GTX 980 vs RX-480?

[Ottonomous]

Currently situated in my home country (basically outside of modern civilization) and considering importing a card for my 2500K

I have 200-225 bucks and the options used are the GTX 980, 970, RX-480 - 290X are extremely hard to come by

Would the 480 be better because of DX12 perf?
Should I not buy altogether?
How do I stress test it for stability during the return period (wprime equivalent for how many hours), including VRM stability?
And would the performance delta from the 2500K mean it'd be better to consider a new setup altogether? (I think with an OC its still within 30% of new CPUs in games?)
Will the 4GB VRAM cause problems at 1080p?

Edit: formatting to make text look proper, plus VRAM question

 

[Guru]

GTX 980 is the best in performance overall. The RX 480 is generally 3-4% slower than the 1060 6GB at reference clocks, of course you can always OC, most 480's used to reach 1400MHz, though they do end up consuming up to 190W with that kind of OC.

The GTX 1060 6GB is basically 2-3% slower than the GTX 980 in most games, so even in DX12 the RX 480 won't overtake the GTX 980, except maybe in very few titles like Wolfenstein 2, COD infinite wars, Doom.

The 4GB of the GTX 980 won't be a problem for most games, but I admit its not the best case scenario. There are some games where you'd have to lower some settings like textures and stuff to make sure it doesn't affect performance due to vram usage. This shouldn't be a problem for most games, but again some games do use a lot of vram like Deus EX, RE7, ROTTR, etc... My GTX 1060 6GB was close to being maxed in a lot of scenes in ROTTR, RE7, COD:WW2 does end up filling up most of the vram, but it doesn't use all of it, it just likes to store stuff in memory.

For example when I was buying my gpu, I was considering the cheaper 3GB option, but just for piece of mind I went with the 6GB version, even though it was $60 more expensive. I have to say I made the right decision, because I would have had second thoughts all the time with 3GB and considering the 3GB is a cutdown as well it would have performance at least 10% slower generally.

So you either go for the GTX 980 which would provide you with the most performance, but it does consume more power and you require 2x6pins, some models require 8pin and 6pin connectors, so make sure your PSU does have the required pins.

 

[Shmee]

Which 480 are you looking at? Some have 8GB RAM. If possible, I would go with one of those.

 

[Ottonomous]

GTX 980 is the best in performance overall. The RX 480 is generally 3-4% slower than the 1060 6GB at reference clocks, of course you can always OC, most 480's used to reach 1400MHz, though they do end up consuming up to 190W with that kind of OC.

The GTX 1060 6GB is basically 2-3% slower than the GTX 980 in most games, so even in DX12 the RX 480 won't overtake the GTX 980, except maybe in very few titles like Wolfenstein 2, COD infinite wars, Doom.

The 4GB of the GTX 980 won't be a problem for most games, but I admit its not the best case scenario. There are some games where you'd have to lower some settings like textures and stuff to make sure it doesn't affect performance due to vram usage. This shouldn't be a problem for most games, but again some games do use a lot of vram like Deus EX, RE7, ROTTR, etc... My GTX 1060 6GB was close to being maxed in a lot of scenes in ROTTR, RE7, COD:WW2 does end up filling up most of the vram, but it doesn't use all of it, it just likes to store stuff in memory.

For example when I was buying my gpu, I was considering the cheaper 3GB option, but just for piece of mind I went with the 6GB version, even though it was $60 more expensive. I have to say I made the right decision, because I would have had second thoughts all the time with 3GB and considering the 3GB is a cutdown as well it would have performance at least 10% slower generally.

So you either go for the GTX 980 which would provide you with the most performance, but it does consume more power and you require 2x6pins, some models require 8pin and 6pin connectors, so make sure your PSU does have the required pins.

Thank you so much for that detailed response, you're a rockstar.

Which 480 are you looking at? Some have 8GB RAM. If possible, I would go with one of those.

Haven't found one but I was thinking a lot about this, 8GB are hard to come by in the market itself, AMD cards in general as well. I want the nvidia because of the assurance, should I just focus on nvidia at this point?

I found a Gaming G1 980 4GB but he wants 300, too steep, I said maybe 250 within 2 weeks as a placeholder. Some other guy has an eVGA 980 4GB SC and the final bid was 200, maybe 225 so I want to give it a wait and look for cards

I am thinking the 250 'placeholder' was a mistake, maybe I should've tried 200 and then 225

 

[guskline]

Ottonomous, what gpu are you using now?

 

[Ottonomous]

Ottonomous, what gpu are you using now?

My old trusty Gigabyte 560 - I sold my GTX 970 Gaming G1 for the embarrassing price of 170 USD equiv. after a panic over currency here and personal finances. I think the idiocy in transitioning to a GTX 980 is obvious

 

[Headfoot]

honestly, of those cards, they are all close enough that I would just get whatever you can actually find at a decent price. The difference between them dont matter if you cant obtain one.