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Cheapest near to 4k Card for my PSU around or under £280

Liamb2005

Liamb2005

Liamb2005

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Joined
13 Jul 2005
Posts
501
I am looking to buy a new graphics card that could potentially be used for 4k gaming. I currently have a 670 GTX and was looking at the MSI r9 390 gaming edition which ive heard is pretty 4k capable.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/msi-...ddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-289-ms.html

I was going to buy it until i realised it said it required a 600w PSU which is a bit of a pain as i only have a 500w psu and really cant justify buying a new PSU at the moment as well.

Can anyone recommend card with similar power for the same price bracket that will work on 500w or my sons 550w if needed as hes going to be having my old 670 gtx and im sure he wouldnt mind swapping.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks:rolleyes:
 
That's probably the best choice in your price range, will handle 4K well provided you have realistic expectations (older games at high settings, newer more challenging ones more medium settings). Which PSU do you have? If it's a decent, branded 500W you'll be fine unless you're overclocking to the moon. If it's a cheap no-name PSU that came with a case, then I wouldn't suggest running ANY powerful GPU on it.
 
What brand and model is your PSU? 600W is an over estimate because most "people" will use a cheap o powersupply.

On my previous build (2600K @ 4.7, 2x 290x overclocked, 2 ssds 2 hdds, custom water) I was using about 650W from the wall in GTA 5 @ 1440P with 60 - 80% CPU and 100% GPU usage.

If your PSU is semi decent it will likely be fine for a 390.
 
PSU requirements tend to state higher than is actually necessary. I'm sure I've heard of sub 600w units running even the 390X. What make is your psu?
 
Thanks for the replies.

My PSU is a Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply

My sons PSU "which id rather leave him with" is a SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black
 
No its all stock at the moment. I had thought of overclocking but i would probably get a better psu & cooling if i were to that.

WThat brings another question. Will my CPU good enough to run games in stock at 4K ? its an i7 3770k
?
 
Thanks for the advice. Out of interest how does a gtx 970 compare ? I currently have a 670 gtx and ive been reading that gtx cards run cooler and have better drivers is this true and which is faster ?
 
My personal advice would be to not buy a 4k monitor if you haven't yet.

R9 390 is a good card, especially for the money, but 4k is *really* demanding and it wont be good enough to play more demanding games at that resolution.

Liamb2005 said:
Thanks for the advice. Out of interest how does a gtx 970 compare ? I currently have a 670 gtx and ive been reading that gtx cards run cooler and have better drivers is this true and which is faster ?
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There really isn't much between them at something like 1080p(depends on the game), but if at 4k, I think I'd be far more comfortable with the 8GB of vRAM on the 390.
 
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Seanspeed said:
My personal advice would be to not buy a 4k monitor if you haven't yet.
Click to expand...

Same here, I have a 1080p monitor but I run my games at 1440p, I have a 4790k and Fury Tri-X and when I try to run games at 4k via dsr I always end up dialling it back down to 1440p. There's not enough grunt this gen. You can just about manage 4k if you are willing to spend around 500 quid but even then it's a push.

A 970 is an excellent 1080p card, Pretty good at 1440p too but hopeless at 4k.
 
Thanks for your replies.

Truth be told. The only reason im upgrading is my sons r9 270 is playing up so the plan was to give him my gtx 670.

I work as a graphic designer so reliability is vital (and has been great on my gf 670) but my son had quite a lot of issues with crashes and driver issues with his radeon. But this may have been that his card was playing up for longer than we thought (its also a sapphire which i beleive is a budget card) so although i want the best For my money for gaming i also need a reliable card and drivers.

I dont play pc games as much as i would like to but when i do it would be on one of my 30" ultrasharps at 2560x1600 but ive also just purchased a 4k 65 sony tv which i was hoping to to test a couple of recent and semi new games in 4k on there possibly. Im not expecting it to run the latest games in top settings in 4k but id love to see see gta v or witcher in 4k and mid settings at least. Also being a huge fan of the oculus and the new htc revice and oculus just around the corner itd be good to have machine thats capable of handling what are said to be quite power hungry
 
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nashathedog said:
There's not enough grunt this gen. You can just about manage 4k if you are willing to spend around 500 quid but even then it's a push.

A 970 is an excellent 1080p card, Pretty good at 1440p too but hopeless at 4k.
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A 970 is not going to struggle to run games at medium settings at 4K. Very/Ultra High settings are often near-indistinguishable from High, but eat performance, e.g. Post FX or Grass in GTA5.

Other times, things like shadows and reflections are based on the rendering resolution and reach a point of diminishing returns; reflections rendered at half internal resolution at 1080p look rough, but fine at 4K.
 
LegendaryDread said:
A 970 is not going to struggle to run games at medium settings at 4K. Very/Ultra High settings are often near-indistinguishable from High, but eat performance, e.g. Post FX or Grass in GTA5.

Other times, things like shadows and reflections are based on the rendering resolution and reach a point of diminishing returns; reflections rendered at half internal resolution at 1080p look rough, but fine at 4K.
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he's not wrong. even with medium settings he'll be getting dips in the 20's probably. best case scenario around 30-35 FPS. You'd need a 980ti at medium to get a good 60+ FPS and even then it would most likely have its dips

here you go
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE_87XA9MeA
 
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https://youtu.be/DH6FCgqQB_s?t=365

(Timestamped, should start around 6:05~)

Specs, which are in the description:

i5 750 overclocked to 3.7 ghz
Asus H55 LGA 1156 motherboard
4GB DDR3 memory
GTX 760

Watch for a little longer and you'll see that card is capable of a constant 30 fps, at medium settings.

sneakysnail said:
snip
Click to expand...

The dude in the video you linked is running with a mix of medium/high, and 2xMSAA which chops off about 30~40% of the framerate in GTA.
 
To be honest my current setup runs most things in 1080p fine but itd be nice to step up a little bit as mine doesnt run games great at 1600p and 1080p looks a little too pixelly for me on ny 30 ultrasharps tbh, as i mentioned i thought id get a new card so my son can have mine so im stuck between shelling out 280 on this now just purley as a bit of an upgrade something i can dabble in mid range 4k graphics or maybe buying something a little cheaper to hold me a while..i like to see an improvement over my previous hw tho.

Its also not a case of saving up its more of a case of justifiying it (considering im not a huge pc gamer) and getting it past the wife lol. Me spending £280 on a gfx card automatically justifies her to spend the same on something for herself...usually out of my wallet as well :(

Starting to think the best option maybe to get my son another9 270 or 270x and hold out till mid next year for a 4k steam machine maybe. Does seem you have to have quite a mammoth setup still for top end 4k gaming at the moment.
 
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