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United Kingdom20297 Posts
On June 06 2015 00:03 Airestyx wrote:
Hello all, my brother's graphics card just died on him so we are obviously looking into a replacement. With a price range of around 200 being what we want to spend, which card would be a better value a GTX 960, a R9 280, R9 280x, or R9 285? This is nothing fancy just 1080p gaming so I figured there isn't a real benefit going up in terms of graphics cards based on the games that he plays.
Thank you in advanced for any input.
280 or 960, depending on what you value.
The 285 is (or at least used to be, i probably have not looked at the price for 3+ months to be honest) pretty badly priced considering that it's inferior to the 280/280x in some ways.
280/280x are the same GPU (from 2012), just cut down a little bit for the lower model (they used to be called the 7950 and 7970).
The 285 a new design (2014) with some advantages but lacking the muscle and VRAM to be a true replacement to them.
280x is a bit faster than 280, but not usually enough to justify price premium for performance/dollar (especially considering the low price of 280 while having 3GB of VRAM is nice)
960 is usually significantly worse performance/dollar but Nvidia's better dx9-11 driver performance is key for people playing some games, most commonly probably World of Warcraft. NVENC might also stand out (hardware encoder for recording/streaming gameplay with minimal performance loss) because it's better than AMD's solution. There's also the efficiency advantage, it uses something like 1.6x less power (which also means 1.6x less heat output) and 960 cards usually have better features for managing noise, low noise overall, idle fan-off on some models etc. You do pay for all of that though.
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United Kingdom20297 Posts
More fuel for the fire with their neglect of dx11 cpu performance
![[image loading]](http://cdn.overclock.net/2/2f/2f9c5fab_gtav_vhigh_cpu2.png)
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I've heard you say AMD is bad at DirectX 11 but I can't find some credible article. Is there one?
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United Kingdom20297 Posts
I don't think any site has flat out published an article saying X and Y happens because Z but all of the info is out there. There are dozens of pictures like that above.
There are also a bunch of articles not directly tackling the problem but showing it off. Take a look at http://anandtech.com/show/9320/intel-broadwell-review-i7-5775c-i5-5765c/9 from a few days back for example. They test a range of games, many of them CPU bound on a 290x and 980.
I actively play WoW and this is actually a thing since the nvidia dx11 performance improvements last year in particular.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/wHNswfa.png)
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It's a bit oversimplifying to make broad statements like that on something as broad as graphics API versions, what with the wide range of feature sets.
But it does seem like Nvidia's hardware does have a relative edge in tessellation, which is used in a lot of games for Direct3D11.
And with respect to CPU performance issues that Mantle sought to address, Nvidia seems to have lower overhead and perform more efficiently with standard Direct3D11.
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United Kingdom20297 Posts
On June 06 2015 03:35 Myrmidon wrote:
It's a bit oversimplifying to make broad statements like that on something as broad as graphics API versions, what with the wide range of feature sets.
But it does seem like Nvidia's hardware does have a relative edge in tessellation, which is used in a lot of games for Direct3D11.
Kepler and Maxwell are way better at tessellation than gcn version used in the 7950/7970, the 290 etc. They revised that in gcn 1.2? used for the 285, improving performance by about 2x (easily) up to 4x when it's turned up to a decent level (factor of 16-32+ish)
This is COMPLETELY unrelated to that though.
The problem is the amount of CPU time that the driver has to spend per-frame. It's substantially higher with the AMD driver. There are performance deficits ranging from small differences to over 1.6x gaps across a wide range of games that occur only when CPU bound.
It's no secret that AMD has huge issues there.
![[image loading]](http://www.pcper.com/files/review/2015-03-25/dx12-980.png)
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![[image loading]](http://www.pcper.com/files/review/2015-03-25/dx12-290x.png)
![[image loading]](http://cdn.overclock.net/b/ba/ba6f272a_i7_sw_1920.png)
^Two tests that highly stress the API+CPU with huge amounts of draw calls
It's a bit oversimplifying to make broad statements like that on something as broad as graphics API versions, what with the wide range of feature sets.
Maybe so, but Nvidia worked hard to reduce CPU load on dx11 while AMD did not improve theirs at all. It's not really a situational thing - they seem to win every single time, sometimes by a landslide. The only question is.. does it matter for X game? If so, how much? It affects quite a lot of our games today, clearly GTA5 too.
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The superiority of Intel, does it justify its price? (about 2x AMD, if not more for I5-4690k)
I'm considering making a 1000$ gaming build (but would like to keep it is as cheap as possible). Obviously, I don't want to sacrifice too much performance. Some people suggested me AMD CPU. Others, I5. If I go AMD, there's a possibility to keep everything low while going for the higher end GPU (Not the top though, something like R9-270/280).
If I go I5, that's already close to 300-350$ with a low-end mobo. A way to save some money would be to go for a lower model of I5 (one that cannot be overclocked). I'm not the hugest tech savvy so I usually don't play around my computer. Since I'm not aiming at MAX graphics everywhere, that's also not an issue.
(shopping on NCIX - still reading)
Also, DD3 vs DD4? So many RAm speed, which one should I pick? On most budget build, the two numbers that come out regularly are 1600-1866.
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just from dose screenshots i wud spend +£100 and get the gtx 970 lol
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Cyro would probably recommend i7-4790K, but I have to say that I'm very satisfied with i7-5820K so far. Only CoD: Advanced Warfare on max settings caused a little bit lag but not 24/7. It was rare. I can't confirm whether it is because of GTX 980 or CPU or unoptimised game. 
Edit: If I were you, I'd wait for Skylake btw.
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United Kingdom20297 Posts
The superiority of Intel, does it justify its price? (about 2x AMD, if not more for I5-4690k)
The platform cost of an i5 + OC system is nowhere near double that of an fx-8xxx/9xxx 8-threaded system. Unless you're making a workstation for something like encoding (where a situation can exist so that you don't care about much more than multithreaded performance per dollar) i would not use anything non-intel at that kind of budget
Also, DD3 vs DD4? So many RAm speed, which one should I pick? On most budget build, the two numbers that come out regularly are 1600-1866.
~1600c9 for locked intel platforms, ~1600c9 to ~2133 at good timings for FX, something high frequency for APU (since integrated graphics scales from the bandwidth) and probably ~2133/2666 at decent timings for unlocked Intel~
^ddr3
for ddr4 IDK, but it's better to avoid the stuff with awful timings. 2133c16 is terrible when there's 2666c16 available for not much more (random made up numbers).
In most cases you can get faster RAM (like above, ~2133-2400 c9-c11 ddr3 instead of 1600c9) for barely any added cost
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5820k is pretty good if you need the power and x99 stuff. It's like ~1.7x faster than an i5 or any FX CPU for multithreaded work, but it's also potentially just wasted money against a skylake i5 (which could run quite a few CPU demanding games better, due to higher performance on fewer cores) if you didn't need the 5820k's multithreaded performance for the CAD programs (i don't really know how they load hardware)
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I thought these figures were just what some random website made up based off of the average IPC increase of Intel CPUs in recent times?
i5s not having hyperthreading is like the only significant difference between them and the i7s right now. :D At least for the desktop line, no idea about the lower TDP ones for laptops/ w/e.
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United Kingdom20297 Posts
Those figures were literally made up by somebody. I mean they wrote on the website hey i made up some numbers and they posted the numbers. It wasn't even like, clickbait, we have a crazy inside source and he told us these numbers! ..They just made up the numbers on the spot and admitted to that. I don't know why so many people freaked out over them.
i5 is quad core on desktop, dual core with HT on laptop. Usually. Probably.
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Hey everyone,
my girlfriend and me are looking for a good setup for gaming and video editing. Would be very nice if you could help out.
What is your budget?
up to 1300 €
What is your monitor's native resolution?
dont have one yet
What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings?
well at least Witcher 3 in good (or better) settings (should be easy in that price range, should'nt it?)
What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming?
video editing
Do you intend to overclock?
not too much since I am not an expert, but some I'll surely do
Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire?
no, if not necessary
Do you need an operating system?
no, still have windows 7
Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget?
basically everything, besides the mouse, since we both used laptops beforehand. For the keyboard I'd prefer a mechanical but since our baby has light sleep i fear it's gonna be too loud. The monitor should be big enough to watch movies over a distance of 2-3 meters. I have no clue how large that is.
Both should be included in the budget.
If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify.
no
What country will you be buying your parts in?
Germany
If you have any retailer preferences, please specify.
not really
Thanks guys and girls for your help!
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Hm, you probably want as large as possible if viewing from 2-3 meters, but you can only get 1920x1080 unless you kill your budget and spend 40% or more on the screen itself, which would be a problem because you'd need a decent graphics card to run games at a higher resolution too. Basically the whole build needs to be built and priced around whatever display you think you're getting.
How far back would you be sitting from the screen normally? One of those 28 inch MVA screens (think 220 euros or so, cheap for the size but low pixel density) would have respectable image quality, deep blacks, and unfortunately kind of slowish response times. I guess 27 inches isn't much smaller, and there are more options at that size.
A 28" TN 3840x2160 monitor is possible in the budget, but you'd have trouble running that in games at native resolution, and it wouldn't be suitable for video editing unless you're not running anything that's color sensitive or can double check on some other display.
32" 2560x1440 would be around 600 euros and is too much considering storage and RAM needs.
What are the specs on the computer you use now, anyway? And where does it seem to be inadequate?
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I'm looking to replace my GPU (GTX 460) and was considering buying an used GPU.
What are the tests I can do to make sure that the card is not faulty? (assuming that I am not going to bring my desktop to the seller's house)
AMD 7950 at 100$ (CAD), good price?
R9-280x around 150$, good price?
GTX 780 : 290$
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Definitely not the GTX 780 for 290 CAD. The HD 7950 is the best deal and runs a cut-down version of the R9 280X (HD 7970) chip. That said, especially if the R9 280X is running a nice cooler and the HD 7950 has the stock blower or looks beat up, I wouldn't fault taking the jump up.
You can't really test or examine a card (other than for obvious defects) without a computer. Either get the seller to demonstrate it works or fly in blind.
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On June 07 2015 14:29 Myrmidon wrote:
Hm, you probably want as large as possible if viewing from 2-3 meters, but you can only get 1920x1080 unless you kill your budget and spend 40% or more on the screen itself, which would be a problem because you'd need a decent graphics card to run games at a higher resolution too. Basically the whole build needs to be built and priced around whatever display you think you're getting.
How far back would you be sitting from the screen normally? One of those 28 inch MVA screens (think 220 euros or so, cheap for the size but low pixel density) would have respectable image quality, deep blacks, and unfortunately kind of slowish response times. I guess 27 inches isn't much smaller, and there are more options at that size.
A 28" TN 3840x2160 monitor is possible in the budget, but you'd have trouble running that in games at native resolution, and it wouldn't be suitable for video editing unless you're not running anything that's color sensitive or can double check on some other display.
32" 2560x1440 would be around 600 euros and is too much considering storage and RAM needs.
What are the specs on the computer you use now, anyway? And where does it seem to be inadequate?
well if the price jump is that big for a larger monitor we definitely would be able to work with 27 inch.
Her macbook air is about 4 years old and well, a macbook air. And I have a msi gt 70 with still okayish specs but after running out of guarantee the monitor started to fall off and now it is more of a shipwreck than an actual pc.
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EPT
