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VRAM at high res

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Unfortunately with the recent death of my 6950, I'm left needing a new graphics card, the 280 and the 760 appear to be about the same speed, I quite like the sound of some of the nvidia features like shadowplay and physx but will the 280's extra VRAM help extend it's life especially at 1440p?

I've been leaning towards one of these two cards at the moment but the lack of reviews for non x 280's makes me unsure of which will be quieter under everyday use

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-gigabyte-radeon-r9-280-windforce3-oc-pci-e

or

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-...33mhz-boost-1000mhz-1792-streams-dvi-hdmi-mdp

The budget can be stretched a higher if there are any cards that would offer substantially greater performance without costing far more

Performance is the main priority, with noise second, I don't care about power consumption at all if I'm honest

Thank you for your help so far :)
 

eidairaman1

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Yes 3gb vs 2
 
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I'm no expert but maybe if you can stretch your budget for this card:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-...oost-1000mhz-dvi-hdmi-mdport-voltage-unlocked
The main reason I say this is if you are familiar with AMD's old gpu names
the R9 280 is the same as the HD 7950
and the R9 280x is the same as a HD 7970.
From my knowledge the 7970 is a great card
Here are some benchmark score's from various games where you can see the difference in performance.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2014/05/19/amd-radeon-r9-280-review-feat-xfx/4
Weather it is worth it only you can decide.
 
Last edited:

hat

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By that graph I'd have to go for at least a GTX970, or R9 290. Here's a graph that includes the GTX 970 (BF4 1440P):


The GTX 970 performs marginally better than the R9 290X, but does it with roughly 90w less power draw (during a typical gaming session):


Not sure about pricing in the UK, but depending on the model someone in the US can expect to pay $70 more for the GTX 970 over the R9 290X. For that, they get slightly better performance at a good deal less power draw (resulting in less heat produced, lower fan noise, lower electricity bills).
 
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By that graph I'd have to go for at least a GTX970, or R9 290. Here's a graph that includes the GTX 970 (BF4 1440P):


The GTX 970 performs marginally better than the R9 290X, but does it with roughly 90w less power draw (during a typical gaming session):


Not sure about pricing in the UK, but depending on the model someone in the US can expect to pay $70 more for the GTX 970 over the R9 290X. For that, they get slightly better performance at a good deal less power draw (resulting in less heat produced, lower fan noise, lower electricity bills).

The 970 and the 290x are both unfortunately quite far towards the outside of the budget but i'll keep an eye on them in case there's a good offer going on one of them at any point

There is a 280x here though that looks quite promising as it does have a very high base clock
 

hat

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Well, the R9 280x typically consumes 216w during a normal gaming load, and is roughly as powerful as a GTX770, according to this review:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyte/R9_280X_OC/26.html

The reviews on this site really are invaluable when it comes to GPU decisions as they really do have a wealth of data to look through.
 
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