What would be the best bet for a new AMD video card under 300

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poconopc

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I currently have the a decent 3gb card but it's almost 3 years old now. It's hard to determine which I should go for.

I know that my system memory should get bumped up to 32gb from 16 as well. Processor is good and decent MB.


Any sugesstions?
 
you don't need to bump your memory to 32gb unless you want to create a very small RAMdisk which would be just plain useless as best, in fact no more than 12GB is really needed for gaming that's why 16GB it's pretty much an standard today... with that said..

best you can do right now is look for an AMD RX 480 GPU, there has been certain offers on the old gen R9 Fury Cards which are obsoleted due the tiny 4GB vRAM even if they can be 10 - 15% faster than the RX 480, that card is where AMD is putting efforts and optimizing games and drivers for so it's the natural choice, however I have to be clear, that card is as best a mid range card as it compete directly to the mid range nvidia GTX 1060 and nothing more..

when you say you have a decent 3GB card I can only guess you are talking about an 7950/280 7970/280x card, with a RX 480 you can expect about 60 - 70% more performance depending on the games at stock, or around 80% when you include overclocks..
 
As he said, an Rx480 8GB is your best bet for an under $300 AMD card at this time. I would recommend getting an AIB card instead of a reference card though, it will be much quieter and run cooler. Unless you have the rare use case where a blower cooler suits your setup.
Also, 32GB of ram is completely unnecessary for gaming. You can get by just fine these days with only 8GB.I did buy an R9 Fury when they were on sale for $260 right before christmas, and it is a beast of a card, but it was more because I wanted to mess around with a Fury and HBM memory, than a long term choice. As of right now 4GB is enough for the vast majority of games even in 1440p, but who knows in 2 years. If the Fury cards came with 8GB they would get my nod.

As I said earlier in my post, I would get a dual fan heatpipe style cooler over a blower cooler unless your case has poor airflow and you need the blower cooler to exhaust all the air out of your case. I would get this card instead, it's the same price even.

https://www.amazon.com/XFX-RADEON-G...8BFA6/dp/B01JM1C5BY/ref=cm_cd_al_qh_dp_t?th=1
 
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Just fiy, depending on the game 8gb or even 16gb may not be enough RAM. I've had "memory low" messages pop-up while playing Rise of the Tomb Raider with 16gb ram. I have, basically, no virtual memory set up, so maybe that's why. But 8gb is sooo 2014...
 
Koween said:
Just fiy, depending on the game 8gb or even 16gb may not be enough RAM. I've had "memory low" messages pop-up while playing Rise of the Tomb Raider with 16gb ram. I have, basically, no virtual memory set up, so maybe that's why. But 8gb is sooo 2014...
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Never had a single game come close to using 8GB of RAM. Rise of The Tomb Raider ran fine. The only program I have used that may have been pushing the limit was 3D Studio Max. Just upgraded to 16GB some weeks back and noticed zero performance change. 8GB is plenty for games, but if you're buying a new PC now you may as well get 16GB.

If you're running out of 16GB of RAM, I strongly suggest you scan for viruses as you've probably picked something up.
 
Koween said:
Just fiy, depending on the game 8gb or even 16gb may not be enough RAM. I've had "memory low" messages pop-up while playing Rise of the Tomb Raider with 16gb ram. I have, basically, no virtual memory set up, so maybe that's why. But 8gb is sooo 2014...
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Really? Don't know what you are running. Never have had a single error with 16gb. Heck even 8gb.
 
NKD said:
Really? Don't know what you are running. Never have had a single error with 16gb. Heck even 8gb.
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You won't get this problem if you have a lot of virtual memory set up - I have basically nothing as vm (and the few hundred are on a hdd) as I don't want my ssds wearing out from constant reads/writes. The same happened to my friend who only has a ssd and had very little virtual memory and 8gb of ram - used to run out of memory while playing BF1. So, yeah, you can live with 8gb and virtual memory. It's slower, but probably good enough.
 
Fury X is clearly the fastest AMD card right now at that price point. It is nearly as fast as a 1070 and 4gb of HBM memory performs better than these dolts give it credit for. They are uniformed.

Here, dolts, try this on for size.

http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedi...re-triple-4k-eyefinity-11-520x2160/index.html


4gb fury x in crossfire beats a pair of 12GB Titans in SLI at 11520x2160 resolution.

4gb HBM is not the limitation that 4gb gddr5 is.

I played through shadow of Mordor at high settings at 50-60fps at 7680x1440 with AA turned off on a single Fury x with an overclocked haswell 4770k in the last month or so. (in game benchmark tool said average FPS was 51 with my three 1440p monitors in eyefinity. What I saw in nearly 20 hours of gameplay was more that the FPS rate stayed pretty cleanly between 50-60FPS with a single card at that res.)


IMG_1144.JPG




Try that with an 8GB rx480.
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/amd-radeon-rx-480-review/1100-6441354/


rx480 no.PNG


note: Fury X is not listed on that graph - In Shadow of Mordor at 4K it would beat a 1070 both based on that 10-15% faster characteristic.
 
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Yes, a Fury X is a much more powerful card than the RX480. Grab a Fury or Fury X at that price point and don't look back.
 
Fury X Cards have been $300 multiple times since black Friday
https://slickdeals.net/newsearch.php?forumchoice[]=4&forumchoice[]=9&forumchoice[]=10&forumchoice[]=13&forumchoice[]=25&forumchoice[]=30&forumchoice[]=38&forumchoice[]=39&forumchoice[]=41&forumchoice[]=44&forumchoice[]=53&forumchoice[]=54&forumchoice[]=71&q="Fury+X"&firstonly=1

Fury cards are about 10-15% slower than Fury X cards and have been down to $240 range multiple times since black Friday.

Both are preferable over a RX480 8GB, and will be infinitely - regardless of resolution. The processing power and memory bandwidth on the Fury X is just too much to overcome by a much slower card with more traditional GDDR video card RAM.

Also since AMD uses the same architecture for these cards - as far as CGN - driver updates and advancements for RX480 will also assist/improve the FURY cards going into the future.

I'm so tired of reading people say 4GB of video RAM isn't sufficient and suggesting a slower card in the RX480 for about the same price.

I'm also tired of people saying 4GB isn't enough for high resolutions like 4K. When clearly the Tweaktown link above disproves that easily. I wish I could generates an autoscript that everytime someone posts about the 4GB of memory on the Fury X being insufficient it would autoreply with the tweaktown benchmark article showing a 4GB Fury X card beating a 12GB Nvidia Titan card at 12K resolution.


By the time the 4GB of HBM memory is a serious limitation in resolution or gameplay experience - the Fury X processing power won't be sufficient to drive that game anyway - so the 4GB of HBM limitation will be moot.

---------

There is no way I'd buy a RX480 over a Fury card --- AT the Fury's reduced current prices. At MSRP for both cards it makes sense. $700 MSRP for a Fury X vs $240 MSRP for a RX 480 -- yeah that's about the only time I'd buy a RX480.

But the Fury cards are no where close to release price anymore....And they were last years high end where as the RX480 is this years mid range.


Terraflops is a computational processing power metric that isn't perfect but is fair enough on similarly designed cards - IE comparing AMD to AMD cards:
RX480 8GB - 5.5 TFlops - best typical and recent street price $200
Fury - 7.2 Tflops - best typical and recent street price $240
Fury X - 8.6 Tflops - best typical and recent street price $300
 
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I tried a regular fury and it was a fast card. I really honestly don't think that memory is an issue, I sold it a while back. Some games have certain settings that require 8gb, only then it becomes an issue but my eyes can't tell the difference in texture and shit. I never ran in to any issue with it. But I do have a rx480 in that rig now, 8GB. I got it for 169.99 out the door. I had some discover reward points I used at amazon. It worked out great.

most games will be fine with fury x or fury. But its true at current fury prices I would buy a fury card but it doesn't fit in my case so that wasn't an option for me.
 
I have a 4gb Nano - yes 4gb can be limiting:
  • Doom - forcing nightmare on shadows or textures or both at 4K causes frame rate to drop about 1/2 and is a stutterly mess.
    • No issue using Ultra settings, Power tune at + 30% keeps it at 1000mhz, get rid of Depth of Field and it runs around 50fps at 4K -> Very nice!
  • Rise of the Tomb Raider - max out the settings (mostly texture setting) and it will tank and stutter away
  • Most other games (y)
The Fiji cards are better performers then any Polaris card but 4gb can be limiting and could be more limiting in the future. The 8gb of the Rx480 may give you a longer lasting card hard to say, also the Rx 480 has HDMI 2b and Display port 1.4 which will come into play more as well. I would recommend a Fury or FuryX if you can get the price down hands down if you are looking at a 1-2 year card.
 
I couldnt resist, got a sapphire nitro for $239 after rebate. Because i am trying to play project cars i was looking for a 1070 but just didnt want to spend an extra $120.
 
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buttons said:
I couldnt resist, got a sapphire nitro for $239 after rebate. Because i am trying to play project cars i was looking for a 1070 but just didnt want to spend an extra $120.
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Good buy, I think you'll be very happy for quite a while with that cars.
 
buttons said:
I couldnt resist, got a sapphire nitro for $239 after rebate. Because i am trying to play project cars i was looking for a 1070 but just didnt want to spend an extra $120.
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Exactly what I ended up doing. If the Vega is a big improvement, I'll happily sell my Fury to a friend at a loss.
 
im going to resell my r9 390 to cover 80% of the cost of my fury. so ill be out like $40.
 
Fury X are all identical AMD reference cards. The ONLY difference in Fury X cards is the sticker on the fan.
 
You should pick a RX 480 8GB if your budget is less then $300. Great card for 1080p / 1440p gaming.
 
257Tony said:
Good buy, I think you'll be very happy for quite a while with that cars.
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well at 1080p my benchmarks didnt change. In vr though im seeing a good increase. Project cars went from 45fps to 70+. I also stumbled onto another find, this morning i swapped out my old ram for newer ram from another rig. ddr3 1600 to ddr3 2400 -- my framerate at 1080p jumped 10-20% across the board. Overwatch went from 135fps to 155fps. Warthunder went from 215fps to 255fps. I may overclock my NB and cpu a little further to see what other gains it might yield.
 
buttons said:
I couldnt resist, got a sapphire nitro for $239 after rebate. Because i am trying to play project cars i was looking for a 1070 but just didnt want to spend an extra $120.
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That is a damn good price, I think you will be pleasantly surprised at how well this card performs. You probably run up against some memory limitations but in most cases it is not a significant IQ loss or even noticeable.
 
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