Is an 8GB AMD Radeon R9 390 worth it for gaming?

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wertay2

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Oct 9, 2015
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Am currently in the process of upgrading my PC and in a previous thread came to the conclusion to upgrade the following parts in preparation for games such as Fallout 4 and Just Cause 3:
4GB Ram--> 2x 4GB DDR3-1600 RAM (8GB Total) for $70 AUD
AMD Radeon HD 7560D (512MB Video Ram) --> AMD Radeon R9 290 (4GB Video Ram) for $395AUD;
and also upgrading my Power source.
My other specs are: AMD A8-5500 APU 3.2GHz; CPU, I would upgrade this but apparently it's too expensive and would require purchasing a new copy of Windows 10.

However I've been able to get a good deal (By Australian standards) on getting an AMD Radeon R9 390 (8GB Video Ram) for $430 excl. GST so about $475 total.
Was wondering if this upgrade is worth it, it will cost around $80 Extra to go from R9 290 to R9 390. I'm on a budget so saving money is preferential but was thinking that the R9 390 would be a good long term investment. What is your opinion? Will there be any noticeable difference in gameplay and will the $80-100 extra investment pay off, or is 4GB Video RAM with the 290 more than enough?

Any advice/ opinion is appreciated, thank you! (AUD= Aussie dollars btw...)
 
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Rogue Leader
A few things. First off you CAN upgrade your processor to a faster AMD APU without changing Windows 10, however its not worth the upgrade. If you replace the motherboard then you're SOL.

Now as for the 390 over the 290, I wouldn't spend the extra money, the reason is even the best AMD APU gets bottlenecked on fast AMD or Nvidia GPU's, they just do not have the performance. The 390 yes is a better long term investment if you plan to upgrade the rest of the PC in the next few years, but for right now unless you replace your whole system you won't see any benefit.
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Rogue Leader

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A few things. First off you CAN upgrade your processor to a faster AMD APU without changing Windows 10, however its not worth the upgrade. If you replace the motherboard then you're SOL.

Now as for the 390 over the 290, I wouldn't spend the extra money, the reason is even the best AMD APU gets bottlenecked on fast AMD or Nvidia GPU's, they just do not have the performance. The 390 yes is a better long term investment if you plan to upgrade the rest of the PC in the next few years, but for right now unless you replace your whole system you won't see any benefit.
 
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wertay2

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Oct 9, 2015
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Thanks heaps mate, not the most fluent with computer parts but when you say the APU gets bottlenecked by the GPU, is that essentially saying that the Video Card Bottlenecks itself? ie. one component (APU) within the video card is bottlenecked by another component within itself (the GPU), so despite doubling the video RAM, the increase you'd expect from that is not quite as significant in reality? Also 4GB of Video RAM is fairly good/ future proof right? I've been running on 512mb video ram and haven't had any issues with other resource intensive open world games eg. heavily modded skyrim, so I expect 8x that should be more than enough for the vast majority of games?
Thanks again :)
 
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wertay2

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Oct 9, 2015
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The only equivalent I can find to the R9 290 that I can get a good deal on is this:
GV-N960G1 GAMING-4GD: http://www.gigabyte.com.au/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5400#ov
With Specs:
4GB GDDR5 memory, BASE: 1241 MHz / BOOST: 1304 MHz (1266 / 1329 MHz in OC Mode)
I can get It for around $360. Not sure what all the numbers mean but it's a Gigabyte video card (never heard of it before). I can get these parts tomorrow with little effort but I'd have a wait a fair while and pay a bit more to get the R9 290. Any idea how it'd compare to an R9 290?

Edit:
Think it's a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960, and Gigabyte is just the store that's selling it... whoops.
From other posts I can see that the R9 290 is recommended over the GTX960 4GB, not sure how significant this difference is though :)
 
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Rogue Leader

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The APU is your processor, your AMD A8, while normally called a CPU, AMD A series are called APU's. That processor is (or will be) a bottleneck to your video card.

THe card you found yes is a GTX 960, I would get the R9 290 over that it is more powerful.

I would not worry so much about 4gb vs 8gb as your processor is going to limit how far you can push the card. At this point 8gb is extreme overkill and it will be years before games regularly need 8gb of memory, only a few games today can even utilize it and only at the highest resolutions.

As for future proof never plan on that, if theres one this I've learned in nearly 30 years of computing, nothing is future proof, you never know what will come out. Just get the best you can for your combination of money and current parts.
 
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