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Graphics card choices...

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Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
7,255
Location
Melksham
So I think I'm gonna pull the trigger and buy a Rift CV1, but fairly sure I'm gonna need a graphics upgrade as I'm currently using a 7990 which seems powerful enough but Crossfire is apparently a big no-no for VR/latency...

So, need a new card, ideally as cheap as possible but looking around £250-300 I guess, ideally closer to £250 :p

Looking at new cards at least (I generally prefer new over b-grade, plus a quick scan of MM didn't reveal much second hand) gives the following options:
RX480 (probably the Sapphire Nitro+ OC 8Gb for £259.99)
Fury (XFX Triple fan for £289.99)
1060 (not sure which, the 6Gb ones start at £229.99)

I do prefer AMD, partially so I won't need to do a clean install, partially as that's what I've used for many years now, and partially due to nvidia's 'business practices' :p but not 100% fixed.

Primary games would be iRacing and Elite Dangerous, perhaps War Thunder based on a video posted in the VR forums earlier :p

I'm leaning towards the RX480 then, for cost and VRAM mostly, but is that a terrible choice and/or are there obvious choices I'm missing?
 
The XFX Fury is hands down better for VR than 1060/480 and totally worth the £30 imo. The 1060 has a slight edge over the 480 in VR right now but going forwards it's going to tilt towards the 480. I would go PowerColor over Sapphire (HiS is good too), the Nitro 480 is pretty poor with heat, if you want the 480.
 
I replaced my ageing 6870 with a 1060 this past weekend and I'm thoroughly impressed with it. What's a five-year old system is now a very competent gaming PC at 1920x1200 again. I'd ruled the 480 out on the basis of heat, power and more crucially, the fact that it likely wouldn't have worked with my motherboard anyway.

Not sure why you'd need to do a clean install though, you just remove the AMD drivers, run the AMD driver removal utility and install the Nvidia ones. Easy.
 
TheRealDeal said:
For a RX480 i would go with this or for £5 more the Devil. The His Ice-Q received a great review which is why i would go with it. The review sample was stable at 1410 core for games and 1430 core for benching.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/his-radeon-rx-480-iceq-x2-oc-8192mb-gddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-10e-hs.html
Click to expand...

That is pretty impressive overclocking. I would just be concerned about the short warranty and having not heard of HIS much, would assume they have SE Asia Rma
 
southernorth said:
That is pretty impressive overclocking. I would just be concerned about the short warranty and having not heard of HIS much, would assume they have SE Asia Rma
Click to expand...

HIS have been one of AMD's best brands for a long time now. I think overall it's a better card than the XFX but an extra years warranty is not bad on the XFX. I am not sure on this XFX cooler as there last few tries on the 7970/290 have not been great. They have always looked good though.

I wonder if anyone around here has the XFX and can give feedback on the temps and noise.
 
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TheRealDeal said:
HIS have been one of AMD's best brands for a long time now. I think overall it's a better card than the XFX but an extra years warranty is not bad on the XFX. I am not sure on this XFX cooler as there last few tries on the 7970/290 have not been great. They have always looked good though.

I wonder if anyone around here has the XFX and can give feedback on the temps and noise.
Click to expand...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvwBEfD4NzY


That's a video review comparing it to the Powercolour card (often seen as the 'best' for cooling). As you can see, it appears to be better thermally. Hard to find reviews for it though.
 
southernorth said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvwBEfD4NzY


That's a video review comparing it to the Powercolour card (often seen as the 'best' for cooling). As you can see, it appears to be better thermally. Hard to find reviews for it though.
Click to expand...

Nice. With 3 years warranty and a decent cooler it could become a decent choice. Xfx as i say have been a let down over the last 3-4 years so maybe this is them redeeming themselves.

Pretty good results there. The first test was weird as the xfx kept dropping it's clocks where as the Devil pretty much held it's full boost the whole way through. The 1400 mhz oc it managed and held much easier. It must have needed the power slider set to +50 in the first test which would have stopped the drops. Overall the looks a solid cooler.
 
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TheRealDeal said:
HIS have been one of AMD's best brands for a long time now. I think overall it's a better card than the XFX but an extra years warranty is not bad on the XFX. I am not sure on this XFX cooler as there last few tries on the 7970/290 have not been great. They have always looked good though.

I wonder if anyone around here has the XFX and can give feedback on the temps and noise.
Click to expand...

I can give feedback on xfx warranty it's nonexistent, I had a 2 month old card break and the best xfx could do was exchange my broken card for small discount on new card from their store.
 
TheVoice said:
I replaced my ageing 6870 with a 1060 this past weekend and I'm thoroughly impressed with it. What's a five-year old system is now a very competent gaming PC at 1920x1200 again. I'd ruled the 480 out on the basis of heat, power and more crucially, the fact that it likely wouldn't have worked with my motherboard anyway.

Not sure why you'd need to do a clean install though, you just remove the AMD drivers, run the AMD driver removal utility and install the Nvidia ones. Easy.
Click to expand...

Why's that?
 
Cheers for the posts, I thought the Sapphire Nitro+ ones were well regarded, the XFX/HIS ones being cheaper and better is always good :p

Also yeah the Fury should be faster, but will 4Gb of VRAM be an issue.

Power etc isn't really an issue for me, the RX480 or even the Fury should use a chunk less than the 7990 :p

Ran the SteamVR performance bench earlier and got 6.6 with no frames under 90 or anything, so that's seems in the ballpark of the 480, but not sure if crossfire will be noticeably stuttery when actually using the rift...

Either way rather than impulse buy it today think I'll end up waiting, got a busy week and a bit, and then the new Nexus/Pixel phones come out so wait for that to determine what my outgoings are actually going to be :p
 
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