Help with picking a GPU

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

im still not convinced that the 970 prices will drop with the new 1000 series from nvidia. the new cards looks to be very high tier cards whereas there wont be a direct replacement for the 970 so i would assume the demand will be the same. the 970 is good for a few years yet. im prepared to be wrong but with no direct date for when the new cards will be released you could be waiting and waiting while during that time you could of been gaming

AMD has been on record as saying they want to target price too with Polaris. I expect Nvidia to have the performance crown and AMD to be more aggressive in pricing. If they can do another HD4870 that would be enough IMHO.

[DanceswithUnix]

im still not convinced that the 970 prices will drop with the new 1000 series from nvidia. the new cards looks to be very high tier cards whereas there wont be a direct replacement for the 970 so i would assume the demand will be the same. the 970 is good for a few years yet. im prepared to be wrong but with no direct date for when the new cards will be released you could be waiting and waiting while during that time you could of been gaming

This is what happened with the GTX 780, remember that the 980 was released in September 2014:

http://uk.camelcamelcamel.com/GeForc...context=browse

The price dropped a couple of months before the 980 came out, then rose back up presumably as stocks go down but quite unstable pricing. The price ended up high again once the 980 was out, apart from a drop in price just before Christmas.

But the depressing bit for bargain hunters, the £400 card dropped by £50 if you got a good price. That's a 12.5% drop, and if you couldn't afford £400 you probably couldn't afford £350 either.

If you go look at graphs for the GTX 980, then the price has been slowly going up, possibly due to exchange rates. If the 1080 is out in June, then 2 months before is *now* but no sign of a drop yet. Though as I said, the drop isn't usually anything earth shattering.

[pne1234]

AMD has been on record as saying they want to target price too with Polaris. I expect Nvidia to have the performance crown and AMD to be more aggressive in pricing. If they can do another HD4870 that would be enough IMHO.

there is already a AMD rival of the 970 with the r 390 and has more attractive features with the extra vram. despite this the pc gamers still seem to choose the 970 regardless of the 3.5gb vram controversy and the previous editions with the inefficient coolers designs. the budget gamers who want to keep to a strict price to performance concept go for the 390 but the popularity of the 970 wont change that much unless they can directly compete in terms of fps, cooling designs and temps.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

there is already a AMD rival of the 970 with the r 390 and has more attractive features with the extra vram. despite this the pc gamers still seem to choose the 970 regardless of the 3.5gb vram controversy and the previous editions with the inefficient coolers designs. the budget gamers who want to keep to a strict price to performance concept go for the 390 but the popularity of the 970 wont change that much unless they can directly compete in terms of fps, cooling designs and temps.

AMD has been actually doing a bit better in desktop dGPU now,but ultimately with Polaris also targetting improved power consumption,so I do think I would rather have a Polaris 10 than a R9 390 and GTX970. The latest rumoured pricing places the GTX1070 at £400(!). That means at under £300 we are probably looking at quite a die salvaged part.

Moreover,if you get a new generation uarch card it will be the priority for driver updates for the next two years,while the other cards which are EOL,will be sailing into the Blue Yonder.

[pne1234]

AMD has been actually doing a bit better in desktop dGPU now,but ultimately with Polaris also targetting improved power consumption,so I do think I would rather have a Polaris 10 than a R9 390 and GTX970. The latest rumoured pricing places the GTX1070 at £400(!). That means at under £300 we are probably looking at quite a die salvaged part.

Moreover,if you get a new generation uarch card it will be the priority for driver updates for the next two years,while the other cards which are EOL,will be sailing into the Blue Yonder.

i still think there would be value in still getting the 970 if the prices go down or stay the same, i dont see from any prelim articles that there is any direct competition to the 970 from amd or nvidia. even though the 970 would be lower down in priority in terms of driver updates the new cards would most likely have the usual case of buying new cards for the first few months where you start seeing fps drops, artifacts etc so would be another few months after the new cards come out before they are stable. on a completely different subject but not unrelated note its good to see a closer playing field between amd and nvidia providing nvidia with genuine competition to give the consumer better value for money

[kalniel]

i still think there would be value in still getting the 970 if the prices go down or stay the same, i dont see from any prelim articles that there is any direct competition to the 970 from amd or nvidia.

I think we'll see a low end polaris 10 card take over the current 970 space, and the GP106 card from nVidia also enter the same area in autumn. Hence why nVidia stopped production of the 970 earlier this month.

[DanceswithUnix]

i dont see from any prelim articles that there is any direct competition to the 970 from amd or nvidia. even though the 970 would be lower down in priority in terms of driver updates the new cards would most likely have the usual case of buying new cards for the first few months where you start seeing fps drops, artifacts etc so would be another few months after the new cards come out before they are stable.

The old cards will get driver updates at the same pace as the new cards, because one driver covers both. But there are problems...

1/ The GTX 780 used to be a faster card than its AMD equivalent, and now it is slower. You get updates but that only seems to mean bug fixes, no effort seems to be put into performance.
2/ Driver support for a card lasts somewhere around 5 years from when it was introduced (not when you buy it). Buying a card from 2014 means you are already a way through that support period.

The rumours are pointing to AMD having 4 cards lining up for release. If that is 460, 470, 480, and 490 then that would get you a nice cheap 460 probably at around GTX960 performance. I expect there will be a £200 R9 480 in the mix as that is an important price point.

[Dayks]

Just an update to everyone who gave me a hand with the decision here.

Went with the r9 380 and picked myself up a Sapphire Radeon R9 380 Nitro 4GB.

Saw it for £124 as an open box return with 1 year warranty and figured that was about as good a deal as I was likely to get.

Installed it yesterday and tried it out on a few games and runs great, and looks pretty great as-well. Went into the Radeon settings and limited it to 75fps and enabled freesync and everything is very smooth.

Thank you again for everyone's help and suggestions.

[DanceswithUnix]

Wow, nice price!

Glad you are enjoying the card. Did a card swap with my wife's PC recently and was running it with the case removed. Seeing the fans no spinning was a bit disconcerting even when you know it is supposed to do that. Back in my machine with the case clipped together, it can do what it wants out of sight again

[Dayks]

Wow, nice price!

Yeah, I was still planning to wait another month or two, but had to bite at that price.

Glad you are enjoying the card. Did a card swap with my wife's PC recently and was running it with the case removed. Seeing the fans no spinning was a bit disconcerting even when you know it is supposed to do that. Back in my machine with the case clipped together, it can do what it wants out of sight again

Mine is safely hidden away inside my case and my Define S has no window, so no worries about that for me. Does run a touch hot at idle though, just north of 40C.

I do like the look of the card as-well, matches with the rest of my build, even if I won't be looking at it often.

It does look fairly empty though without any trays in the front.