Need Video Card recommendation

Xaltar wrote: I would look at either a GTX 1060 or a non-reference Radeon RX 480 as best value/$ or if your budget is tight then look at an R7 360 which can be had for cheap now. Do not buy a reference RX 480 at this time as there is a good chance you could have problems with it, non reference designs however have corrected the issues the reference design suffer from.

The GTX 950 is aimed at people who are on a budget and mainly play e-sports games such as League of Legends and CS:GO, which do not demand much from the GPU. I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone. The R9 380 beats the GTX 950 and even the GTX 960 in most gaming benchmarks and synthetic tests, so I'd say it's a lot better choice. There are differences between different AIB cards (cooling, amount of OC, quality of components), so before buying one you should read at least a few reviews. I'd go for the version with 4 GB of RAM (unless the price difference to the 2 GB model is big), since it's marginally more future proof.

Edit: Remember to compare the prices between the R9 380 4 GB model and the RX 480 4 GB model.


Edited by PetrolHead - 22 Jul 2016 at 4:21pm

I agree with PetrolHead on the r9 380, it is by far the better option between the two you are looking at. I am using a GTX 960 and aside from my compulsive desire to upgrade with every new generation I am very happy with it. I have the 2gb model which is a little short in some games (for high textures) so I wish I had waited for the 4gb version. The 380 is more or less equal to the 960 (win some lose some depending on game and factory overclocks on either card). Even with the reasonable pricing on the RX 480 and GTX 1060 they are still a little expensive for those on a budget. 

shane49 wrote: Man,I reckon I've read and viewed about a hundred reviews and comparisons in the last 3 hours, youtube and web based. This is such a complex arena with so many conflicting opinions, it makes me scared to actually make a decision.

Remember that benchmarking video games is not really an exact science. The results may vary a couple of % between runs even on the same computer with the same settings, so it's no surprise that different people running benchmarks on different rigs, different settings and even different drivers get different results. This is why it's a good idea to read through several reviews and concentrate more on trends than individual results or exact FPS figures.

By the way, I'd pay extra attention to GPU reviews that don't only report the average FPS in benchmarks, but also the 99 and 99.9 percentile FPS (i.e. the average of the lowest 1% and .1%, respectively). Some reviews are even reporting frame times. This is all valuable information since it will give an indication of how consistent the performance is and reveal differences between GPUs that are not visible in the average FPS values.

Edit: I see you've made your decision (I was went afk mid-post for several hours). In that case I'd maybe stop reading reviews so that you won't start to unnecessarily doubt your choice. ;) It is worth considering which AIB card to choose, though. Not all brands are equal. Have you decided which brand you'll go for yet?


Edited by PetrolHead - 23 Jul 2016 at 11:15am

Sorry, I should've been clearer. I meant AIB partner brands - for example Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, Sapphire and XFX - who make their own versions based on the R9 380 GPU. These cards may differ in many ways from each other, so while the GPU itself will be the same in each, there may be differences in size, how many power connectors the card uses, how silent and efficient the cooling is, how easy it is to overclock, is the GPU factory overclocked etc. Prices will also be different for different models and the difference between the cheapest and most expensive model may be significant.