, if you can, please bear that in mind on making a recommendation. (I'm asking over at tonymac too btw, but figure Hexus members may know more about the hardware and UK market)

Thanks for reading!
Frankenfurter

My System (sans GPU)
Gigabyte GA-Z87X-D3H
Intel Core i5-4670K w Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
XFX ProSeries 550W Core Edition PSU - 80+ Bronze
Kingston HyperX LoVo 8GB (2x4GB) 1600MHz CL9 DDR3 1.35V Memory Kit Intel XMP
Kingston SSDNow 120GB SSD (with Windows 7, I am yet to buy a second SSD for Yosemite)
TP-LINK TL WDN-4800
Corsair Graphite 230T case
An inexpensive Samsung DVD writer (SH-224DB)
I'm also planning to get a couple of 1TB HDDs when I can afford them, just mentioning it in case the additional power draw makes any difference

As far as your current build a 760 will do well, you have the same CPU and PSU as me and I'm using a MSI 2gb GTX 760.

I'm able to run most if not all recent games pretty maxed out (few exceptions being crysis and such ofcourse). If your budget is £300 max have a good solid look at the GTX 970 however, its right near the top end of your budget but is a very powerful card. The 960 is also speculated to come out early next year which should be good at a slightly cheaper price.

GTX 760 is a good solid card for anything current, can speak from experience as the main factors of my build match up to yours. 970 is well worth consideration if you have the spare money however. That said I'm not aware of quite how Macs work with GPUs, only that they have drivers for specific ones or something so I'm talking from a purely hardware perspective.

Edit: Forget to mention power, since you have basically same build as me you should be fine, I left myself about 100-150W clearance to account for eventual PSU decay and thats with the 760. Looking at the Nvidia website right now and 760 uses 170w, 970 uses 145 so if its in your budget its a safe bet, should still run fine.

Hey - Thanks for the input, Jag :)

I'm happy to hear the 760 is still performing well and you are enjoying your build. Is there any particular reason why you chose the MSI card over the Gigabyte or is that just the one you could get?

The 970 has partial Mac support right from what I gather from tonymac (needs a bit of fiddling around to get it working but then does its job) so is certainly an option if it would future proof my rig a bit. In your opinion, how much longer do you think the 970 would keep my system OK for new releases over the 760? I'm a bit worried about wattage too, comparing the Gigabyte cards on their website the 760 wants a 500W PSU and the 970 a 550W PSU, which puts me right on the edge. :s This seems odd though given that I've just seen what you added in your edit - where do you find those numbers please?

Oh apologies, my power requirements were the stock Nvidia ones, naturally the OC'd branded ones will require more.

Reason for MSI was just that it beat out most the others for price performance for the 760 specifically, for the 750 ti they were the worst, as it turns out for the 760 they were 2nd highest clock but at a significantly lower price. Gigabyte was my initial choice and they also happened to offer a higher clock the the MSI ended up being around £30 cheaper so was a no brainer on a budget build like mine.

As for future proofing I suspect you'll get a good few extra years out of the 970, everything I've heard about it seems to indicate its far more powerful than current cards and is easily the best price performance card atm. We're also going through a rocky time currently with new DirectX in the works as well as Mantle meaning were going to see much better gpu utilisation, having a higher end card will become an increasingly bigger advantage I suspect so if you can afford to I'd definitely suggest the 970. The 970 also has more VRAM which is beginning to become an issue in older cards as developers are really pushing the limits now.

As it stands, I'm expecting the 760 to probably last me atleast 2 years (I dont upgrade too often) since going from my standard GTX 650 to the 760 has bumped pretty much every game from minimum graphics up to max with solid 75+ fps with the exception of very demanding games like Crysis. If were judging by PassMark score, the 760 sits at 4.97k with the 970 at 8665. Meaningless numbers to an extent but thats a good +75% or so extra. Ofcourse actual usage and benchmarks are worlds apart but the 970 should be a very safe bet.

On the power front, one thing I quickly discovered when planning my build is that the general consensus about the actual suggested psu is more like a safety net so that people with low grade psu's are pushed towards buying a more powerful one since generic PSUs dont really have the ampage to support good GPUs. Keep in mind also that the suggested power supply and actual power consumption are different things, looking at the stock Nvidia specs for example they suggest a 500w power supply with 145w of actual power dedicated to the GPU. The 145w here is the actual power the card needs, the 500 is the safety net to ensure proper compatibility with the other power demanding hardware such as CPUs as well as factoring in PSU decay. You should be completely fine on that PSU if its brand new, I got it myself because its so well regarded as being well built for its price.

Theoretically as long as you check the power your actual system needs you can use a lower power PSU than what the manufacturers suggest, you could run a 970 and i5-4670k on a 450w for example despite the 500w suggesting 500 but to ensure stability they recommend 500 or more. Ofcourse you also have to account for full load and such too, I just looked up some info on the Gigabyte 970, youre looking at between 120watt idle to 280watt under full stress. that leaves you 270w for the CPU and the much smaller amounts for other stuff like harddrives and the board. I would say that is plenty, the 970 actually consumes less power than the 760 regardless as a result of the new chip they used.

Thanks for the thorough answer, Jag - that really helped me out :)

It's a pretty large price jump, but I think you're right - the 970 is a safe bet and will last me a long time. Not that the 760 wouldn't last me, of course, but maybe not as long. Your point about the power efficiency really made the decision a lot easier though - I was worried that a 970 might eat too many watts for my system, but after having a look around I saw they actually draw about the same amount of power as the 760 I was considering.

Anyway, I've ordered the Gigabyte GTX970 G1 Gaming edition - it should arrive on Tuesday (very impressive for free shipping at this time of night and in an extremely busy buying season, I'd say) so hopefully I'll get a chance to try it out before Christmas and put it through its paces. :D

Thanks a lot for all your help and, in case I don't see you around the forums before then, have a wonderful Christmas!
Cheers,
Frankenfurter

Happy christmas to you too, and ye the price jump is what lead me to getting the 760, I simply couldnt afford the 970 as it would have eaten half my budget but its well worth getting when you can afford it. Have fun with it, I'm sure it will serve you well.