wiredotter14 said:You make a fair point, but I think obsessing over every single tiny detail really kills the value proposition. Like you said, you basically need an RTX 3080 just to maintain a steady 60FPS.
Fair enough. Even the developers suggested "high" settings. I'm just pointing out what people in that demographic expect when they drop that kind of cash on a GPU. Of course, nobody actually recommends an RTX 3080 purely on its own because the price-to-performance ratio is usually pretty rough—which is standard for high-end gear. That’s why I’d say an RTX 3060 is the sweet spot, maybe an RTX 3070 if you're feeling fancy. Once you jump to 1440p, the CPU matters a lot less, provided you aren't using some bottom-tier processor.
wiredotter14 said:Timothy Kim60, we seriously need to take FXa down a notch if we haven't already. In my opinion, anything priced higher than those budget-friendly RX 480 4GB cards should definitely come bundled with a high-end monitor upgrade.
I have to disagree. Games are only getting more demanding, and you’re just going to run into that specific type of person who will scoff at anything new regardless. $1000 When you're looking for a GPU, you want two things: maximum settings and a rock-solid frame rate—ideally a locked 60 FPS. Honestly, even a GTX 1070 isn't overkill for 1080p gaming. I actually ran into a guy on a tech forum who paired a GTX 1070 with an FXa; he was claiming that for the first time ever, he’s finally getting exactly what he wanted: ultra settings and a smooth 60 FPS at 1080p. God only knows what kind of games he's playing to make that happen.
Check out this new Deus Ex gameplay footage—this is actual Prague gameplay, not some artificial in-game benchmark. They’ve also disabled the blur and turned off MSAA.
Look, if you aren't hitting at least 60 FPS at 1080p, you basically need a GTX 1080 just to stay afloat—and even then, you won't be cranking everything to max settings. That’s why the idea of "overkill" doesn't really exist when you're talking about actual performance.
Honestly, I’d stick to what I suggested: either grab an NVIDIA GTX 1060 6GB (their prices are pretty solid right now) or go with an NVIDIA GTX 1060 3GB (specifically those custom models under $667). As for everything else, just pick up a 240GB or even a 480-525GB SSD and you'll be good to go. Beyond that, there isn't much worth swapping out unless he really wants to justify the extra cost.
I believe the real issue here is that the temperatures are pushing past the acceptable threshold—we're looking at around 90°C. In my book, most people want to see things staying under 80°C. Beyond that point, whether it's 75°C under a heavy load, 60°C, or just sitting at 35°C while idling, I don't think the difference matters much for the card's health. It’s all about how you tune the fan curves to suit your own needs.
Yeah, look at the graph, like this one. As for RAM, it really depends on what you're using the PC for—if it’s just web browsing, general everyday tasks, or gaming, you don't need more than 8GB. You'd be much better off putting an SSD in instead, like this .
I haven't messed around too much with it; I just did a little bit of undervolting.
Basically, the fans shut off when I'm not gaming, so I don't hear a thing. When I play WoW, it stays silent, even though WoW has become pretty demanding lately with those recent updates. When I jump into Overwatch, though, it gets quite loud. I expected that, so it doesn't bother me—I wear headphones anyway, so I don't even notice. But if I didn't have them and was playing through speakers, you'd definitely hear it, and I bet it would annoy a lot of people. When it actually kicks in, it's spinning at 3000rpm. I managed to drop the max temp from 90 down to 85, while keeping the target at the stock 75. If I cap the speed at 2500 rpm, the card would still stay under 80 degrees but be noticeably quieter. I’ll be experimenting with that more over the next few days.
As far as the games go, I've only tested those two, but the card absolutely crushes them. I'm not going to overclock it yet; the boost clock holds steady, and undervolting to 1080 mV is perfectly stable. It could probably go even lower, but I don't feel like messing around just to shave off another 1-2°C.
The only thing bugging me—which I'll need to find a fix for—is that it idles at 60-70 °C... and the fans won't kick in because the target temp is set to 75. There's a setting in Wattman where you can trigger the fans based on the core clock frequency; I dropped it to 300, but it still won't spin up. I might just build a custom fan profile using a different app. Regarding the aesthetics, it looks truly beautiful, high-quality, and massive. It's significantly larger than the 7850.
The GPU is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX gtr (I don't think it's the Black Edition; if I recall correctly, there's only a tiny difference in clock speeds, so it's totally irrelevant)
That 0dB fan mode seems to get overridden whenever you set a custom fan curve in MSI Afterburner—at least, that's how it's worked with 0dB GPUs in the past. Maybe Wattman is just being buggy right now.
28nm Maxwell architecture? Sure, they might push out some rebranded GTX 750 or GTX 750Ti cards for desktops, but like I said before, we're looking at last-gen tech here. We won't be seeing any new architectures—like Pascal—hitting the low end at 14/16nm anytime soon.
A friend of mine just got an xfx gtr delivered from overseas yesterday. I haven't had a chance to check it out myself yet, and I'm not even sure if he's found the time to put it through its paces. It works the same way; freesync wouldn't trigger on my GTX 1060 either.
For that CPU, the 470 is the sweet spot. But honestly, you're right—the 480 4GB isn't much more expensive either. I saw a tech reviewer run that specific combo and it hit a bit of a bottleneck, but considering how cheap it is? YOLO.
It’s pretty interesting to see how developers (at least for these specific titles) actually define their minimum versus recommended requirements.
First of all, please keep in mind our targets with minimum and recommended specs. At minimum spec, which is a HD 7870 2GB or GTX 660 2GB, paired with an Core i3-2100, we aim to give you an average of 30 fps, at 1280*720 resolution, but this is at the low quality preset. At recommended spec, which is a RX 480 4GB or GTX 970 4GB, paired with an i7-3770K, our target is to offer you 60fps average at 1080p, but at the High quality preset.
WE also offer a Very high and Ultra designed for users whose hardware significantly exceeds the recommended specs or those willing to sacrifice some frame rates for better visuals. If your rig is above the recommended tier, don't feel stuck—even if you can't max out everything on Very High, try tweaking individual settings to find your own sweet spot!
Just like we saw with the Witcher developers, "recommended" doesn't necessarily mean you're getting every single fine detail turned up to eleven.
The price gap between the 2GB and 4GB models is way wider over there than it is here at home. He’s arguing that it just doesn't make sense—you either save up until it hits $470 or you just grab the 2GB version for $460. Out of the 13 games he tested, there was zero difference in 10 of them, a tiny bit in 2, but nothing you'd actually notice while playing. The only exception is Doom, where the performance gap is massive because that game absolutely hates 2GB cards.
wiredotter14 said:Basically, what we expected from AMD reference cards—setting a gold standard for quality and pricing—just didn't happen. On the flip side, Nvidia managed to roll out custom cards immediately, which actually seems to make them more accessible than AMD's lineup right now.
That is definitely not an accurate assessment. Unlike Nvidia, AMD doesn't care about reference blower coolers at all, nor do they have any serious long-term plans for them. Their only purpose is to provide a specific cooler for presentations and initial sales until the custom models arrive. It wouldn't make sense for them to show up to a keynote with some Gigabyte Windforce card and claim it's their new GPU. The cooler isn't theirs, and it would bother their other partners if they showed blatant favoritism toward one specific cooling design. If you recall my previous posts, I predicted that reference models wouldn't even exist in the long run. I also noted that AMD custom GPUs wouldn't be significantly more expensive than the reference versions (at least, that has been the trend so far).
I disagree regarding availability as well. I’ve been tracking the reports, and both sides were equally difficult to find if you consider the AMD stock wasn't higher. For instance, AMD reclaimed over 7% of their market share in Q2 (compared to just 1-2% gains in the three quarters prior). During Q2, the reference 480 was available for only two days (June 29th), whereas the GTX 1080 and 1070 were "available" for over a month during that same quarter.
You won't notice much of a difference (it would be just like switching to a GTX 1060 for gaming), but if the price is the same, go for it. You'll likely get a higher clock speed, which means better benchmark scores 😁. You might see some minor variations in games that rely heavily on single-core performance.
Forget Mbo; for roughly the same price, you can snag much better motherboards that offer features like four RAM slots, M.2 support, and superior voltage regulation. As for the GPU—the real difference lies in $100 😁 I see what you did there—trying to match colors? In my opinion, it’s just not worth it. It makes way more sense to put that cash toward other components, like a larger SSD. By the way, you won't find an i5-6600 for that same price, and honestly, you probably wouldn't even notice the performance jump anyway.
Just put it up for sale. It’s not unheard of for a brand-new graphics card to be a dud right out of the box—you aren't the first person this has happened to, and you certainly won't be the last.
If you're looking for troubleshooting steps, you could try updating the BIOS (assuming there's an update available) or testing the card in someone else's PC to see if the issue follows the hardware.