R9 280x is now the 780 Ti level?

[Malik Sajid]

Hi, guys! I've a Q9650 clocked at 4.3Ghz paired with an RX 460. I was looking for a suitable gpu upgrade and I've found that R9 280x or 1050 ti is the max for the Q9650 before it becomes a bottleneck
so I decided to get the 1050 ti as it's newer, consumes less power and delivers the same performance but a friend of mine gave me this chart [imgur.com/a/vReGm]
which shows that R9 280x is outperforming the 780/780ti in DX12 titles, is this chart accurate?
In your opinion should I pick up the R9 over the 1050 ti? Considering it's going to help my poor cpu when dx12 becomes the standard and yeah I'm not planning to upgrade my platform any time soon.

 

[ASOT]

1050ti anyday

 

[Vya Domus]

I suggest picking an Nvidia card simply because their drivers rely less on single thread CPU performance , that Q9650 is pretty old.

 

[qubit]

Get the 1050 Ti anyday.

 

[Keullo-e]

An used GTX 970 or GTX 980. 1050 Ti is like a fart compared to those.

 

[Liviu Cojocaru]

In you particular situation 1050 ti should be ok

 

[Sasqui]

At the speed you have the Q9650, you'll see graphics gains with any bump in GPU capability. Yea it's a little old, the biggest downside is the memory controller and DDR2. That said, the 1050 Ti is about on par with the 280x, and you get DX12 with the 1050 Ti. The 1050 Ti is also a nice overclocker.

If you are looking for another upgrade you won't regret, get an SSD for your OS drive

 

[Malik Sajid]

Thank you, guys! We have a clear winner here! But may you take a close look at gamegpu
rebench;

http://imgur.com/a/vReGm

I mean the R9 280x is truly a beast in DX12/vulkan leaving the 1050 ti behind in the dust so don't you think it would be more future proof than the 1050 ti?

that Q9650 is pretty old.

Yeah but it still got some life inside;

At the speed you have the Q9650, you'll see graphics gains with any bump in GPU capability. Yea it's a little old, the biggest downside is the memory controller and DDR2. That said, the 1050 Ti is about on par with the 280x, and you get DX12 with the 1050 Ti. The 1050 Ti is also a nice overclocker.

If you are looking for another upgrade you won't regret, get an SSD for your OS drive

P45 can handle DDR3, but I got no clue why did asus build P5Q mobos with ddr2 slots!
As for the ssd it was in my mind, may you recommend me some of them in different price categories?

 

[Sasqui]

Yea, according to those charts, The 280x does best the 1050 Ti by a nice margin. I couldn't find a 1:1 comparison on TPU's reviews, due to the age difference.

The 280x is DX11.2 capable, not DX12 from what I read. Won't make much difference now.

P45 can handle DDR3, but I got no clue why did asus build P5Q mobos with ddr2 slots!
As for the ssd it was in my mind, may you recommend me some of them in different price categories?

DDR3 was relatively new and DDR2 was cheaper, so it's more a marketing thing than anything else. I've bought MB's before because of the compatibility with older RAM so I could re-use what I had. The Core2 architecture still had the memory controller separate from the CPU, so that's the only really big downside of the quad you have, they also opened up HT most of the HEDT chips, so you'd have 4 cores and 8 threads.

As for an SSD, the best time to buy was around black Friday, but if you can be patient and find a 500GB for under $150, you're doing good. That's a good size disc for the OS and a healthy number of programs, then use your HDD for backup and other data. I got a Samsing 850 Evo last year and it's amazing how fast the system boots and programs load!

 

[WhiteNoise]

I own a R9 280x and It's ok. I don't use mine any longer but while I used it in one of my lower end PC's at the time for my daughter it handled most games pretty well.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

The 280x is DX11.2 capable, not DX12 from what I read. Won't make much difference now.

All GCN cards are D3D 12.0 feature level except Vega which is 12.1.


Vulkan benchmark cited is going to give a small boost to GCN cards especially compared to D3D 11.x which is what the vast majority of games are these days.


It's really going to boil down to what is available and affordable in your area. It's a crapshoot trying to find a card these days.

 

[Sasqui]

All GCN cards are D3D 12.0 feature level except Vega which is 12.1.

hmmm... don't see a single mention of DX 12 here: http://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/software-technologies/gcn (GCN overview)

Although, I do see DX12 here: http://www.sapphiretech.com/productdetial.asp?pid=169596D2-D495-4094-BD75-DEA745D05911&lang=eng (Sapphire Nitro 280x)

I saw another spec sheet that clearly said DX11.2, so I'm confused

 

[Zyll Goliat]

Well maybe in few DX12 titles r9 280x showing a bit better results but in 99% of the DX11 games GTX 780 TI is dominant card......also GTX 1050 TI and R9 280x are more closer to the GTX 770 in overall performance,however I will suggest you to go with the GTX 1050Ti as that card is newer architecture way more power efficient and produce less heat then R9 280x or GTX 780 Ti........

 

[HD64G]

At the speed you have the Q9650, you'll see graphics gains with any bump in GPU capability. Yea it's a little old, the biggest downside is the memory controller and DDR2. That said, the 1050 Ti is about on par with the 280x, and you get DX12 with the 1050 Ti. The 1050 Ti is also a nice overclocker.

If you are looking for another upgrade you won't regret, get an SSD for your OS drive

DX12 is the same for 280X also and in some games it surpasses 1050Ti. But a new GPU having warranty is better usually.

 

[peche]

save money or use it wise, get GTX 1050ti, why? cuz is marginally newer, might come with warranty, consume less power and less heat, also the most important face, resale value, you could get some pennies for it, R9 280 will be aged day by day and its value will be lower...

the thing is your systems, motherboard, CPU and mostly ram are almost at the corner to kick the bucket, ill replace them instead video cards, get a new system or something closer to the actual hardware, sandy, ivy bridge or haswell as well, if you want to continue intel, or amd if you like, but sys upgrade and a nice SSD will provide better gaming experience.

Regards,

 

[kruk]

@OP: in the current situation, both 1050 Ti and 280X are a waste of money. In GPU bound titles you might get like a 25% speed bump, in CPU bound titles there will be no change. If you are looking to max out most modern titles, you are in for a disappointment.

Just lower the settings and hold out until you can do a proper full system upgrade ...

 

[OneMoar]

a 280x is a 7970 a 6 year old gpu

I am telling you do not want a 280x they are power hungry run hot and prone to early failure if they have been abused/used for mining which basicly all the used cards on the market have been if its ever seen more then 80c load temps it will be dead inside a year

don't waste your money you will be disappointed

doom is a terrible benchmark. it heavily HEAVILY factors AMD's high stream processor count and is not a good representation of real performance

 

[Vayra86]

What you should really do for a fair comparison, is take a MUCH larger benchmark suite and get an average of a set of DX11, DX12, games both older and very new.

That gives you the most honest impression of relative performance.

Few things:
280X = HD7970. In other words its a five (six?) year old architecture. 3GB VRAM, which today isn't fantastic.
1050ti = Pascal = 2H 2016. It also has 4GB which is sufficient.

That said, if the 280X can be had considerably cheaper, go for that. The 1050ti is low-midrange while the 280X is/was upper midrange and even high end at release. It makes a difference, the 280X will be a much more well rounded GPU, whereas the 1050ti may be less consistent due to a tighter VRAM bus. At equal price though, get the newer card, warranty is a nice thing to have and newer arch + lower heat and power is also beneficial in every way, including noise.

Another reason to buy a cheap 2nd hand 280X right now is the state of GPU market; its completely screwed right now, and new cards are heavily overpriced. The 280X will probably not be. DX12 performance will not be very relevant in 2018, it is NOT relevant for any 2017 release, and it probably will slowly start taking off next year. I reckon by then, you'll definitely be looking at a new GPU again.

As for your question specifically: the 780ti is a faster card overall than the 280x, but the difference is small, 10% or so. Other alternatives that I would personally pick over a 780ti/1050ti/280X: GTX 970. GTX 980. GTX 980ti. RX480. GTX 1060 6GB. The last 3 will be more expensive, but massively improve your gaming experience, even with that CPU. GPUs can move to a new rig anyway eventually. If you're going second hand, I would suggest you expand your search to all of these cards so you can make a more informed choice and perhaps snag a nicer deal.

 

[OneMoar]

the only time you should buy a 7970 is if its 40 bucks ... not one cent over that

 

[Vayra86]

the only time you should buy a 7970 is if its 40 bucks ... not one cent over that

Nah, more like 60-90 would be realistic IMO... but only if the owner was real gentle with it, its cleaned, and repasted. There's at least 2 more years of life in there.

You are definitely right about the risk of it being a card that's been mined with though.

Edit @OneMoar below.. yes everything depends on finding a seller you can trust.

 

[OneMoar]

Nah, more like 60-90

I paid 100 for a 7970 2 years ago
no just no ..

edit sorry it was 3 years ago @moocow0463 sold it to me

at the time it was a good buy I got 3 years out of it now ...

they aren't worth it not with them black screening left and right from people baking them and putting them on ebay again

 

[Malik Sajid]

hmmm... don't see a single mention of DX 12 here: http://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/software-technologies/gcn (GCN overview)

Although, I do see DX12 here: http://www.sapphiretech.com/productdetial.asp?pid=169596D2-D495-4094-BD75-DEA745D05911&lang=eng (Sapphire Nitro 280x)

I saw another spec sheet that clearly said DX11.2, so I'm confused

DX12 has features level 11_1, 12_0 and 12_1. GCN 1.0 is utilizing DX12, fl 11_1 and what I've read that these features lvl are not meant for the players but the developers.

Well maybe in few DX12 titles r9 280x showing a bit better results but in 99% of the DX11 games GTX 780 TI is dominant card......also GTX 1050 TI and R9 280x are more closer to the GTX 770 in overall performance,however I will suggest you to go with the GTX 1050Ti as that card is newer architecture way more power efficient and produce less heat then R9 280x or GTX 780 Ti........

Of course gtx 780 ti is out of the question when it comes to DX11 performance but what I want to say that R9 280x when it's released it was an equlavent to the gtx 770 and now it's competing with 780/780ti so I was asking if it would be a more future proof than 1050 ti when dx12 becomes the standard.

@OP: in the current situation, both 1050 Ti and 280X are a waste of money. In GPU bound titles you might get like a 25% speed bump, in CPU bound titles there will be no change. If you are looking to max out most modern titles, you are in for a disappointment.

Just lower the settings and hold out until you can do a proper full system upgrade ...

25% speed bump? Did you get this percentage from tpu gpu db? If so, I think it's not accurate anymore, The R9 280x has gained a lot of performance since the the date of release.

a 280x is a 7970 a 6 year old gpu

I am telling you do not want a 280x they are power hungry run hot and prone to early failure if they have been abused/used for mining which basicly all the used cards on the market have been if its ever seen more then 80c load temps it will be dead inside a year

don't waste your money you will be disappointed

doom is a terrible benchmark. it heavily HEAVILY factors AMD's high stream processor count and is not a good representation of real performance

That bench wasn't about doom only, check it again. But yeah my only concern about the R9 as you and @Vayra86 said that I'm "right about the risk of it being a card that's been mined with"
But talking about the prices, I'm wondering which universe am I living in? the cheapest r9 280x here is 140$ (used) and the cheapest 1050 ti is 175$ (used)

 

[eidairaman1]

Grab a 290 or 570.

 

[Mindweaver]

I would upgrade your CPU, Ram, and Motherboard and keep your RX 460 for now IMO.

 

[noel_fs]

Grab a 290 or 570.

+1

im with a 7970 that i bought for 65$, im happy but would be a better buy a 290.