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Community Forums/Technical Discourse/.

EOF(Posted April) [#1]
I'm shopping around for a graphics card upgrade. Not 'top end' but something powerful enough to run 1080p gaming at 60FPS medium settings.
Seems to me there are two close choices between the Geforce GTX 1060 and the Radeon RX 470. Both more or less going toe to toe while the latter being a bit cheaper.
However, the last time I had a Radeon (a long while back mind) it suffered from poor driver support, stabilit, and game optimisation issues.

So, I would be interested to here from any Radeon owers.
How is driver support now?
Any performance issues or glitches in games?
What about stability?

I know my current card (Geforce GTX 660) has been well supported and gets a universal driver update from time to time so my tendency is to stick with the NVidia brand.


Flanker(Posted April) [#2]
I have a Radeon HD 7950, wich seems to be equivalent of your Geforce GTX 660, so it's maybe not relevant for newer cards, but I had some 3D artifacts and things like "the graphics driver doesn't respond" errors. I don't like the Radeon settings software, it's slow and not well organised. I think my next one will be a Geforce. For the two models you are comparing, it seems that the Geforce GTX 1060 is slightly better.
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html


EOF(Posted April) [#3]
Nice link there. Thanks!
For the NVidia card model, according to one Youtuber the 3G SC (super clocked) version is the best bang for 1080p graphics. He reckons 6GB is mostly overkill since practically no games use up that much video memory for a 1080p display (provided you stick with standard to medium settings).




Ian Thompson(Posted April) [#4]
I have a RX480 in a test machine. Seems to be very compatible.

Minus, you loose hardware PhysX.

Positive, Vulkan is far more efficient on the Radeon than the NVidia and can yeild vast frame rate gains.


xlsior(Posted April) [#5]
I have the RX480 -- Very nice card, and one of the most affordable VR-ready cards out there, works great with my HTC Vive.

(Similar to the NVidia 1060)


BlitzSupport(Posted April) [#6]
@Jim: I recently upgraded from a GTX 750 Ti to the 6GB version of that EGA GTX 1060 SC in your video post.

It's definitely able to handle a lot more, but I wouldn't say it's a huge difference over the GTX 750, which was already very decent, and used half the power. The most noticeable difference was probably in Hitman's Marrakesh crowd scenes, with HUNDREDS of characters, which CRIPPLED the otherwise decent 750, but now runs very well indeed.

Other games I can push the sliders up all the way, for the most part, but it's not as obvious. Most games run at 'ultra' settings now, whereas I had to reduce some features on the 750.

I'm currently playing around with the DSR feature, where games think they have access to higher-res modes (4K), so render internally at the higher resolution but it's then downscaled to the normal 1080p, does a pretty good job at that, depending on the game/settings. It makes everything look sharper, while also largely taking away the need for antialiasing.

Not sure I'd want the 3GB version, as many games are hitting the 2GB-or-over mark, so you get more future-proofing for only a little more money (plus things like the DSR or AA will use much more memory). If you're not worried about those aspects, it should be very capable indeed.

The new DOOM game (well, demo), runs in ultra-everything and is the smoothest-looking game I've ever seen, even at that -- you can actually tell it's running at 60 FPS, not something I've ever really been able to see before!


EOF(Posted April) [#7]
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BlitzSupport(Posted April) [#8]
Would just point out that the GTX 750 is my old card, with the GTX 1060 6GB being the current one -- that link rates the 6GB at 8,605, so it's only a trivial amount faster than the 3GB version in terms of baseline performance.

I'm actually surprised by the rating of the 750 against the 1060, as I didn't think the difference was all that great, though it's entirely game-dependent, of course, and a few titles are definitely improved.

Other point is that the GTX 1060 is also classed as 'VR Ready' by Nvidia, Steam, Oculus, etc. (In fact, I have a Rift DK2 due to arrive on Tuesday and can't wait!)


Flanker(Posted April) [#9]
Tom's Hardware recently pointed out that benchmark differences beetween two identical graphics card with different memory capacity is often due to faster memory frequency more than memory capacity, making high memory capacity a commercial argument (unless you target high resolutions gaming or heavy 3D rendering software).

If you're sure to stay with full HD gaming for a while, the GTX 1060 3GB is enough. It's cheaper than 6GB version, and performances are close. But if you find the 6GB at a good price, go for it, like said BlitzSupport it's more "future-proof".

@BlitzSupport If you want to know why the GTX 750 is lower in score you can test your GTX 1060 with the PerformanceTest software, it's way more complete than the website, it will run DX9, DX11 and DX12 tests, shaders test, geometry tests etc... and you can compare several cards in details with your results. Same kind of tests also for CPU and disk/memory read/write performances. It's free to use for 30 days, and users you can upload the results to update the online database.


dynaman(Posted April) [#10]
When I'm looking for a new graphics card I check the latest roundup on cards in my price range and buy whichever has the best performance. I don't care which chipset it uses.


coffeedotbean(Posted April) [#11]
I have an RX470 (4GB) G1 gaming edition, I bought this out of necessity as my 1050Ti went tits up (also a great 1080p/60 card). You'll find the 60FPS medium\high experience easy to get on RX470 - AMD cards are said to be more future proof with better Vulcan performance and DX12. Don't pay the extra for 8GB if you plan only to play at 1080p.

I'd been Geforce for 10 years or more so this is my first AMD card in a long while and I can honestly say I am not disappointed with AMD, their software "crimson" does everything Geforce did with Shadowplay and live streaming etc.


EOF(Posted April) [#12]
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EOF(Posted April) [#13]
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coffeedotbean(Posted April) [#14]
@jim, It the MSI Gaming X I have not the Gigabyte G1 gaming.. doh.. it's this one link

I have the following overclock using MSI afterburner
core: 1350 (stock: 1250)
mem: 1750 (stock: 1650)

AMd just announced the Rx500 cards so might be worth it to see those benchmarks.


Hotcakes(Posted April) [#15]
Always gone nVidia myself, mostly because ATIs OpenGL implementation was always the worst.

As for the 1060, I hear tell that the AMD is the better option bang for buck, or otherwise it's worth the extra money to go up a notch to the 1070.


xlsior(Posted April) [#16]
Fwiw, amd just announced two new cards, the rx 570 and the rx 580.


EOF(Posted April) [#17]
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andy_mc(Posted April) [#18]
just switched from an old AMD 6670 to a slightly less old Nvidia 660 GTX.

Doom framerate has jumped from 10-15fps to 30-60fps, lovely.