Everyone keeps saying: wait for Pascal/Polaris...

[username_]

BUT

 

and assuming they indeed come out in June, we won't have brand models till months later, right? Only the reference cards

[Enderman]

is something wrong with reference cards?

[DominicNikon]

1 minute ago, Enderman said:

is something wrong with reference cards?

bad cooling. not good overclocking and power?

[Oshino Shinobu]

1 minute ago, DominicNikon said:

bad cooling. not good overclocking and power?

Last time I checked, Nvidia at least did a very good job with their reference coolers over the past couple of series. 

@OP There's also the matter of blower style coolers being better for certain types of systems.

[Moonzy]

well for the 900 series, the aftermarket cooler launched with the reference cooler, there's a chance it'll be the same for pascal

[gamingowiz]

4 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

well for the 900 series, the aftermarket cooler launched with the reference cooler, there's a chance it'll be the same for pascal

Yeah, I seem to remember this too. though only limited.

Just do what I'm doing - buy a gpu now then flog it and get a new one once they arrive. lose 300 in the process  

[cpuwaiy]

My opinion is, all off the current gen video cards are manufactured using 28nm process. This process goes back to the AMD 7000 series/Nvidia 700 series.

 

If Polaris/Pascal are built at 16nm or even 14nm, the increase in the amount of transistors that will be able to fit in the same area will be dramatic.

 

[givegomezthegun]

This will always be the cycle with computer components, no matter what.  Buy something now, and something better will come out shortly after.  It doesn't really matter.  If you are waiting for the new gpu's, but want non-reference coolers, then wait for those, if you want something right now, buy something available now.  It doesn't matter, no matter what it is, something better will follow at some point, normally relatively soon.

[Enderman]

25 minutes ago, DominicNikon said:

bad cooling. not good overclocking and power?

they cool enough for the card to not throttle, with TDP dropping every year you can get great overclocks on reference cards without aftermarket power delivery, and reference cards have great compatibility with aftermarket coolers if you want to upgrade it

 

at least for nvidia, AMD's reference cards are jet engines