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Replacement GPU for £250

Henryg40

Henryg40

Henryg40

Associate
Joined
27 Oct 2011
Posts
42
So I built my computer back in 2011 with the following spec, apart from the SDD which is a later addition. It seemed quite happy to run at 4.5ghz for the past 5 years but obviously the graphics card is holding me back. What sort of thing should I be looking at as a replacement? I have a budget of around £250 and I would quite like to be able to play Battlefield 1 when it comes out and would maybe like to have a go at VR when it becomes more available.

Am i flogging a dead horse when it comes to the rest of the spec? or can I get away with just replacing the GPU?

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz running @ 4.50ghz
Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
Corsair XMS3 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz
MSI GeForce GTX 560 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Antec TruePower New Modular 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply
250GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps
 
The GTX 1060 is the best card for £250 and easily fits your system.

It uses very low power so its cool and quiet. It's regular performance is first in its price bracket, and it's VR performance is spectacular and destroys the competition. Here is a well respected benchmark that compares the 1060 and the 480: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1771?vs=1748
 
Nitro+ OC is fantastic card, great value for money and with longer lifespan due to DX12 and Vulcan.
And much better AMD driver support as months and years come by.
 
Mayh3M said:
The GTX 1060 is the best card for £250 and easily fits your system.

It uses very low power so its cool and quiet. It's regular performance is first in its price bracket, and it's VR performance is spectacular and destroys the competition. Here is a well respected benchmark that compares the 1060 and the 480: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1771?vs=1748
Click to expand...

In all honesty it's hard to vote for the 480 with results like this where the 1060 often has a significant lead in DX11 titles and only just lags behind in DX12 titles.
 
480 or 1060 either would do you well. but saying that seeing as you moving from a 560, it would seem that you keep your cards for a good while, the RX480 is probably the better bet.

The rest of your system is fine for a good while yet.
 
Interesting head to head comparison of the 1060 and rx 480 here:


Basically boils down to right now the 1060 is faster though for slightly more money. But if DX12 or Vulcan take off in the near future the RX 480 might out perform it.

Either way one of those 2 cards will serve you well.

My personal choice would be the RX480. 90% of the time you wouldn't notice the performance difference and between it being slightly cheaper, the extra memory and the possibility of better relative performance down the line pushes it over the top.
 
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480 all day long, BF1 will be getting DX12 which will make the 480 shine, while its true the 1060 performance in many DX11 games is better, the future is DX12 / Vulcan etc and AMD have built their cards with this in mind unlike the current Pascal cards...

If you only upgrade every 3 or so years, do not buy anything other than an AMD card, and the 480 is your best bet at your price point.
 
SiDeards73 said:
480 all day long, BF1 will be getting DX12 which will make the 480 shine, while its true the 1060 performance in many DX11 games is better, the future is DX12 / Vulcan etc and AMD have built their cards with this in mind unlike the current Pascal cards...

If you only upgrade every 3 or so years, do not buy anything other than an AMD card, and the 480 is your best bet at your price point.
Click to expand...


I am also hearing BF1 will fully support Vulkan API. :)
New Deus Ex game incoming is also supposedly DX12.

1060 or RX 480, both are superb and evenly matched but personally my money would go on a Nitro card every time, best looking graphics card on the market full stop. :)
 
1060 is faster, better bang for buck, cooler, quieter, uses less power nad will perform better with older/slower CPUs.
 
If you only upgrade every 3 years or so i wouldnt buy an Nvidia card, they tend to not bother optomising for their older products when something new comes along, i believe rumors are Volta their next gen will be arriving next year?

AMD with GCN on the other hand just get better and better, for instance the 290 is still performing very well, the 480 is roughly the same level of perf

Here is a comparison of the latest AMD drivers in Hitman

0lnwm86b05cx.jpg
 
SiDeards73 said:
If you only upgrade every 3 years or so i wouldnt buy an Nvidia card, they tend to not bother optomising for their older products when something new comes along, i believe rumors are Volta their next gen will be arriving next year?

AMD with GCN on the other hand just get better and better, for instance the 290 is still performing very well, the 480 is roughly the same level of perf

Here is a comparison of the latest AMD drivers in Hitman

0lnwm86b05cx.jpg
Click to expand...

Not to sound like a nvidia fanboy, but that is a bit of a cherrypicked result. AMD cards usually vastly outperform nvidia cards on that game specifically.
 
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