Rumors have surfaced that R9380X (containing HBM) *cough* *might* *cough* be availabe for $400. That's pretty good. I'm more interested in HBM and what it can do. NVIDIA Pascal's coming up next year with HBM, NVLink and blah blah. My question, shall I upgrade from my *cough* 1 month old *cough* GTX 960 STRIX to R9 380X or wait out for Pascal (GTX 1070) for about 1 yr? Any benefits if I wait? Buying now is a bit foolishness I guess? I need your suggestions, all replies appreciated! Thanks in advance.
Why on earth did you buy a 960 in the first place? its a terribad Card for the price, which will already now struggle in most new games, due to its 2gb vram. If i were you, id beg the retailer to take it back, and make the deal that you pay him some extra, and get a 970 in return.
NVLink will not do anything for many years in consumer segment. There will not be even boards for this till someone insane decides to implement yet another industry splitting proprietary tech from nVidia. And even if... , I do not see intel to make special CPUs with NVLink to have it do its thing fully. nVidia has this in mind for compute server invasion and they are likely to deliver ARM based CPUs with NVLink.
Wrong the 960 runs out of gpu power before the Ram becomes an issue. If you are gaming at 1080p it can handle pretty much everything one should expect for a $200 card. That does not mean its a good deal though.
You do understand that using more vram doesnt necessarily mean using more gpu power, right? No, obviously not. Using 4k res textures instead of 1k textures will increase vram consumption significantly, but it wont increase gpu load. By buying a 2gb vram Card at this point, you will limit yourself to low res textures in the newest games, and some games (such as assassins creed unity) wont even run at any setting, without being a stutter fest due to vram bottleneck.
Lol what? 4K textures doesn't just require more VRAM, it requires far more rendering time as well. What, did you think that the card just swaps it into memory and it's magically included in the next frame? More data = more processing time. Simplest concept ever. Regardless, we're not talking about this again, nor are you allowed to crap on the OP saying "it's a terribad card" and implying he should feel bad for buying it. That's not a positive contribution to the topic. As for the OP, the question we need to ask is, are you happy with your 960, or do you often want higher framerates/higher visual quality settings? Because if you are happy with it, I would spend that money in a different way.
I haven't seen any rumors stating that R9 380X will have HBM....considering it's rumored to be based on the Hawaii GPU, which would require an almost complete redesign to support HBM.... Rumors put R9 390 and R9 390X as being the only cards with HBM. The GTX960 isn't necessarily a bad card but if you're having buyer's remorse I'd recommend seeing if you can return the card and get something like the 970. Otherwise, wait until reviewers get their hands on the R9 300 series and see how the reviews and prices look. As for the comment about 4K textures.... 4K textures would have more detail than 1K textures. You can't increase the amount of textures that need to be processed, without increasing the load on the GPU.
It does add slightly to the rendering time, but all tests ive come across (including the ones ive done myself) has shown that the fps difference between low quality textures and high quality textures are negligible.
There's so many variables to how much it's going to affect scene rendering time that it's nearly impossible to create a blanket statement for everyone. I can counter your example with Skyrim/Fallout New Vegas. Installing the high res texture mods definitely directly affects framerates, especially on the cards that were available when the games released. Obviously with two 780Ti's the difference will be a lot harder to notice, because the 384 bit bus can handle the throughput easily, and the ROP's and TMU's are highly efficient with Kepler onwards. But regardless, this is off topic and will attract another flame fest that nobody wants. Let's just end this here. And no, I'm not "getting the last word". OP wants help deciding if he needs to upgrade. You've made your point (even if you could have been nicer about it), and I've made mine. The OP can decide for himself if potential VRAM limitations are a legitimate additional reason to upgrade.
Yep... the VRAM sucks but the only game I'm after GTA V. Rec. Sys Reqs show it needs a 660 for 1080p, 660 is 2GB. So I expect that the game runs well on my PC. The Reason for my upgrade is Witcher 3 and HBM. Basically I'm targeting R9 380/x or GTX 1070. BTW, how long will a 960 last from now?
If possible, I'd try and return it. IMO the 960 is already an obsolete dead end card for current and next generation games. It's decent if you play older games or don't mind console quality/performance in new games.
The hate on the 960 is justified, its a mediocre card for its price which is easily outclassed by more future-proof cards. End of story. I thought we all kinda got that figured...
you can say its a great card but you can't direct it as an insult to another forum member. That can be classed as bullying. Maybe some people take certain things too seriously and need to just chill out and maybe offer help and valued feedback rather than just "that card is terrible". We all know the 960 will not be great for higher resolutions and more AA that is a given, but that doesn't mean its not a good card by any means. PC gaming doesn't have to be all about 4k and £1000 GPU's, other GPU's and resolutions do exist.
You do know OP already has the 960? He is not looking for pros and cons to a card he already has. By him starting this thread tells me he is not 100% happy with it and is looking for advice in gpu`s that he does not own.
I not 100% happy! Well The reason I bought this card is for building just a beginner PC. My Dad promised me if I take the GTX 960 as a starter, he could give me some more money and boom, here comes R9 380X! Yeah yeah I'm still a teen (13 yrs)......... What was the age restriction again? So the reason my DAD does not give me money is because he is not at all interested in my computer. So I had made an agreement and WILL look for a stronger card (just as your suggestions) and carry on. My biggest question is how long it will be before I upgrade? My dad promised it will be ~1 yrs before I get a new card and I think so I should wait as GTA V and The Witcher 3 will keep me acquainted till Pascal arrives. My main concern is the Cores, VRAM and Memory interface. Shall I wait ABIT for R9 380X or wait LONG for GTX XX70? My DAD does not think that I should be onto gaming a this age!
Just a tip for the future. Never buy a piece of hardware that is not good enough for you and then replace it with something better. You're throwing money away. Sometimes it's better to wait a bit and go for more suitable hardware.
