R9 280X or GTX 960

[marshalex]

Hi All

As above really, brother needs a new graphics card to replace his 4870 and with the games he wants to play (GTA mainly) I'm thinking one of these would give decent performance on his budget, the question being which one is better?

Cheers

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What CPU and PSU does he have?? The R9 290 cards are starting to dip under £200 now IIRC.

[marshalex]

It's a Corsair 430w PSU (getting on a bit now) and an i5 750 I think from memory (it's on a P55 chipset).

Think the 290 might be a bit too far out of budget

I had put this together for more of a complete upgrade http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/gqX8wP

[CustardInc]

It's a Corsair 430w PSU (getting on a bit now) and an i5 750 I think from memory (it's on a P55 chipset).

Think the 290 might be a bit too far out of budget

I had put this together for more of a complete upgrade http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/gqX8wP

Is there any point having a Z motherboard with a non-K processor?

I had a 290x and 4670K and they were using 350W at most while playing pretty heavy games like battlefield (GPU at 100% and CPU at 90%), so you wouldn't NEED to upgrade the PSU.

[marshalex]

Is there any point having a Z motherboard with a non-K processor?

I had a 290x and 4670K and they were using 350W at most while playing pretty heavy games like battlefield (GPU at 100% and CPU at 90%), so you wouldn't NEED to upgrade the PSU.

OK that's something to bear in mind about the PSU, though it is a bit old now (6 years I think) which is the other reason to upgrade it.

I thought that the Z series also had other benefits, like supporting multi-gpu configurations?

[Doniu]

I had to make this decision last month too. I've picked the R9 280x because it delivers slightly more fps in most games but it uses more power and I think it's slightly hotter but this didn't put me off.