Hello Everyone,
I’m currently running an Core I7-7700k paired with a GTX 970 and my Asus RogSwift Monitor (27", 165hz, G-Sync, IPS)
My Game settings are:
- 1920x1080
- 75% Render Scale
- All settings on low except Anti-aliasing which is on the second lowest.
So I can reach my desired 165fps on a somewhat stable basis. But as the fans are somehow broken loud and she’s really fighting on her limits, i decided to upgrade.
And 3.5gb - > 8gb vram must be an amazing improvement for a good price.
So I’ve ordered a GTX 1070TI 8gb, anyone who has a similar setup, i’d like to know how much I can expect on 2k with 165fps. Are there settings that will drop me below these numbers?
Many thanks to all responses and I’m an IT apprentice so don’t worry with getting to technical 
Here is a GTX 1070 ti test with max video settings in 1080p and 1440p: Overwatch GTX 1070 Ti OC | 1080p & 1440p Maxed Out | FRAME-RATE TEST - YouTube
The average framerate with max video settings seems to be somewhat above 100 @1440p and somewhat below 200 @1080p. This means that you could benefit from a stronger GPU with a 2K monitor but you’ll get amazing results with GTX 1070 ti.
You’ll either have to run overwatch at 2K with 75% renderscale if you want max video settings, or run it at 2K with 100% renderscale but a bit dumbed down settings.
People with overclocked i7 7700k can run overwatch even at 240Hz so that shouldn’t be a problem.
I’m running the game with this setup: i5 8600k 3.6Ghz, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 6GB, Dell S2417DG 2K 144/165Hz TN G-Sync. In-game settings: 120 fps cap which results in 40-50% CPU usage (note that i5 8600k is 6 core without hyperthreading and OW uses the cores quite evenly) and I tweaked my video settings so that my GPU usage is fluctuating between 60-80% most of the time during gameplay. Video settings: 2k with 75% renderscale which means the 3D scene is rendered in 1080p and scaled up to 2k but overwatch is very smart and draws menus, crosshairs and other stuff after upscale in 2K so it looks amazing and sharp. My video settings aren’t ultra/epic but high without fancy reflections and with medium antialias which looks damn good. The perceived quality is very good, much better than a POTG that I save in 1080p especially when it comes to the HUD that is drawn in 2K regardless of my below 100% renderscale.
I recommend capping your FPS to something that your system can maintain constantly. This can benefit your aiming and results in a GPU usage that is usually below 100%.
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Saw that video, and therefore it seems easily possible to have 165fps with some minor settings turned down a bit.
Yeah I definitely want to avoid 100% gpu pressure all the time, doesn’t help the stable fps to be on the limit all the time. I’m gonna update here maybe on Tuesday when I’ve installed the 1070ti, and have some data.
Regardless I can also live with 144fps, as long its stable. But currently sometimes having 90 is just unplayable… (sounds silly to some, first world problems)
Yeah my cpu is OC to 4.6ghz and I only left out a gpu when I upgraded first so its only her what should be slowing me down. And now since I play MHW too, it sucks having 30-40fps on 1080p
Or an overwatch ui on 720p.
I didn’t want to go over the top even there was a good deal for 300.- more for a 1080ti, i will finish apprentice next year and jump on the second RTX series after enough games use it.
In short: the 2gb more vram will be a little bit above your settings, sounds pretty good for me. Compared to how low I currently have to play.
Every software/game has fluctuating variable FPS without limit - I usually check the lowest FPS (GPU usage peak) and cap my FPS there or at a lower value. This way the FPS will be fix and very stable and the average GPU usage will obviously below 100% most of the time and I have enough headroom for peaks. Note: for some reason the hero selection screen uses much more GPU than any in-game scenario but I obviously tweaked my settings for in-game, don’t really care if FPS drops a bit on the hero selection screen.
With g-sync lower values also feel stable and stutter free. When I tweaked my settings about half year ago I had a small CPU cooler and I set up my silly 120fps limit to avoid very high CPU temperatures. Since then I bought a gigantic cooler so I could revisit my settings to get 144fps or 165fps. I have a lot of headroom with my 40-50% CPU and 60-80% GPU usage and perhaps the only thing I should change is the fps cap… But 144 VS 120 wouldn’t be a huge difference and I’m very satisfied with 120 too.
If you play overwatch @1080p with any kind of below 100% renderscale then your UI is still 1080p but that will still look bad on a 2K monitor. Instead of 1080p with 75% renderscale I’d rather play @1440p with 50% renderscale that would result in native 2K resolution menus/HUD/UI but 3D scene rendered in 720p. Would result in much better perceived quality. If you are using both renderscale and a non-native in-game resolution then you suffer scaling twice. Out of the two the in-game resolution that is different from your monitor’s native resolution is degrading the quality a lot.
They usually ask a premium price for the top model that often isn’t worth paying. When I purchased my card the tipping point was at GTX 1060.
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Yeah it looks very bad imho
I’m definitely going to look into this, thanks for the explanation,
GTX 970 performance is pretty close to my GTX 1060 so with the right video settings you should’ve achieved at least decent quality with 100+fps: RX 480 vs GTX 1060 vs GTX 970 in Overwatch @ 1080p Max Settings - YouTube
In a game that has smart renderscale (like Overwatch) it’s a huge mistake to use an in-game video resolution other than the monitor’s native resolution. With renderscale you are basically specifying a second resolution only for the GPU hungry 3D scene, the UI uses the original specified resolution (this is why it’s smart). In your case there were 3 resolutions in play: monitor’s native (1440p), overwatch in-game (1080p - your UI was rendered in this) and renderscaled 3D scene resolution (720p). Your 3D scene was rendered in 720p and then scaled up to 1080p in software (well, by the GPU). Then the UI was drawn in 1080p and your monitor scaled the whole thing to 1440p. Scaling UI is very noticeable compared to scaling an image (3D scene) because it contains a lot of lines an text which is very sensitive to blurriness. Another problem is that software scaling can use various algorithms, many of them can result in better quality then the scaling done by some displays when it comes to non-native resolutions. (I don’t know what algorithms are used by monitors to upscale non-native resolutions). Double scaling (renderscale + monitor) on the 3D scene was also a huge blow.
In my opinion 2K with 75% renderscale looks pretty good (I actually prefer the slightly thicker glowing red enemy outlines) but found 50% to be too blurry and the edges/lines in the 3D scene were too bulky (essentially double thickness with some blurriness). If I had GTX 970 I’d probably go with my current settings - 2K resolution with 75% renderscale with a bit dumbed down video settings.
Tweaking the 3D settings is a bit tricky because one has to find the right balance for each setting. In most cases the difference between high/ultra/epic is barely visible but the difference in GPU usage can be huge. In case of some settings going to medium or low degrades the quality a lot. You have to find the tipping point. Some things are completely optional (e.g.: reflections) and can be turned off or to lowest setting to save GPU power without noticing much change in quality.
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Holy moly, very right.
I’ve set 1440p and 50% render scale and could push the anti-aliasing to the max and lots of other settings to max too.
By still maintaining 165fps
I’ll try Today to go 1440p 75% a bit silly but great to know it now at least. Which I can explain to my friend if he takes over my 970. Since in 2 days the 1070ti is here.
1440p x 50% is almost the same as 1080p x 75%, there shouldn’t be much difference in required gpu power. Both render the GPU intensive part close to 720p. But 1440p x 50% skips the scaling done by the monitor and the UI is rendered in monitor-native resolution so the overall quality should be much better.
Today GTX 1060 is a decent 1080p card that can run most recent games with max or close to max settings at 60hz. My guess would be that the same applies to GTX 970. My 1440p x 75% is essentially an 1080p resolution and I have to dumb down video settings because I use 100+hz not 60. If your friend has an 1080p monitor than GTX 970 should be able to cope with 100% renderscale at 100+hz with correctly dumbed down settings. I personally find 720p (your 1440p x 50% or 1080p x 75%) to be low quality (the bulky/blurry lines in the 3D scene catch my attention and make the low resolution too obvious). Overly dumbed down video settings (I mean really really low settings for example in CS) gave some advantage in some older shooter games: it was easier to spot enemies. My dumbed down settings are actually fairly high and one should put my screenshot next to a high quality one to look for the differences. A thing that makes the difference in detail even less relevant: the last thing most players are looking for in the heat of the battle is detail. A lower quality antialias is much less obvious (especially during battle) than very thick lines caused by very low resolution (eg.: 720p) rendering. higher resolution rendering makes antialias less needed anyway.
Spotting differences in some video settings (eg antialias) is much harder in animated scenes than in screenshots that don’t move. This is why they are good candidates when it comes to dumbing down. Low render resolution, low geometry and low texture detail are usually among the worst candidates.
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Quick update:
Gtx 1070ti is installed, was a pain to get out the 970, after it was stuck. But more pleasure cleaning the case from dust at the same time.
Now 2k resolution, 100% render scale and everything currently on medium/high, i can reach my 165fps.
I’ll go through your points again and check how high I might can go. Or where I can save.