GPU Buying Guide - (Read first post)

Yeah, I’ve overclocked it a bit; it's sitting at 3.5 GHz on stock settings. I wouldn't push it past 4 GHz though—between the motherboard and the cooler, I feel like I'm already pushing the limits. It seems to run pretty hot during long sessions, and I think I'm seeing some thermal throttling, or at least that's my impression. As for gaming, I mostly play Call of Duty—specifically the fourth one right now—and once the new one drops, that'll be next in line to replace it. Aside from that, I play some EA Sports, which runs perfectly fine even now. I dabble in a few other things here and there, but nothing heavy enough to really worry about.

I guess I should ask—what motherboard and cooler are you running? Also, what voltage is your CPU set to?

I'm running an ASUS M5A97 Le R2 with a Cooler master Hyper 103. The voltage is sitting at 1.285 V.

Why didn't you go with the M5A97 R2.0, minus the LE, for $3.25 more 😁

It's definitely best-buy($662):

It’ll probably bottleneck, though maybe not by much.

Voltage looks alright... I guess it won't push past 4GHz at 1.285V?

I honestly can't say for sure—there were a few other complications popping up, so I wasn't paying too much attention to that specific part. I might be able to push it up to 4.2GHz if I bump the voltage just a little bit more, though. I can give it a shot.

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.

So, if you were picking out a custom RX 480, which one would be your top choice and why?

I’m leaning toward the Alienware Aurora 8GB—it runs a bit warmer than some others, sure, but the reviews say it's remarkably quiet. For me, that silence alone makes it worth it, not to mention the solid boost clock.
The XFX BE GTR is also on my radar, mostly just because I dig the black aesthetic. 😁

I'd love to hear your thoughts or any advice you might have.

PS: I'm skipping the RTX 3060 entirely since I'm picking up a G-Sync monitor (Samsung Odyssey).

Are you planning on picking something up from Newegg, Amazon, or somewhere similar?

Right now, I think the best value you'll find is the Radeon VII at $375.

As for the GeForce GTX 1060, I suspect the Dell model is probably the quietest or most efficient, though EVGA and ASUS are both solid choices too. They’re all pretty much within 40MHz of each other when it comes to overclocking, so 😬

Here is my guide click 😁

I’d steer clear of the Radeon VII—the power draw is just too high for my liking. Besides, I’ll be upgrading the whole setup in about six weeks anyway.

Specs:

i5 6500 ($210)
LCC CC 120 cooler
Dell H110M
8GB HyperX 2400
EVGA 500W (which is why I'm skipping the R9)
275GB Crucial MX300 SSD
GeForce GTX 1060 (hoping to snag a good deal under $300 🤣)
Corsair Silent Edition 100R

Personally, I’d lean toward the EVGA FTW or maybe the Black Edition... EVGA offers a three-year warranty and their cooling solutions have been pretty solid lately, so I might actually grab one of those before looking at the Black Edition.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comment...erence_review/

http://www.game-debate.com/gpu/index...rce-gt-940-2gb

They might actually drop. I’m guessing the GT 930 will land somewhere around the 800-900 GFLOPS mark. Once I track down a passive cooling model, I'll be all set. Looks like they're coming out October 31st, which is perfect timing for when my paycheck hits.

We're talking about mobile (laptops)

We'll just have to wait and see how this all plays out—I suspect the EVGA card might actually be a solid contender, even if there isn't much review coverage out there yet. Time will tell. 😁

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.

Timothy Kim60 said:we're talking about laptops here.

Where on earth did you read that?

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.

Timothy Kim60 said:A buddy of mine got an NVIDIA GeForce GTX delivered yesterday from overseas. Haven't caught up with him yet—no clue if he's even had a chance to fire it up.
works the same way freesync didn't want the GTX 1060

Do me a favor and let me know what your friend thinks of the XFX 🙂 once you touch base with him. Is it the Black Edition or just the standard model?

Here you go:

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.

Whoa, those temperatures are actually pretty intense. Running at 60-70 while idling 😲

@Adam Moore3/">@@Adam Moore3

Because the thermal target is set at 75°C, so the fans don't even kick in...