4 GB HBM enough for 1600p @ 60Hz?

[Shmee]

The season is upon us, and I was wondering how long you guys think a Fury(x) would be good enough for my setup. I was looking at some of the Fury Nitro deals, and may be wanting to sell/(gift) a 290 or two.

I would possibly unlock the card (if at all possible), but would not go Crossfire atm, for several reasons. So I am thinking, would a single Fury(x) be enough for a while? Also, anyone have recent benches of 290 crossfire vs Fury(x) single card?

System in sig, running win 10 pro.

 

[raghu78]

I think a GPU upgrade now is not advisable. With 16/14nm FINFET GPUs scheduled to launch in mid-2016. 4 GB HBM capacity is also an issue given how many console ports are using up massive amounts of VRAM at the highest settings. I would say stick with your R9 290s and wait for Arctic Islands / Pascal. I expect the next gen GPUs to be significant improvements and built from the ground up for DX12.

 

[RussianSensation]

If you are going to upgrade, I'd consider a GTX980Ti. I know this is an AMD section but...Fury / X have almost no overclocking headroom while 980Ti has another 8-10% on top of this:

I just can't recommend a $500 Fury or $600-650 Fury X when cards like R9 390 can be had for $235 or even $215 if stacking AMEX+Visa Checkout together. I think if you are going to upgrade now and don't want to wait for 16nm cards, 1.5Ghz 980Ti is the way to go.

If you want to stick with AMD, maybe just wait until 2016 and go all out then and you can gift/sell both of those 290s.

 

[Shmee]

Hmm, I was actually considering Fury < $450 shipped and hoping for an unlock. But I definitely understand the argument of waiting for the major dieshrink/architecture improvement. At what price do you think a fury would make more sense?

Also, how does a 390 play with a 290, any data there?

 

[.vodka]

390 and 290 are both Hawaii based, so there shouldn't be any issues trying to crossfire them. Even if you were to throw a 290x or 390x in there, it would still work. As long as it's the same GPU, it will work.

I'd also recommend waiting for the next wave of cards. Arctic Islands/Pascal + 16/14nm FF + HBM2 should make 980Ti/FuryX look like toys in comparison. It's an advancement on all three fronts at once, fabrication, architecture and memory tech.

Your two 290s should hold you over just fine until then. It's certain one of those new cards could very easily replace 2 290s, with performance to spare I'd like to think, at a fraction of power consumption.


Fury cards are nice and 4GB vram is enough for the foreseeable future, the new radeon crimson driver coming out today is to improve performance across the board if the leaked slides are to be believed, but a single one (vanilla or X) is actually a downgrade if coming from 290 CF.

 

[Mondozei]

There are two seperate discussions here. The first is which exact GPU you should get, which is one strand of the debate, the second, and the one I'll try to answer here, is whether 4 GB of VRAM is enough at 1600p.

The answer is most probably yes, even if it likely goes against conventional wisdom. I mean, even in highly VRAM intensive games like Shadow of Mordor, you're are fine with 4 GB of VRAM at 4K. And that's with the less advanced architecture of Hawaii, while both Tonga and Fiji have improved upon that in terms of memory bandwidth compression.

So 4 GB of VRAM at 1600p should be fine, absolutely.

 

[Mondozei]

As for which GPU to get, I'd say the non-X fury is a good buy. It gets progressively better as you go up in resolution and should net you around 60 fps with the right tweaks in most games with fairly high visual fidelity.

The Fiji GPUs also have color compression which helps them a lot with memory bandwidth so it's important to understand that not all 4 GB of VRAM is the same. Architecture matters and this is also why the 285(Tonga) could have the same memory bandwidth as the 280X yet have a lower memory bit count. Architectural improvements. This should also help you with Fury.

Of course, if you have an unlimited budget, then MSI 980 Ti LE is the leading contender, but if you don't then I'd say the non-X Fury is a good value card for 1600p in the same way the 280X is a good value card for 1080p.

You don't get the best but you don't struggle to get by either and you do so for a relatively cheap price.

 

[Shmee]

Thanks, I may get a fury for the lulz if I can get it cheap enough, if not, I will wait for 16nm, as many, including myself in the past, have recommended.

 

[raghu78]

Thanks, I may get a fury for the lulz if I can get it cheap enough, if not, I will wait for 16nm, as many, including myself in the past, have recommended.

Resist your urge and sit tight for another 8-9 months. You will be happy you did. :thumbsup:

 

[Shmee]

Ya that's probably best