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960 now/soon or wait for 960Ti?

TheVoice

TheVoice

TheVoice

Soldato
Joined
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Glasgow
I was pondering over getting a new GPU back in June but after coming to the conclusion that the 960 was the best fit for my needs and budget, I never bothered.

Now with Hitman and Quantum Break on the horizon, I'm back in the mood for an upgrade. The 960 is still about the same price now as it was back then, albeit they're 4GB now. Is it still worth getting one of those for £140-150 or am I better waiting for the supposed 960Ti I was hearing about back in November? Is it likely to be much quicker and perhaps more importantly, will its power requirements be significantly greater? I want to keep power draw to within what my current 6870 uses, otherwise I'm faced with the prospect of also having to upgrade my PSU. Are we likely to see the Ti soon or will it still be months away at this point?

Cheers.
 
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i dont see the need to upgrade from a 960 to 960Ti, performance boost would be negligeable imo, and thats assuming they will release one, if they didnt by now they probably wont, unless small pascal is really far away still.
i would suggest you hang on to your 960, untill polaris/pascal show, or if really want to play these games comfortably, try to save £250 and get a 390, or at least 380X for £180, that would give you a decent perf boost, then later grab a freesync monitor, that would help your comfort
 
Sin_Chase said:
If your upgrade is driven by Hitman/Quantum Break, who not wait it out and see what develops?

They are both a little while away yet are they not?
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hitman release is march, and quantum release on april, i doubt new GPU line up will show that soon, beside these games seem to be bring quite the visual push, i doubt 960 or even 960ti level of performance would allow anything than low settings or 30fps on medium, just try to get a 390.
 
AlamoX said:
i dont see the need to upgrade from a 960 to 960Ti, performance boost would be negligeable imo, and thats assuming they will release one, if they didnt by now they probably wont, unless small pascal is really far away still.
i would suggest you hang on to your 960, untill polaris/pascal show, or if really want to play these games comfortably, try to save £250 and get a 390, or at least 380X for £180, that would give you a decent perf boost, then later grab a freesync monitor, that would help your comfort
Click to expand...

I don't have a 960, I have a 6870. My current monitor is only two years old so there's no point replacing it, and the reason for the interest in 960 (other than budget) is its fairly low power draw. Anything more powerful (and more expensive) means another £50+ on a PSU which makes the entire upgrade a rather expensive pill to swallow when I'm not playing many PC games at the moment.
 
TheVoice said:
I don't have a 960, I have a 6870. My current monitor is only two years old so there's no point replacing it, and the reason for the interest in 960 (other than budget) is its fairly low power draw. Anything more powerful (and more expensive) means another £50+ on a PSU which makes the entire upgrade a rather expensive pill to swallow when I'm not playing many PC games at the moment.
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Having a GTX960 myself,I would be far more inclined to get an R9 380 than a GTX960 for those games. Hitman is also AMD sponsored.
 
390 uses about 280watt, full system should run on a 500 watt psu
380 uses about 180watt, full system should run on a 400watt psu
960 uses about 120watt, full system should run on a 350watt psu
so unless you are running like a 300watt psu or really crappy manufacturer, you shouldnt worry that much about it.
 
AlamoX said:
hitman release is march, and quantum release on april, i doubt new GPU line up will show that soon, beside these games seem to be bring quite the visual push, i doubt 960 or even 960ti level of performance would allow anything than low settings or 30fps on medium, just try to get a 390.
Click to expand...

Eh? The 960 runs more emanding games(such as Witcher 3) at 40+ fps on high/ultra settings.
 
I wouldn't buy any GPU at all now, with Polaris/Pascal being so close.

If these cards deliver what many of us expect, it will completely gut current prices of all cards overnight.
 
TheVoice said:
I would, but the 380 is quite a bit more power-hungry.
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Dude i read the original thread, don't get so hung up on power consumption.

The GTX 960 is more efficient than the 380, its also a slower card...what a surprise.... :D

If you want a lower performance card for less power consumption get the 960, if you want higher performance it will use more power.

Just because the GTX 960 is in the same pricing level as the 380 doesn't mean its a comparable card, its not, its an over priced lower end card.

My GTX 970 uses more power than the 380, "oh no.... maybe i should get a 380? Or better yet a GTX 960????? NO!"
You don't buy cards based on how much power they use, you buy the fastest card you can get for your money.

My card only uses 120 Watts.... yeah well i can run Crysis 3 on the highest settings!
 
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Dave2150 said:
I wouldn't buy any GPU at all now, with Polaris/Pascal being so close.

If these cards deliver what many of us expect, it will completely gut current prices of all cards overnight.
Click to expand...

May just do that, I'm not in any real rush, just would've been nice to have something in place for the Hitman beta in a week or so.

The reason for the focus on power consumption is to avoid having to upgrade my PSU, it makes the entire upgrade a lot more expensive otherwise. In any case, I've had a 6870 for 4 and a half years, I highly doubt I'll be disappointed with even a lower-end card at this point.
 
TheVoice said:
May just do that, I'm not in any real rush, just would've been nice to have something in place for the Hitman beta in a week or so.

The reason for the focus on power consumption is to avoid having to upgrade my PSU, it makes the entire upgrade a lot more expensive otherwise. In any case, I've had a 6870 for 4 and a half years, I highly doubt I'll be disappointed with even a lower-end card at this point.
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System Power consumption 6870 (305 Watts) take older CPU into account.



System Power consumption 380 (229 Watts)



http://techreport.com/review/19844/amd-radeon-hd-6850-and-6870-graphics-processors/15
http://techreport.com/review/29316/amd-radeon-r9-380x-graphics-card-reviewed/9

In actuality they are about the same. < thats being kind to the 6870.
 
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TheVoice said:
I would, but the 380 is quite a bit more power-hungry.
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Its meaningless though. I have a Xeon E3 1230 V3/Core i7 3770 with a few drives in a SFF system and with my GTX660 or GTX960 I am lucky to see 200W at the wall when gaming. A system with an R9 380 will not even hit 300W,and is probably closer to 200W to 250W at the wall. I am only using a XFX PRO 450W PSU since it is quite compact.

I got my GTX960 4GB pretty cheap otherwise I would probably have got an R9 380 4GB myself.

To put in context,Valve were running a Core i7 4770 and a Geforce Titan off a 450W SFF PSU in their prototype Steam Boxes.

The R9 380 is generally the faster card,especially since Hitman is AMD sponsored and is meant to async shaders:

http://wccftech.com/hitman-feature-implementation-dx12-async-compute-amd/

Quantum Break is another DX12 title. I expect it will run on a R9 380 better.

Now if you can wait until Polaris is released,I would do so though. However,it looks more like a summer release TBH.
 
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