What is mid-range today? £250?

[FoxEye]

Was discussing this with somebody a couple days ago, who assured me that my 7850 was now strictly "low-end". "Only good for low-mid settings at 1080p. Will struggle with new releases."

Apparently 280X/ 770 is mid-range (@£250 typical) and only 780ti /290x (£400) and Titan (£lol) are high-end.

Which I find kinda interesting and kinda upsetting!

Firstly, what about all the cards below a 270/7850? Are they low-low-end? Are they obsolete? Do we ignore them and pretend they don't exist, because they aren't for gaming? I guess you could argue they aren't gaming cards so aren't even low-end, if you wanted.

Second, what about the ££££? Can a £250 card be mid-range? That's not a trivial amount of money! And is a significant increase from previous gens mid-range cards (GTX 460, etc).

£250 is 70% of a brand new PS4 console, btw. Amazing to me that that only buys a mid-range PC graphics card. So can we expect mid-range to be £300+ in the near future? Or is Maxwell really likely to push prices down (personally I don't believe this one little bit. nV does not lower prices unless forced to, and AMD won't lower prices unless nV do.)

Just interested to see what peoples views on "mid-range" are. Is it defined by performance, by price, or just whether there are other products above and below it in the same range? Is everything below Titan mid-range?

Perhaps there are lots of people now who used to buy mid-range cards who are now and in future buying low-end, because prices keep going up? I personally don't think mid-range should be £250. If we allow it prices will just creep up higher and higher. Mid-range cards in 2016 could be £300+!

tl;dr: it's another pointless thread and you should totally do something better with your time than reading it. I was bored, OK?

 

[Gibbo]

Mid range is actually about £150 ish, AMD 280 and NVIDIA 760 are close to £150 and give solid 1080P performance in most games with high/max settings.

£269 gets you a 290 which is high-end.

The consoles have something like a 7850 in them or slower which is far slower than a 280 which was previously a 7950.

 

[FoxEye]

Was using average prices in OP

Btw, a £75 difference between the cheapest and dearest 290 is huge. Are the more expensive ones really worth £50-£75 more? £335 is a whole different price bracket than £270.

 

[AlamoX]

yes the 290 vaporx is definitly worth the difference, the quality, features, overclock capability, silence, temps...
otherwise a trix 290 is good too
personaly i always get sapphire vaporx cards, never had any issue with them, i once bought a VTX3D because it was cheap then i regreted it, maybe i just was unlucky but still spending the extra bucks gives you peace of mind

 

[Doogles]

I see mid-end as a R9 280/GTX 770 and high-end R9 295x2/Titan Black, thing is now the bridge between mid and mid high is so little you get so much more performance for your money just going for a R9 290, on a good day a new one is £260!!!

 

[Nocky24]

The price difference usual amounts to it being at least one of the following: better cooling, better components, better overclocking potential. Whether it's worth the cost is up to you

 

[meldarthx]

PCS+ cooler is one of the best at specially at that price as it matches and beats the tri-x cooler and just about a match for vap x.........

Its just huge is the issue as a 3 slot cooler......still need to check to make sure it will fit my case LOL......

 

[Kaapstad]

It is hard and a bit pointless to even try and define.

@1080p a 295X2 would be classed as very high end

@4K I would only define it as mid range as it will run out of VRAM on occasions where as a 18 month old Titan won't.

It is best to think of GPUs as tools and aim to buy the right one for the job.

A rough guide to if a card was mid range would be to bench a stock 780ti (fastest GPU available) on 3dmark11 and use the graphics score, then any GPUs scoring about half what the 780ti scored could be classed as mid range.

 

[eddiew]

Every 2 years I pick a new card in the £150-200 range and consider it mid-range. This year it got me a 760 with 4GB (for modded Skyrim), which by all reviews really does deliver good all round performance at 1080p. Would also have gotten me a 270X, or possibly a 280 vanilla on offer, which are equally good for single screen gamers

(Basically what Gibbo said )

 

[LtMatt]

It is hard and a bit pointless to even try and define.

@1080p a 295X2 would be classed as very high end

@4K I would only define it as mid range as it will run out of VRAM on occasions where as a 18 month old Titan won't.

It is best to think of GPUs as tools and aim to buy the right one for the job.

A rough guide to if a card was mid range would be to bench a stock 780ti (fastest GPU available) on 3dmark11 and use the graphics score, then any GPUs scoring about half what the 780ti scored could be classed as mid range.

Would a 295x2 have the grunt to use more than 4gb ram at 4K and remain playable though, i doubt it. Neither would 2x titans i bet.

 

[Kaapstad]

Would a 295x2 have the grunt to use more than 4gb ram at 4K and remain playable though, i doubt it. Neither would 2x titans i bet.

If it was using Mantle on BF4 at max settings it would come unstuck with VRAM but using DX11 it would be fine.

There are more games out there that breach 4gb than the reviewers let on, most of them don't matter as 2 GPUs are not quite quick enough to matter.

The other problem with the 295X2 being a dual card is the sort of people who will buy them will often get two for quadfire.

Something that needs testing with the 295X2 in quadfire is PCI-E bandwidth, I don't think they would have a problem on an X79 system with 2 x 16 PCI-E 3.0 slots available but what happens when you try running them on a different platform with 2 x 8 PCI-E 3.0 slots.

Having seen what happens @4K with some games on 4 single Hawaii GPUs when the slots they run in are set to PCI-E 2.0 x 8 (the same as using PCI-E 3.0 x 8 for a 295X2) could this explain some of the poor performance figures some reviewers get for the 295X2. This is not a problem with the cards but more a limitation of possibly using the wrong platform to test. At the moment this is guess work but I will be looking at reviews more closely for bad testing methods on the wrong platform to see if there is any truth in this.

 

[LtMatt]

If it was using Mantle on BF4 at max settings it would come unstuck with VRAM but using DX11 it would be fine.

There are more games out there that breach 4gb than the reviewers let on, most of them don't matter as 2 GPUs are not quite quick enough to matter.

The other problem with the 295X2 being a dual card is the sort of people who will buy them will often get two for quadfire.

Something that needs testing with the 295X2 in quadfire is PCI-E bandwidth, I don't think they would have a problem on an X79 system with 2 x 16 PCI-E 3.0 slots available but what happens when you try running them on a different platform with 2 x 8 PCI-E 3.0 slots.

Having seen what happens @4K with some games on 4 single Hawaii GPUs when the slots they run in are set to PCI-E 2.0 x 8 (the same as using PCI-E 3.0 x 8 for a 295X2) could this explain some of the poor performance figures some reviewers get for the 295X2. This is not a problem with the cards but more a limitation of possibly using the wrong platform to test. At the moment this is guess work but I will be looking at reviews more closely for bad testing methods on the wrong platform to see if there is any truth in this.

PCI-E 4.0 should help and with more regular 4K use on the not too distant horizon that's a good thing.

 

[Kaapstad]

PCI-E 4.0 should help and with more regular 4K use on the not too distant horizon that's a good thing.

PCI-E 3.0 x 16 should be fine for the near future unfortunately it is not as common as it should be.

 

[David Bisset]

Was discussing this with somebody a couple days ago, who assured me that my 7850 was now strictly "low-end". "Only good for low-mid settings at 1080p. Will struggle with new releases."

Apparently 280X/ 770 is mid-range (@£250 typical) and only 780ti /290x (£400) and Titan (£lol) are high-end.

Which I find kinda interesting and kinda upsetting!

Firstly, what about all the cards below a 270/7850? Are they low-low-end? Are they obsolete? Do we ignore them and pretend they don't exist, because they aren't for gaming? I guess you could argue they aren't gaming cards so aren't even low-end, if you wanted.

Second, what about the ££££? Can a £250 card be mid-range? That's not a trivial amount of money! And is a significant increase from previous gens mid-range cards (GTX 460, etc).

£250 is 70% of a brand new PS4 console, btw. Amazing to me that that only buys a mid-range PC graphics card. So can we expect mid-range to be £300+ in the near future? Or is Maxwell really likely to push prices down (personally I don't believe this one little bit. nV does not lower prices unless forced to, and AMD won't lower prices unless nV do.)

Just interested to see what peoples views on "mid-range" are. Is it defined by performance, by price, or just whether there are other products above and below it in the same range? Is everything below Titan mid-range?

Perhaps there are lots of people now who used to buy mid-range cards who are now and in future buying low-end, because prices keep going up? I personally don't think mid-range should be £250. If we allow it prices will just creep up higher and higher. Mid-range cards in 2016 could be £300+!

tl;dr: it's another pointless thread and you should totally do something better with your time than reading it. I was bored, OK?

Depends who you're talking to as well. In here the 7850 is pretty low-end now, but this is hardly your average crowd. Most normal people don't have a clue what their computer does or what the bits are beyond maybe a brand name.

I'd say that in general you're probably still mid-range for current kit, above average for the gamer population as a whole (look at things like the steam surveys - most gamers are using much older, significantly lower spec stuff)