DescentBB

Wondering what AMD vid card (if any) I can use to replace my old one:
Specs

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cy ... -sky/13130

Hopefully I can upgrade it or I will be faced with a a new comp. build. Any help will be much appreciated. Went to a few google sites but am not getting good answers so I'm here where the experts are (shameless suk up comment )

edit ...Mother board is ASUS P5Q Deluxe

The question is what do you have in that motherboard right now. What is your CPU, how much RAM, what power supply, what OS are you running, etc.

Click the link Krom as that was a sys analysis. OS is win 7. Power supply is PC Power & Cooling 750W Silencer Mk2.

I did click the link, but that only tells me the requirements for No Man's Sky, not what you have in your computer.

did you scroll down? It tells what I have and what percentage each part is good for.

It only shows that when you load that page on your computer. Try clicking the link on a different computer/web browser without their plugin installed or a smart phone or something and you will see what I mean.

Sorry Krom, didn't think of that. Anyways here is the info:

AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series

Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz

Ram 16 gig

Mother board is ASUS P5Q Deluxe

PC Power & Cooling 750W Silencer Mk2

That is more like it. Honestly a Radeon 7800 series is probably in the ballpark of the minimum specifications already. I might recommend a wait and see approach before you spend money on a new card.

It is also worth considering that all the next generation cards are expected to drop in the next few months (expected by summer/fall). And for reals this time, because the 16nm silicon is finally in production after being stuck on 28nm for the last 4 years.

Otherwise I'd say a Radeon R9 380 or 380X for a good future proofing AMD card, though keep in mind these cards are hot and power hungry, nothing your 750w can't handle but depending on how well vented your system is they could make things get noisy.

Krom, thanks for taking the time to reply. Guess I'll wait a bit as the game I was interested in (No Man's Sky) won't be out for abit. when the 14-16 nm cards come out I'll see how much the other cards drop in price.

Bringing this topic back up. AMD has just come out with the RX 480, a 14 nm card in the 200.00 range. I'm not interested in the fact the card is vr rated, just powering graphics a lot better than my 7870. A link here on it's qualities:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd ... ,4616.html

Krom if you have time, give me your thoughts.

Oh, this is the GPU I'm drooling over right now, the Titan X.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2897196/ ... cards.html

Pros

Incredibly powerful gaming performance
Capable of playing games at 4K resolutions with high detail settings
Quiet, relatively cool, and easily overclocked

Cons

99 percent of gamers can't afford it

I know. Plus, I'd need a new system to put it into anyway. But I can dream can't I?

The RX480 is a decent card, but there are a few issues worth keeping in mind.

The 8 GB version runs $240 minimum and it is frequently out of stock. Also, avoid the reference design at all costs. The reference design ships with a single 6 pin PCIe plug and as a result the card is known to overdraw current from the motherboard slot and has fried motherboards worth more than itself in the process, the fix from AMD reduces the cards performance in order to keep it closer to the safety specs. Custom designs usually go with an 8 pin power plug which gives the card plenty of breathing room (double the available current of a 6 pin) and completely eliminates the risk of damaging other components in the system. Although the downside is that the custom designs are all pushing $300 and for a bit less than that price you could shop around for a overclocked GTX 1060 6 GB (unfortunately also frequently out of stock) which will outperform the RX 480 at pretty much everything for less power, heat and noise.

Krom, once again thanks for reply. Glad you brought up the 6 pin reference card info. I was looking at the 8 gb card so I will wait a bit more. The GTX is a bit better but I'm loath to change the software from radeon to nividia. Seems I've had problems but that was a long time ago so maybe things are easier nowadays.

woodchip, check out the most recent vid card reviews. Personally, I still prefer Nvidia though.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3106426/ ... aming.html

Seems PC world also thinks highly of the RX480. Looks like I'll go with the Sapphire nitro.

Krom, what is the difference between these 2 cards. One says Nitro and the other says Nitro+ :

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... _-14202275



Little confused. Better OC? More HDMI ports?

Odd, the amazon link would not post. Trying it in new reply:



Even odder. Link shows up when I edit but not when I post. Try this one:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 6814202223

Think I know now, core clock speeds are different.

There are 3 versions of that card, with progressively higher overclocks:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 6814202275
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 6814202224
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 6814202223

Odd as well. A Reddit forum link wouldn't show here either. Maybe because it's a secure site or something? This is the first I've noticed the issue.

Here's some more info on the Nitro series woody.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id- ... nitro.html

Personally, I think that a even 6G GTX 1060 is a far better card. I even was able to install a 8G GTX 1070 into my 6 year old ASUS Rampage gene III motherboard powered by a Corsair 850 PS and running Win 7 without a hitch. No fuddling with the BIOS or anything. Unfortunately, it's a little pricier than the Sapphire 480, hence the GTX 1060 suggestion.

Thanks Krom. Another question. As I am still using :

Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz

Ram 16 gig

Mother board is ASUS P5Q Deluxe

PC Power & Cooling 750W Silencer Mk2

Will the cpu be a bottle neck for any of the Nitro cards? I'm leaning to the 3rd choice as it is only 20.00 more than the first choice you listed.

TC, cost will be a factor.

It should be fine for a little while longer, the RX 480 isn't so powerful that it will stall out waiting for that CPU in most games. There may be exceptions but not many, and it would depend greatly on your monitor and its refresh rate.

Krom, Monitor:
https://www.cnet.com/products/samsung-s ... 5-5/specs/

Once again I very much appreciate the help you give.

Yeah, its a 60 Hz monitor at 1200p so I wouldn't worry about the CPU limit with that setup. Odds are either the GPU will limit most games, or you will bump into the monitors 60 Hz refresh rate before the CPU bottlenecks. CPU limits only really become relevant for high refresh rate gaming like on a 144 Hz monitor, and in most cases a RX 480 isn't going to be able to render that fast at that resolution in the first place.

Ok Krom, thanks again. I'll post here when I get the card and try it out.

One more monkey wrench. The card uses pci 3.0. My motherboard uses 2.0. Talking to the asus tech the 2.0 will choke the performance and there is no way to upgrade it. Looks like I will have to do more than replace the vid card or have to get a older vid card running 2.0. Darn.

Well now I'm confused. This link shows there is not much difference at all ( older info so not sure how many newer games make use of 3.0):

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/artic ... mance-518/

I've got my current PCI 3.0 GTX 1070 card plugged into my old PCI 2.0 motherboard slot and it hasn't been an issue. I mean, it's not a racehorse of a system like some gamers seem to crave, but I'm perfectly happy with the performance. I'm even running most of my new games with their settings nearly maxed out.

It will be fine, 2.0 is plenty for a single card. Even 1.0 would be fine for 99% of the games out there.

Basically in an x16 slot, PCIe 2.0 gives you 8 GB/sec of usable bandwidth, while PCIe 3.0 will give you 16 GB/sec. The only time it would seriously get stressed is if your video card was out of memory which would cause it to start swapping textures in from the main system RAM, which is going to kill performance either way because even PCIe 3.0 x16 is nothing compared to the video cards onboard memory that can read at 224 GB/sec.

Thanks TC and Krom. Went ahead and bought the card.