Quieter,Cooler, Lower Power Consumption and better performance than my HD7950

maxinflixion

maxinflixion

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Apr 2, 2007
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Quieter,Cooler, Lower Power Consumption and better performance than my HD7950

The time has come to upgrade my PC. The 2600k is going to find a new home.

Since I am upgrading motherboard and CPU, it seems fitting that this GPU moves on as well since it is loud and underperforms. As of this moment, I am a little up in the air on CPU choices as well.

I am looking for guidance on something that fits the bill.
- Low Power: I am sick of blowing a fuse if I turn on my space heater in the winter AND, my electric bill already sucks
- Quieter: just because
- Cooler: This actually plays more into the cooler thing due to temp and fans
- Better performance: I barely game anymore, but if I am buying a new card it should be at least slightly better. Plus, when I do game, I always itch for better performance. Also, I occasionally need to encode video, so good performance here is helpful.

I am brand agnostic, so whichever has the best price to benefit ratio wins.

Thank you in advance for any guidance.
 
A 470 will do all of that for you, but don't pay more than $170 for it. Next to that, since you've been running with a 3GB card, there is a 3GB 1060 also in that price range. Uses slightly less power, is slightly faster overall once max OC's are in place and costs about $10-$15 more than the 470 if you catch a good deal.

If you're ok with up to $300, get yourself a 1060 6GB.
 
Budget?

If you want the best perf/$ it's either the 1060 or the 1070, if you can find those at MSRP.

GTX 1060 is 120W, while 1070 is 150W. Overclocked, around 140W and 170W respectively.

Encode video using NVENC is iffy, some people report bad image quality compared to CPU encode, so YMMV.

AMD cards this gen are not competitive perf/W wise, so if you can list your budget and ranking of your requirements it'll be easier to give a clear answer.
 
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I don't think you can go wrong with either a RX 480 or GTX 1060. The former costs less than the latter (if you're in the US, at least), possibly has better encoding, but uses more power. The latter uses less power, but costs more. Both cards offer up around the same level of performance in games at "medium" to "high" settings and 1920x1080 if you're shooting for 60 FPS.
 
Budget is a tough question. I actually hadn't thought of it prior to posting. I am trying to keep the costs down here.

I initially had trouble even finding my current card on charts, but then got my head out of my a$$ and found it. It kind of looks like anything I buy will have better performance these days.

The RX 480 might fit the bill. Or... I can see how it all runs w/ just CPU/Mobo/RAM upgrades I guess as well.
 
What is the resolution of your monitor(s)?

If it is 1920x1200 or less then 3/4GB VRAM should be okay, but if you are a 1440p/1600p or an Eyefinity user then 8GB VRAM and a big GPU like the 1070 starts looking attractive. Of course if you are a 4K user then all bets are off.

Are you overclocking the i7-2600K? Moore's Law isn't exactly dead but Intel hasn't had much incentive to majorly improve CPU speed for some time now (dammit AMD, get off your ass!), so if you are running it at 4.4GHz+ a new CPU may not really benefit you in gaming if you are sensitive to the price/performance curve (Skylake needs DDR4 so you have to factor new RAM in the upgrade budget). If you are doing video editing, audio work, CAD stuff, etc. that likes lots of threads then a 6-core i7-6800K may be attractive.
 
I'd suggest a 1060 or 480 in these crazy black friday deals. I don't know about quiet and power consumption. It's not something I concern myself with often.
 
RX470 with MSI or Gigabyte cooler for semi-passive mode.

You will want Kaby Lake for sure for the hardware videos encoding capabilities it adds when it comes out. Shifting it on its dedicated blocks will save you on power and processing time.

If the video encoding isn't for a job for for serioius purposes and you need the budget Skylake will also work wonderfully.
 
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