GTX 960 worth it?

[TechCity]

Hi, I'm building my first ever gaming PC and I just wanted some advice on choosing my graphics card. I wanted to know whether the MSI gaming 960 2GB is worth the price? (Currently it is priced at £156 and comes with Metal Gear Solid V : Phantom Pain on Amazon UK for a limited time till the 8th)

 

Or shall I go for an alternate? Maybe something cheaper but close to performance? A 950 ti is priced only £30 lower than this card so I guess it's pretty pointless.

 

*I have a 500W PSU, so the higher-end cards, especially some of the AMD cards may not support the build. 

[don_svetlio]

No - 380 is a much better bet - PSU is not an issue - the 380 uses about 35W more than a 960 - Attention! Power draw and TDP are 2 COMPLETELY different things!

[DannyRyu]

Its a good card I have one my self personally.

but the real question is what's your budget for a GPU

[don_svetlio]

[TechCity]

Its a good card I have one my self personally.

but the real question is what's your budget for a GPU

Ideally I'm wanting to spend under or around £150. 

[DannyRyu]

well to answer your question the GTX 960 is worth it especially at that price. your saving quite a bit for minimal difference between the 960 and the R9 380, its true the R9 380 gives very slightly better frames but for that price I'd get that 960 + you end up with a smaller power bill, 40W kind of adds up.
The difference is negligible at 1080p

[don_svetlio]

Ideally I'm wanting to spend under or around £150. 

Check prices on the 380 - that's the best price:performance ration at the moment.

[don_svetlio]

well to answer your question the GTX 960 is worth it especially at that price. your saving quite a bit for minimal difference between the 960 and the R9 380, its true the R9 380 gives very slightly better frames but for that price I'd get that 960 + you end up with a smaller power bill, 40W kind of adds up.

40W is the amount his remote for the TV uses - I've done the math - over the course of 7 years it adds up to 10$ - please, that is NOT important in any way.

the 380 offers around 10% better performance more stability during intense moments with the 960 dropping more frames on average.

[GM_Peka]

Either the 380 or 960 should do you well.

[TechCity]

No - 380 is a much better bet - PSU is not an issue - the 380 uses about 35W more than a 960 - Attention! Power draw and TDP are 2 COMPLETELY different things!

Thanks for the input, I did not know. I'm just slightly sceptical of using an AMD card, but if there's a good performance difference then sure why not. 

[don_svetlio]

Thanks for the input, I did not know. I'm just slightly sceptical of using an AMD card, but if there's a good performance difference then sure why not. 

The 300 series from AMD have been rock solid so far - just get a good OEM like Sapphire or MSI and you will have 0 issues - Gigabyte's versions are slightly sub-par so avoid them.

[DannyRyu]

40W is the amount his remote for the TV uses - I've done the math - over the course of 7 years it adds up to 10$ - please, that is NOT important in any way.

the 380 offers around 10% better performance more stability during intense moments with the 960 dropping more frames on average.

Okay, In japan its 10$ a month if its on 24/7 which is unlikely but still each country is different his power bill may differ and yes this is not too important its just a +.

Did you see how much the 960 costs for him? 156 Euros. thats 175 USD or 231 CAD. 

the base price is 200 USD without any of the games. the R9 380 is 240$ so he is saving 70 USD for 10% performance decrease is that justifiable when he only wants to spend less than 150 euros?

[don_svetlio]

Okay, In japan its 10$ a month if its on 24/7 which is unlikely but still each country is different his power bill may differ and yes this is not too important its just a +.

Did you see how much the 960 costs for him? 156 Euros. thats 175 USD or 231 CAD. 

the base price is 200 USD without any of the games. the R9 380 is 240$ so he is saving 70 USD for 10% performance decrease is that justifiable when he only wants to spend less than 150 euros?

the MSRP of the 380 is NOT 240 USD - I can assure you - they price is around 180$ with the 285 (380 2GB version) being 175$ on Newegg - please do not use numbers from the most expensive 380 and cheapest chinese 960

The power bill was calculated with my overpriced local bills - so it's a worst case scenario.

[TechCity]

The 300 series from AMD have been rock solid so far - just get a good OEM like Sapphire or MSI and you will have 0 issues - Gigabyte's versions are slightly sub-par so avoid them.

Even without the free game the 960 provides, would this r9 380 be good?:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/XFX-Radeon-Graphics-Card-GDDR5/dp/B00ZCBDVW6/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1441283571&sr=8-7&keywords=r9+380

 

I really appreciate the help you all are providing, thanks! 

[don_svetlio]

Even without the free game the 960 provides, would this r9 380 be good?:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/XFX-Radeon-Graphics-Card-GDDR5/dp/B00ZCBDVW6/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1441283571&sr=8-7&keywords=r9+380

 

I really appreciate the help you all are providing, thanks! 

No problem - let me check real quick

[don_svetlio]

Even without the free game the 960 provides, would this r9 380 be good?:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/XFX-Radeon-Graphics-Card-GDDR5/dp/B00ZCBDVW6/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1441283571&sr=8-7&keywords=r9+380

 

I really appreciate the help you all are providing, thanks! 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sapphire-Nitro-Graphics-PCI-E-GDDR5/dp/B00YXSL3YW/ref=pd_sim_sbs_147_6?ie=UTF8&refRID=0N075TRYV3BG86E43P8X&dpSrc=sims&dpST=_AC_UL160_SR160%2C160_ - This is my personal pick for a 380 but the XFX model you selected is also Rock Solid - no issues I can notice off the bat

[typographie]

*I have a 500W PSU, so the higher-end cards, especially some of the AMD cards may not support the build. 

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9390/the-amd-radeon-r9-fury-x-review/25

A good-quality 500 Watt PSU is technically enough to power a system with any single-GPU AMD card, though 600–650 W may be a better choice for the very high-end cards like Hawaii and Fiji just to make sure it's not being run so close to it's limit.

 

As shown above, a PC with any of the cards in this price range is probably going to top out at 300 Watts or so of actual power draw.

[don_svetlio]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9390/the-amd-radeon-r9-fury-x-review/25

A good-quality 500 Watt PSU is technically enough to power a system with any single-GPU AMD card, though 600–650 W may be a better choice for the very high-end cards like Hawaii and Fiji just to make sure it's not being run so close to it's limit.

 

As shown above, a PC with any of the cards in this price range is probably going to top out at 300 Watts or so of actual power draw.

Long story short - he's fine

[TechCity]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sapphire-Nitro-Graphics-PCI-E-GDDR5/dp/B00YXSL3YW/ref=pd_sim_sbs_147_6?ie=UTF8&refRID=0N075TRYV3BG86E43P8X&dpSrc=sims&dpST=_AC_UL160_SR160%2C160_ - This is my personal pick for a 380 but the XFX model you selected is also Rock Solid - no issues I can notice off the bat

I would have loved to capitalise on the offer of the free copy of Metal Gear Solid provided with the 960, but as you have recommended the r9 380 I may just go for it Do you think it's also better that it has actual support for DX12? I don't know much on the difference it can provide. I still wish AMD had these sort of offers NVIDIA provide

[SteveGrabowski0]

What CPU do you have? If it's not an i5/i7/Xeon, you'd probably be better off with a 960 than a 380 due to the AMD DirectX11 overhead swamping low-end CPUs. If you have an i5/i7/Xeon then the 380 is better than the 960.

[SteveGrabowski0]

I would have loved to capitalise on the offer of the free copy of Metal Gear Solid provided with the 960, but as you have recommended the r9 380 I may just go for it Do you think it's also better that it has actual support for DX12? I don't know much on the difference it can provide. I still wish AMD had these sort of offers NVIDIA provide

 

DX12 is a huge unknown right now. We have exactly one DX12 game out in alpha right now.

[don_svetlio]

I would have loved to capitalise on the offer of the free copy of Metal Gear Solid provided with the 960, but as you have recommended the r9 380 I may just go for it Do you think it's also better that it has actual support for DX12? I don't know much on the difference it can provide. I still wish AMD had these sort of offers NVIDIA provide

In regards to the purpose of Async compute, there are really 2 main reasons for it:

1) It allows jobs to be cycled into the GPU during dormant phases. In can vaguely be thought of as the GPU equivalent of hyper threading. Like hyper threading, it really depends on the workload and GPU architecture for as to how important this is. In this case, it is used for performance. I can’t divulge too many details, but GCN can cycle in work from an ACE incredibly efficiently. Maxwell’s schedular has no analog just as a non hyper-threaded CPU has no analog feature to a hyper threaded one.

2) It allows jobs to be cycled in completely out of band with the rendering loop. This is potentially the more interesting case since it can allow gameplay to offload work onto the GPU as the latency of work is greatly reduced. I’m not sure of the background of Async Compute, but it’s quite possible that it is intended for use on a console as sort of a replacement for the Cell Processors on a ps3. On a console environment, you really can use them in a very similar way. This could mean that jobs could even span frames, which is useful for longer, optional computational tasks.

It didn’t look like there was a hardware defect to me on Maxwell just some unfortunate complex interaction between software scheduling trying to emmulate it which appeared to incure some heavy CPU costs. Since we were tying to use it for #1, not #2, it made little sense to bother. I don’t believe there is any specific requirement that Async Compute be required for D3D12, but perhaps I misread the spec.

[typographie]

Long story short - he's fine

 

Everything's a long story with me.

[TechCity]

What CPU do you have? If it's not an i5/i7/Xeon, you'd probably be better off with a 960 than a 380 due to the AMD DirectX11 overhead swamping low-end CPUs. If you have an i5/i7/Xeon then the 380 is better than the 960.

Currently I have an i3 4160 for my first-time gaming build. Sadly I've been stuck on this graphics card matter for months.  

[don_svetlio]

Currently I have an i3 4160 for my first-time gaming build. Sadly I've been stuck on this graphics card matter for months.  

An i3 is enough for the 380 - the CPU overhead with DX11 relies on single powerful cores, not many cores. The i3 is fine with a 970 and 390, so a 380 is a breeze  for it. You are good to go.