Hi guys I'm in need of a decent graphics card, a bit of a noob about it. My budget is maximum R2,000. i have a pcie express 16 slot. I came across this card, is it the best you can get for the price? http://www.loot.co.za/product/sapphire-r7-240-graphics-card-supports-2-x-displays/gjgc-3050-g330
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Need Some Advice Regarding Graphics Card
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Chevron
Serial breaker of phones
That's a terrible card. You can can do way better with that budget.
Spend the extra R100 and get this:
http://www.wootware.co.za/xfx-r7-36...60-2gb-gddr5-pci-e-desktop-graphics-card.html
If you really, really can't, then this:
http://www.wootware.co.za/sapphire-...pci-e-3-0-ultimate-desktop-graphics-card.html
But the 360 is way better.
do you currently have a graphics card?
which games do you want to run off the graphics card?
What resolution is the monitor that you will be using?
according to Techpowerup, the recommended resolution is 1024x768 for high settings, gaming on the r7-240.
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/2463/radeon-r7-240.html
if you can maybe stretch your budget a little,
look into a sapphire - amd r7-360: Price: R2056.00
http://www.loot.co.za/product/sapphire-amd-r7-360-nitro-edition-graphics-card-pci-e/wrmw-3485-g260
or a gigabyte - nvidia 750: R2256.00
http://www.loot.co.za/product/gigabyte-nvidia-geforce-gtx-750-ti-graphics-card-2gb/gdbc-2920-g630
750 might be a bit quicker than the 360, but also R200 more.
I've never owned a gigabyte graphics card.
Currently have a Sapphire card, which has been in my PC for about 2 years.
google some graphics benchmarks for the 240 vs 360 vs 750.
Johnatan56
Honorary Master
The 750 is not worth it over the 360. Also note hopefully some good DirectX12 games are going to come out soon, the R9 360 will leave the GTX 750 in the dust due to the schedular issue.
Out of those cards I would go with the 360, best price/performance ratio.
(I am not an AMD fanboy, but Nvidia shot themselves in the foot for the current GTX series, hopefully the next gen in Q2-3 will fix the issues)
I doubt dx12 is gonna make much of a difference to potatoes.
These cards trade blows but the 750ti overclocks way better than the 360 for added performance which makes it quite popular with budget buyers.
What games do you play?
What resolution do you play at?
What cpu & ram do you have?
R2k does not really buy anything 'decent' I'm afraid but lets see what your needs are first.
Chevron
Serial breaker of phones
I wouldn't recommend that a guy that knows nothing, pay extra for the ability to overclock.
Johnatan56
Honorary Master
If the CPU is the potato, yes, that would be quite an improvement.
Just real world tests: http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-750-Ti-vs-AMD-R7-360/2187vsm30045
CataclysmZA
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You should stretch the budget out a bit for a GTX 750 Ti: http://www.rebeltech.co.za/gtx-700-...-gv-n75toc-2gi-oc-edition-2gb-128bit-ddr.html
It's a better card overall than the R7 360.
Reducing the driver overhead in DX12 is good even for the low-end systems, because that may yield higher minimum frame rates and smoother frametime graphs. At the high-end you just get more consistent performance because the GPUs have more autonomy in how they render the game.
I don't think NVIDIA's situation with the scheduler will affect them much either. Their drivers have always been better optimised for lower CPU overhead, and I think that they'll be on par with AMD for the early DX12 releases.
It's a better card overall than the R7 360.
Reducing the driver overhead in DX12 is good even for the low-end systems, because that may yield higher minimum frame rates and smoother frametime graphs. At the high-end you just get more consistent performance because the GPUs have more autonomy in how they render the game.
I don't think NVIDIA's situation with the scheduler will affect them much either. Their drivers have always been better optimised for lower CPU overhead, and I think that they'll be on par with AMD for the early DX12 releases.
Those are not real word tests, it's a rudimentary benchmark app you download that does not even do DX11. It's less indicative of gaming performance than say unigine heaven/valley benchmarks.
Something like this would be a real world gaming test,
[video=youtube;Pi83biaquVE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi83biaquVE[/video]
Johnatan56
Honorary Master
GTA V - Nvidia better
COD - Same.
Wicher 3 - Gameworks. Not sure what patch this is running on as well, later patches increase performance a lot. - Nvidia slightly better, even most of the time though.
Assassins Creed - There it's pretty much even, Unity is crap generally, so not really indicative.
Far Cry - AMD card better, though quite even.
Shadow of Mordor - AMD card better, though quite even
Ryse - one random drop on the i3 (bug?) else AMD better.
Crysis 3 - Gameworks again. (EDIT: Nvidia better, obviously. Remember Crysis 2? Page 2 is lovely.)
BF4 - Nvidia better.
I'd also like to know what the resolution is that he's running these tests at. I assume 1080p due to him saying console level performance?
So usually quite close, but it's all driver optimized. I am talking about the future with DX12, AMD should become a lot better then. (yes, the article is old now, but nothing much has changed. I think the developers of the Occulus complained as well, saying Nvidia's lack of async support makes the AMD cards way outperform the Nvidia cards.)
Currently those two cards, the 750Ti and 360 are quite even, I am just advising the 360 to be more "future proof".
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CataclysmZA
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Resolution is 1080p, as the video's title reveals.
I wouldn't really ascribe the game performance entirely to drivers either. GCN and Maxwell have different strengths that lend themselves to better performance in different games. When the game doesn't stress a particular pain point for both architectures, as Shadows of Mordor and COD:AW will show, then both perform largely the same. I recently read a nice round-up of the strong and weak points for both architectures that I sadly didn't bookmark, but I'll try find it again to point it out.
Crysis 3 is also not a Gameworks title.
Maxwell is up against Bonaire/Tobago, which was a generation old by the time the GTX 750 Ti came out. The Maxwell architecture's performance scales better for higher workloads because it's more efficient at organising the resources inside each SMM module, while GCN takes something of an old-school approach to dividing up workloads for each compute core and doesn't always execute things in the most efficient way.
I have rarely seen people enabling gameworks when comparing amd & nvidia gpus, it's not done to level the playing field.
If they had enabled hairworks & hbao on those gpus they would have slowed down to a crawl and that includes the 750ti, no way you would get that fps with gameworks on.
As for dx12 it's gonna do little for low end cards, your cpu will get some relief and forward more draw calls but your gpu shaders ain't gonna cope. dx12 is not a silver bullet for low end hardware.
If they had enabled hairworks & hbao on those gpus they would have slowed down to a crawl and that includes the 750ti, no way you would get that fps with gameworks on.
As for dx12 it's gonna do little for low end cards, your cpu will get some relief and forward more draw calls but your gpu shaders ain't gonna cope. dx12 is not a silver bullet for low end hardware.
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Unless you absolutely need a new card right now, I'd hold off. I'm also in the market for a graphics card but am waiting for AMDs new line of cards due out later this year.
http://wccftech.com/amd-greenland-gpu-hbm2-14nm-2016/
Even if these new cards are high end only, it does mean the older parts will drop in price.
http://wccftech.com/amd-greenland-gpu-hbm2-14nm-2016/
Even if these new cards are high end only, it does mean the older parts will drop in price.
CataclysmZA
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Past June is what I've heard so far. Polaris isn't anywhere near ready now. I'd recommend getting a new card now if it's necessary, and look at getting an upgrade in 2017 or 2018 once it becomes necessary to have something that is fully DX12 compliant.