Have r9 270, how much of an upgrade is a 960?

kyomagi · Apr 2, 2015

So how much over an upgrade is a gtx 960 over a r9 270

Guest · Apr 2, 2015

http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-R9-270X-vs-GeForce-GTX-960
there ya go
hardly at all

Shankovich · Apr 2, 2015

Above comment is quoting the 270X, wrong card. However, it still isn't worth the upgrade: http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-R9-270-vs-GeForce-GTX-960

My advice: R300 series coming out soon, maybe a month or less (or even this month). Save up for a good R300 card, or if you want nVidia, the R300 series will make the GTX 900 series go down in price.

kyomagi · Apr 2, 2015

im limited on funds. i was thinking of going to a r9 280, would that be worth it? is the r9 270 a 7870 rebrand?

Supernova1138 · Apr 2, 2015

The R9 270 is a 7870 rebrand while the R9 280 is a 7950 rebrand, it's also not really worth the upgrade. I'd say keep saving your money and aim for a GTX 970 or the upcoming AMD equivalent, R9 290 or 290x would also be a worthwhile upgrade if you can deal with the heat and high power requirements. The 960 isn't a big enough of a jump to really justify the upgrade.

Guest · Apr 2, 2015

Supernova1138 :

Agreed

kyomagi · Apr 2, 2015

Supernova1138 :

i have an fx 6300, if i get a 290, would i be bottle necked? also i have a 500w psu, would that be good enough?

Supernova1138 · Apr 2, 2015

You may have to overclock your CPU a bit to get the most out of something in the R9 290 performance range, though it would depend on the games you play, less CPU intensive titles wouldn't be much of a problem. A 500 Watt PSU may not be enough unless it is a very good quality unit, the Hawaii GPUs are very power hungry and I personally wouldn't put them into any system without at least a good quality 550 Watt power supply or better, especially if you're also going to throw a CPU overclock into the mix.

You may be better off just saving for the GTX 970 or waiting to see if AMD's new cards are a little more power efficient, as going with the 290 may also have the added cost of a new power supply as well.

kyomagi · Apr 2, 2015

heres the thing tho, on this same site, it says the gtx 960 is better than the 280/285

I have the SSC (super superclocked) if that makes a difference

Supernova1138 · Apr 2, 2015

The GTX 960 sits in a weird position between the R9 280 and the R9 280x on the AMD side and between the old GTX 760 and GTX 770 on the Nvidia side. It is faster than your 270 by a not insignificant amount, but it's not a huge jump (maybe around 20-25% faster than your 270 depending on the game), and it also only has 2GB of VRAM, which may be a problem in future titles unless you're playing at rather low resolutions. You can buy it if you want, but I personally would save up more money to get a larger upgrade and a more futureproof card, as I don't see the 960 aging particularly well.

kyomagi · Apr 2, 2015

so its better than the 280? regardless of the vbus

Supernova1138 · Apr 3, 2015

The 960 will generally perform better than the R9 280 under most circumstances. If you're playing at extremely high resolutions, or are playing a game that uses a lot of video memory (more than 2GB), then the 280 might be better in those situations as it won't run out of video memory and have really choppy performance as a result.

The bus size is irrelevant when you are comparing two different brands of GPUs using different architectures. Nvidia got away with the really narrow bus on the 960 because they have managed to make transfers between the GPU and video memory far more efficient with their Maxwell architecture. AMD's architecture isn't nearly as efficient in this regard (not surprising considering the R9 280 originally came out in 2012 as the Radeon HD 7950) and needs a wider bus to get the same amount of data transferred. You shouldn't really be comparing specs like that unless you are comparing two different cards with the same architecture, eg. you could compare a 280 and 280x in that way, as they are the same architecture, and the only difference between them is shader count and clock speeds.

Esaelias187 · Apr 3, 2015

280x > 960 well as much as ive seen on youtube anyway

kyomagi · Apr 3, 2015

should i say screw it and go for a 970? i only play at 1080p resolutions and i hardly play a lot of games other than ffxiv and dragon age

Supernova1138 · Apr 3, 2015

If you really want to upgrade, that's probably your best option right now, the R9 290 series eat use too much power to run comfortably on your PSU, and most of the other options aren't a huge jump over what you already have.

kyomagi · Apr 3, 2015

Ok so i found a r9 280x for the same price as the 960, im gonna jump to that. Will my 6300 be an issue? Also, i have an inland gold 500w PSU, should i be good on the power? This system will also run a SSD and a 500gb HD.

thanks

JQB45 · Apr 3, 2015

Half the reason everyone is recommending to you the 960 is because your power supply is not powerful enough to handle the 280 or 280X.

kyomagi · Apr 3, 2015

really? its got a 12v rail, my CPU is a low consumption cpu.

17seconds · Apr 3, 2015

The 280 is the equivalent of a 7950 in this chart. You should be able to get a free copy of the Witcher 3 with the GTX 960. That's a PhysX game, just one of the graphics quality settings you can enable on the GTX 960, that would be unavailable on the AMD cards.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyte/GTX_960_G1_Gaming/28.html

kyomagi · Apr 3, 2015

17seconds :

What is the difference between the G1 and the regular? The one im looking at is a SSC card.

That chart basically is saying the card performs pretty similar to the r9 280? What difference will the extra gig or the triple bus give the 280 over the 960?

Have r9 270, how much of an upgrade is a 960?

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