GTX 1060 or RX 480?

[sniip]

Hey everybody, I'd like some opinions. 

 

I am planning to get a graphics card for Christmas to upgrade my pretty old rig. (I7-2600; 8GB DDR3 ram; Intel motherboard; GTX560 1GB VRam gpu; DELL U22 monitor) I decided to first invest my money in a GPU and then after (probably after kabylake is on sale) buy all other parts. Since my budget is tight on this one I could either buy GTX 1060 (6GB) or RX 480 (8GB) (thinking about MSI Gaming X edition). Dilemma occurred to me since both of these cards are almost the same performance vise, but I still can't seem to find an answer which one of these are more future proof, since I won't be able to buy a new GPU for another 4 years.

 

Thanks in advance 

[HKZeroFive]

The GTX 1060 6GB is the better performer and more power efficient. If it's close to the price of the RX 480, I would opt for that.

[Cela1]

2 minutes ago, HKZeroFive said:

The GTX 1060 6GB is the better performer

*Cough* DX12 *Cough*

[manikyath]

there is no future proof, put that concept out of your head.

 

i'd say either RX480 because amd tends to sit on the same architecture for longer, meaning you'll likely get applicable driver updates for longer.

or the GTX1060 because it's stronger out the gates, slightly more power efficient (not that this really matters when comparing to the 560), and generally more games swing the nvidia side than the amd side in terms of optimization.

[HKZeroFive]

Just now, Cela1 said:

*Cough* DX12 *Cough*

And the GTX 1060 6GB holds up well in several DirectX12 games regardless. Your point?

[Cela1]

Just now, HKZeroFive said:

And the GTX 1060 6GB holds up well in several DirectX12 games regardless. Your point?

Chill bro, I was just saying.

[sniip]

I know that the concept of future proofing is stupid but it's not what i had in mind. What I wanted to say is which card would be better in 4 years or something like that. I was more on Nvidias side because of better game optimization but it seems that AMD could work better with future games made on Vulkan or DX12.

[Miguel Batista]

34 minutes ago, sniip said:

I know that the concept of future proofing is stupid but it's not what i had in mind. What I wanted to say is which card would be better in 4 years or something like that. I was more on Nvidias side because of better game optimization but it seems that AMD could work better with future games made on Vulkan or DX12.

Whichever you choose, it will work very well. They are so close together, go for the one you like the most. I would say an XFX 480 GTR... That thing is awesome and puts all other 480s to shame. Plus, with the 8GB model you get gddrx vram. 

[Citadelen]

2 hours ago, manikyath said:

-snip-

 

Just saying, AMD were the only one's that improved their architecture this generation, Maxwell and Pascal are almost identical.

[manikyath]

1 hour ago, Citadelen said:

Just saying, AMD were the only one's that improved their architecture this generation, Maxwell and Pascal are almost identical.

but amd recycles the same silicon A LOT more than nvidia, which basicly has an entire new set of chips each generation. it's going as far as a... 7870 if i recall correctly basicly having the same chip under the hood as something in the 300 series, forgot which one exactly.

[sniip]

3 hours ago, Miguel Batista said:

Whichever you choose, it will work very well. They are so close together, go for the one you like the most. I would say an XFX 480 GTR... That thing is awesome and puts all other 480s to shame. Plus, with the 8GB model you get gddrx vram. 

Sadly XFX 480 is not available in my country  Best solution would be MSI Gaming X of Sapphire 480. Also I try to renew the whole system because it turned very loud so acoustics matter a lot to me. Also not sure whether or not I should buy a CPU cooler since the one i have is stock sandybridge intel cooler.

[othertomperson]

5 hours ago, Cela1 said:

*Cough* DX12 *Cough*

The 1060 outperforms the 480 in Dx 12 in more cases than not.

 

5 hours ago, manikyath said:

there is no future proof, put that concept out of your head.

 

i'd say either RX480 because amd tends to sit on the same architecture for longer, meaning you'll likely get applicable driver updates for longer.

or the GTX1060 because it's stronger out the gates, slightly more power efficient (not that this really matters when comparing to the 560), and generally more games swing the nvidia side than the amd side in terms of optimization.

In a world where only OpenGL and Dx11 existed, this would be true. The only reason this was a thing in the past is because of Directx 11 needing so much in the way of driver optimisation that Nvidia was able to get way more out of Dx11 than AMD. This is why Nvidia hardware performs similarly on Dx 11 to AMD on Dx 12. This is also why AMD's marketing is able to paint their own hardware as supporting Dx12 "better" by dishonestly focusing on increase in FPS when moving from the older to the newer API, rather than the raw FPS numbers.

 

This lack of driver overhead really limits what software improvements AMD can make over time. Now they are in the same position as Nvidia in that their day 1 performance is about as good as it's going to get in most cases, while Nvidia are in the position that they are going to stop seeing performance losses in older architectures due to a lack of driver attention in legacy hardware.

 

2 hours ago, Citadelen said:

Just saying, AMD were the only one's that improved their architecture this generation, Maxwell and Pascal are almost identical.

Just saying, the GTX 1080 performs nearly twice as well as the GTX 980 in most cases, and in terms of Performance per Watt even by moving to 14nm AMD were only able to rival Maxwell, and not Polaris.

[8951903782]

I would suggest the gtx 1060,

[manikyath]

32 minutes ago, othertomperson said:

In a world where only OpenGL and Dx11 existed, this would be true. The only reason this was a thing in the past is because of Directx 11 needing so much in the way of driver optimisation that Nvidia was able to get way more out of Dx11 than AMD. This is why Nvidia hardware performs similarly on Dx 11 to AMD on Dx 12. This is also why AMD's marketing is able to paint their own hardware as supporting Dx12 "better" by dishonestly focusing on increase in FPS when moving from the older to the newer API, rather than the raw FPS numbers.

 

This lack of driver overhead really limits what software improvements AMD can make over time. Now they are in the same position as Nvidia in that their day 1 performance is about as good as it's going to get in most cases, while Nvidia are in the position that they are going to stop seeing performance losses in older architectures due to a lack of driver attention in legacy hardware.

to be honest, at this point there is more exceptions to DX12 than there are cases following anything told about DX12.

 

goes as far as luke mentioning on wan show about -i forgot which game- that one performed identical on DX12, and the other one did much, much worse. (compared to dx11 offcourse)

 

DX12 may be a bigger questionmark than the whole games supporting multiple cores thing

[othertomperson]

Just now, manikyath said:

to be honest, at this point there is more exceptions to DX12 than there are cases following anything told about DX12.

 

goes as far as luke mentioning on wan show about -i forgot which game- that one performed identical on DX12, and the other one did much, much worse. (compared to dx11 offcourse)

 

DX12 may be a bigger questionmark than the whole games supporting multiple cores thing

That's just because the sample size is small. We don't have many Directx 12 games to measure so the variance is going to be quite big. And we don't even have a single native Dx 12 game yet, all the ones we have are ports from Dx 11.

[manikyath]

Just now, othertomperson said:

That's just because the sample size is small. We don't have many Directx 12 games to measure so the variance is going to be quite big. And we don't even have a single native Dx 12 game yet, all the ones we have are ports from Dx 11.

which is why we cant really measure anything worthy of mentioning in DX12. anything we have now in terms of DX12 may be completely unrepresentative in the future.

 

and honestly.. i feel the majority of the question marks around DX12 is at least partly to do with -whatever that first game was with the big flashy benchmarks-

[othertomperson]

Just now, manikyath said:

which is why we cant really measure anything worthy of mentioning in DX12. anything we have now in terms of DX12 may be completely unrepresentative in the future.

 

and honestly.. i feel the majority of the question marks around DX12 is at least partly to do with -whatever that first game was with the big flashy benchmarks-

Pretty much. And Vulkan is in an even worse state. The fact that people recommend one brand over another over a sample size of exactly 1 is laughable.

[manikyath]

9 minutes ago, othertomperson said:

Pretty much. And Vulkan is in an even worse state. The fact that people recommend one brand over another over a sample size of exactly 1 is laughable.

cory doctorow does not a sample size make.

- bryan lunduke.

[sniip]

By the way I forgot to mention that in my country MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming 6G cost is around 328euros and MSI Radeon RX 480 8G cost 316euros

[unholy_walrus]

I'd suggest going for whichever decent quality custom card is the cheapest where you live. The GTX 1060 should give you a slight performance edge in gaming right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if the tables were turned a bit in a while. If the cards are within like 10-15€ of eachother, I'd probably advice you go with the GTX 1060, but both cards will do well.

 

If I had to choose a card, I'd probably go for a Sapphire RX 480 Nitro. Sapphire generally makes fantastic cards and I've yet to hear anything bad about the 480 Nitro. The 4GB Nitro is by far the best deal when it comes to buying a new gpu where I live; the price-to-performance ratio is really just amazing. Sure, the 4GB vram could end up being somewhat of an issue in the future, but the value is just so good. I'll probably end up getting the 4GB Nitro for my 2500k machine to replace the R9 290 that's having problems. 

[Citadelen]

3 hours ago, manikyath said:

-snip-

 

If the card works, then why make a financially troubled company pay for something new? Maybe low-end cards do, but both manufacturers do that. The R9 380 is a refreshed R9 285, which used the same GCN revision as the 3XX series. I'm not too sure but, I seem to remember Nvidia breaking the norm when it released an entirely new line-up for the 9XX series.

2 hours ago, othertomperson said:

-snip-

 

GCN is a compute architecture, considering the clock speed increases AMD has done very well for themselves with Polaris. A 480 consumes around 20-30 watts more than a 1060 which is impressive for the nature of GCN. With the 1080, it has massive clock speed increases, that's why it's faster, nothing more. It's pretty much a die shrunk 980 with SMP stuck in.

 

Edit: I have no idea where you're getting the 1060 being faster in DX12 and Vulkan, you need to check your sources. In DX11 the 1060 is around 7% faster on average.

Edited October 22, 2016 by Citadelen

[manikyath]

Just now, Citadelen said:

If the card works, then why make a financially troubled company pay for something new? Maybe low-end cards do, but both manufacturers do that. The R9 380 is a refreshed R9 285, which used the same GCN revision as the 3XX series. I'm not too sure but, I seem to remember Nvidia breaking the norm when it released an entirely new line-up for the 9XX series.

i didnt say a good or bad, i just mentioned it's a thing they do, which gives AMD an advantage on long term driver support, because they're doing this in a much bigger extent than nvidia is.

[Citadelen]

Just now, manikyath said:

-snip-

 

I didn't imply it was either.

I was just informing you.  

[manikyath]

Just now, Citadelen said:

I didn't imply it was either.

I was just informing you.  

i got used to the fannboiiz calling me a team blue/green fanboy over putting facts above brand sentiment i guess

[Citadelen]

Just now, manikyath said:

-snip-

Hmm, we all fall into that ever now and then.