Graphics Card Advise

[Rubymaster]

Ok long story short, bought everything to build my new gaming rig. Typically I build my friends rigs but I've never had enough money to build my own until now.  I bought everything except the gpu.
I'm waiting for my next pay check (2ish weeks from the time of posting) so I don't have to eat rice and ramen for 2 weeks.  
I'm looking to spend around $200 on a gpu. There is some wiggle room but I would prefer not to spend anymore than $250.

I will be running a G3258 and hopefully the silicon gods smile upon me because I will be overclocking the snot out of it. Sadly everything but the CPU arrived at the same time (my fault for ordering on a holiday weekend).

I've been looking at 970's, 960's, and of course the RX 480.

 

What I need from you guys is info on price drops.

With the 1060 rumored to be announced in 3-4 days, do you think Nvidia will lower their prices of the 900 series. It has been 7ish months since the last price drop.

Secondly, when do you all think AMD will drop their 300 series prices? Currently the 380 and 480 are the same price in most places, but if the 380's price drops significantly, I might pick up one of those.

Thirdly, I'm not worried about all the power draw concerns on the 480, AMD is supposed to make a more official announcement tomorrow. I really hope this can be fixed in software like they claim. I will edit this post once they make that statement to put my thoughts on the matter.

 

I don't plan on running an resolutions over 1080p. I have terrible eyesight and even with my contacts in 1080p and 1440p look nearly identical, and 1440p looks just as good as 4k.

I don't play many new AAA titles at the moment because I have a laptop with a Nvidia 635m (yes it's a thing I knew nothing about gpu's when I bought it).  I'm currently on a Fable kick and would really like to start playing all the titles in my steam library, which are mostly AAA titles from the xbox 360 era (Assassins Creed (not including black flag and newer), the first three Batman Arkham games, the Bioshock series, Boarderlands, you get the picture). I would like to eventually play AAA titles. My processor might be holding me back though.

The game I'd really like to play is Lichdom Battlemage, I bought it before they ported it to the consoles but my puny laptop can't even handle it on low on the lowest resolution).

 

Any and all help is appreciated!

You guys are great!

 

tl;dr:  When do you think price drops will happen, if at all, for AMD and Nvidia?

[App4that]

Nvidia already dropped their prices. But I wouldn't get anything lower than a 980ti as other cards in its price range are better. So I'd hold out for the 1060.

[Cracklingice]

Personally, I think we'll see at least a 20$ price drop when the baby 10's drop; it would make it far far more compelling to get the 970 or 980 over the 480 without having to be as competitive on the baby 10's.

[Rubymaster]

15 minutes ago, App4that said:

Nvidia already dropped their prices. But I wouldn't get anything lower than a 980ti as other cards in its price range are better. So I'd hold out for the 1060.

The last price drop was 7 months ago to my knowledge, but I may be mistaken.
The 980ti is 2.5x my budget for the GPU and I will not be playing anything over 1080p. Hopefully in the future I can afford a card that is nearly the cost of this entire build.
I will be waiting for the 1060 though! I'm hoping it performs as good as the 970 similar to how previous 60's cards performed similar to the previous 70's cards.

[Rubymaster]

7 minutes ago, Cracklingice said:

Personally, I think we'll see at least a 20$ price drop when the baby 10's drop; it would make it far far more compelling to get the 970 or 980 over the 480 without having to be as competitive on the baby 10's.

I hope so! I hope the board partners drop their prices too. The pricing on nearly every GPU doesn't make sense right now. Me having to wait for my next paycheck is almost a blessing in disguise.

[App4that]

38 minutes ago, Rubymaster said:

The last price drop was 7 months ago to my knowledge, but I may be mistaken.
The 980ti is 2.5x my budget for the GPU and I will not be playing anything over 1080p. Hopefully in the future I can afford a card that is nearly the cost of this entire build.
I will be waiting for the 1060 though! I'm hoping it performs as good as the 970 similar to how previous 60's cards performed similar to the previous 70's cards.

If you look at the other Pascal cards the 1070 and 1080, the 1060 should perform as well as a 980. Maybe even a OC 980. The price drop on Maxwell might be regional then, here a 980ti has dropped to just over 400us. A 980ti Hybrid only costs 500us brand new.

 

the 1060 should be around 300us. If you want a card less than 300us then pick up a 390, better value than the 970.

[Rubymaster]

On 7/4/2016 at 3:31 PM, App4that said:

If you look at the other Pascal cards the 1070 and 1080, the 1060 should perform as well as a 980. Maybe even a OC 980. The price drop on Maxwell might be regional then, here a 980ti has dropped to just over 400us. A 980ti Hybrid only costs 500us brand new.

 

the 1060 should be around 300us. If you want a card less than 300us then pick up a 390, better value than the 970.

Everything seems to be $50 more expensive here than what you described.

While browsing I saw this MSI 980 at $319. I totally would have jumped on it if I had the money right now.

 

I was looking at the 390's also, but I'm going to hold out for a price drop on those since the AMD 380 and 480 are the same prices currently. Which still baffles me.

[App4that]

1 hour ago, Rubymaster said:

Everything seems to be $50 more expensive here than what you described.

While browsing I saw this MSI 980 at $319. I totally would have jumped on it if I had the money right now.

 

I was looking at the 390's also, but I'm going to hold out for a price drop on those since the AMD 380 and 480 are the same prices currently. Which still baffles me.

Yeah, you have to catch the sales when they happen. The 390 is a good card, I had a Nitro and it was good for just about everything at 1080p. Biggest improvement with Polaris is power usage. Why I'd still take a 390 over a 480. If Sapphire figures out the power on the 480 then maybe it will be worth buying.

[Rubymaster]

Update for everyone:
I got a EVGA FTW 970 for $200 on eBay! I got tired of waiting for the AIB partners to release rx 480's and the benchmarks for the 1060's were not out yet. (but everyone keeps saying they'll be out "soon")

A friend let me borrow his reference 970 (he's buying his computer slowly in parts, against my advice, and couldn't use it yet) and it ran everything I wanted to perfectly. I did learn that I didn't want a reference cooler though. I couldn't stand the noise it made.

 

Thank you all for you help!