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Hi all,
building a secondary (budget) rig and was wondering which card would be better for gaming in 2018.
R9 280 3GB or R9 285 2GB
Not much between them performance wise, but would you go for the newer card with 2gb vram or the older card with 3gb vram?
Both cards are priced the same secondhand.
Thanks
The R9 285 has better tessellation and FreeSync support and the R9 280 has 3GB of VRAM. The R9 285 is based on the same generation as the R9 290/290X so should in theory support DX12/Vulkan better and it should get driver updates longer too.
I would go for the 285, if the bigger card had 4GB of ram I might consider that of note but frankly at 1080p it doesn't matter. I didn't feel any difference going from a 2GB R9 285 to a 4GB R9 380 and I'm on 1440p (and no, that wasn't a planned "upgrade").
Quite simply, the 285 is a newer design with a later instruction set.
Did you ever suffer from textures popping in due to lack of vram 2gb?Quote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
I'm just worried that the experience would be bad with 2gb vram as even on normal settings on GTA 5 the vram is already close to 2gb.
Thanks for replies
Try and get the R9 380 4GB if it is not much more,as it is basically the R9 285 with more VRAM.
The R9 280 and R9 285 is currently £65 and the R9 380 is £90Quote:
Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH
About 28% more for a R9 380, do you think its worth the extra £25?
I also saw a RX 470 for £110, this is the dangerous area of just adding a bit more money for more performance XD
The R9 280 3GB is a rebrand of the GCN 1st Gen HD7950 3GB. A great value card at the time. The R9 285 was the first GCN 3rd Gen GPU and I honestly consider it one of the best price/performance cards from AMD or NVIDIA in the last 10 years. I have the R9 380 4GB which is a rebranded R9 285. Been a brilliant card for the money at 1080p and now 1440p w/Freesync. Still benefits from performance improvements in the current series of drivers. New features like ReLive, Chill etc have all been added in the years since I bought it which was unexpected and awesome.
I am looking to replace it this year. (Having to knock down the settings in a lot of games now.) Glad I got the 4GB version as even at 1080p I've seen many games using around the 3GB mark in memory usage.
The RX470 4GB is an excellent card - it is 30% to 40% more faster than an R9 380.Quote:
Originally Posted by advan
Not really. Basically my son's graphics card died so I bought the 4GB 380 hoping it would be an improvement over the 285, but in reality it felt like any title where the 285 would struggle I didn't see any improvement in the 380 so I think it was just running out of compute ability more than vram.Quote:
Originally Posted by advan
My son is currently using the 285 on a 42 inch 4K tv, he has to use a displayport to hdmi adapter to get a 4K signal but the card copes way better than I would have expected. I was using it on a Freesync display which helps smooth any glitches, so it was really only VR where I felt it struggled (and hence my recent Vega purchase).
But if you can get a 470, then that is the answer.
I found ROTTR had VRAM issues for sure under DX12.
However,if you want to see the effect of VRAM on the GTX960/R9 380 read this:
https://www.computerbase.de/2015-12/...0-vram-test/2/
A new RX570 can now be had for £180 and you get free games. Assuming you sell those games, the price can come down to £120