AMD R7 370 Card

[Tyrannosaur]

I asked the question of budget cards a few months ago and got some great replies. Most pointed me to the AMD R9 270x/280/285, but with the launch of the 300 series I decided to wait and see what happened. Now they've been out a while I think the R7 370 card is a good balance of price and performance.

Would this card be a good match to my AMD A8 5600k APU? Currently using the integrated graphics which is Radeon HD7560D.

Looking to speed up and smooth out the general graphics performance, but also looking to get back into gaming and maybe playing some H1Z1 and Rocket League.

Don't want a too powerful card that the CPU can't cope with but also don't want to see just little improvement.

Cheers.

[ajcardiac]

What is your budget for the GPU?

[Tyrannosaur]

Looking around £120 - £140 something like that.

[ajcardiac]

At that price point, you could consider the GTX 950.

[EndlessWaves]

Normally I'd say go AMD, they support Adaptive Sync. The 370 is the only card in the range that doesn't though so I'd definitely consider the nVidia option in this case.

[Tyrannosaur]

Thanks for the responses.

Just read a review of the GTX 950 and it seems a better card in both performance and power usage.

Will read up on them a bit more.

[DanceswithUnix]

£145 gets you an R9 380, I think it is worth saving up the few extra pounds if you can. Bit late for dredging up benchmarks, but this is a 270 vs 285 which are the older slower versions of the same card: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1080?vs=1333

I added an old 6770 to my daughter's 5800K machine, and to both the graphics and I think more importantly to the amount of noise the fans make it has made a huge difference. Anything you add in that price range will help a lot.

[EndlessWaves]

If you were going for a 380 you'd be silly not to spend the extra £15 for a 4GB version.

The 2GB of memory is a black mark against the 370/950. While that's reasonable on an entry level card the 950 launched at £50 more than the 360/750ti. Now they're coming down to £110 and will probably dip below £100 for Christmas it's an easier limitation to accept.

[cptwhite_uk]

If you use this website: (you'll need to setup an account)

https://www.bespokeoffers.co.uk

Click "beat my price" at the top, then paste this link from Ebuyer:

http://www.ebuyer.com/714696-powerco...6379&pkw=&pmt=

Wait 24 hours and you'll probably get an offer on the AMD R9 380 4Gb for around £150 (maybe £145 if you're lucky).

Website works a bit like flubit if you've ever used that.

********

Alternatively I'll be putting my 2nd hand ASUS HD 7970 3Gb Ghz Edition Direct CU II up for sale on the forums on Tuesday for £110 delivered, if you want to consider buying it. It's a monster card and super build quality - around 30%+ faster than the 370, 40%+ faster than the GTX950 and comparable in speed to the R9 380 according to gpu.userbenchmark.com website.

It's performed flawlessly and was bought on 8th Oct 2013 from Scan, as such warranty runs out in around 2 and a half weeks but I always send parcels out is substantial packaging to withstand drops by the courier. PM me if you're interested, otherwise it will be in the For Sale thread on Tuesday

[Tyrannosaur]

Read a few more reviews about the GTX 950, especially the ones on Hexus (http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphi...e-gtx-950-ssc/) and it seems the card was made for people wanting to upgrade from integrated graphics, which is the situation I'm in.

Thanks cptwhite_uk for the offer but I don't think my Corsair CX430 psu could cope with a 7970 monster.

[cptwhite_uk]

If you go through the steps I outlined above for the R9 380 you should get an offer for £147.82. Just for reference the performance difference between the GTX950 and R9 380 (apart from having double the RAM) should be as follows:

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare...380/3510vs3482

This would make the 380 roughly 44% faster than the GTX 950.

It's game dependent but as a general rule if the GTX950 gave you 40fps, the R9 380 would give you 57fps.

In terms of pure value the R9 380 is a much better buy for an extra £30, but if you decide to go with the GTX 950 it can be bought for £115 here:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c...paign=products

[Tyrannosaur]

What is the power consumption like on an AMD R9 380? From what I've seen a 500w is recommended.

[EndlessWaves]

What is the power consumption like on an AMD R9 380? From what I've seen a 500w is recommended.

If you look at R9 380 reviews you'll see typical system power consumption while gaming is around 250W. You need to allow something for peak power so I'd say 350W would be sensible. The 7970 (aka 280X) draws similar power.

500W is excessive unless you've got loads of other stuff and/or a very heavily overclocked CPU.

[Tyrannosaur]

Another point about the R9 380s is most need 2x6pin power connections and my CX430 only has 1 6 pin power. So unless I get a new PSU then I think the R9 is out.

Damn you guys, now thinking about a new PSU and an R9 380!

[cptwhite_uk]

You could use a molex to 6 pin converter cable. Pretty sure the power requirements would be fine with your PSU.

[Tyrannosaur]

So 2gb or 4gb version? And any manufacturer to recommend? Would want one that's silent under normal load and the fans don't run until a certain temp.

***edited***
Just noticed the GigaByte version uses an 8 pin power connector which I have. Any reason not to go for GigaByte?