Question NVIDIA 550 ti --- swapping in an RX 460 worth it?

[CuriousMike]

Friends son has a fairly stout i7-4790k with 32GB of RAM paired with an Nvidia 550 ti.
It's hard for me to come to a conclusion how fast/slow that 550TI is - seemingly it's ~ 1030 speed? Or slower?

I have a spare AMD RX 460 2GB that I was thinking of swapping in, but I'd only want to do it if it was a good upgrade... where good would be... I dunno, at least 30-50% faster on most e-titles ?

 

[LTC8K6]

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html

You can find those cards on the hierarchy chart.

It's not a huge upgrade.

 

[SPBHM]

it's a big upgrade,
550 ti = 192 shaders,
even the 1030 can keep up with the gtx 570 (480 shaders)
and the rx 460 is a lot faster than the 1030

and Fermi is very poorly supported on many newer games, so the difference will often be massive..
not to mention 1 vs 2GB

 

[CuriousMike]

Thanks SPBHM !
Looking at the chart LTC put up, I'm not sure why he's saying not a huge upgrade.
It looks big --- unless I'm reading the chart wrong.
gpudiff by CuriousMike, on Flickr

 

[mohit9206]

Big upgrade yes go for it.

 

[NTMBK]

Big improvement!

 

[LTC8K6]

Well, the 2gb of VRAM is what tempered my opinion of the upgrade. I think it would be huge with 4gb.

 

[Mopetar]

It's actually quite a big difference. It isn't a perfect comparison, but the 260X has the same 896 shaders and a similar base clock to the 460 so we can use AT's old GPU benches which have the 550 Ti: https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1133?vs=1044

It should be at least twice the performance, possibly even more depending on the situation and how well it can sustain the boost clock.

 

[LTC8K6]

It's actually quite a big difference. It isn't a perfect comparison, but the 260X has the same 896 shaders and a similar base clock to the 460 so we can use AT's old GPU benches which have the 550 Ti: https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1133?vs=1044

It should be at least twice the performance, possibly even more depending on the situation and how well it can sustain the boost clock.

Okay, that's a good example as that 260X had 2gb.

 

[CuriousMike]

but the 260X has the same 896 shaders and a similar base clock to the 460

Excellent - thanks for this comparison.

The good thing about the 460 is with a BIOS flash, it unlocked to 1024 SP's - I think it was only worth 5-10% more performance, but that's free extra frames.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The good thing about the 460 is with a BIOS flash, it unlocked to 1024 SP's - I think it was only worth 5-10% more performance, but that's free extra frames.

And then the need to run modded/hacked kernel drivers from then on, because the official AMD ones check for unlocked shaders/BIOS mods, and they won't load on those cards. (You get MS Basic Display Adapter (VGA).)

 

[CuriousMike]

And then the need to run modded/hacked kernel drivers from then on, because the official AMD ones check for unlocked shaders/BIOS mods, and they won't load on those cards. (You get MS Basic Display Adapter (VGA).)

True. However, whenever I did this I was directed to an executable (atikmdag-patcher-bios) that I've kept in my Google Drive that has worked for every driver I threw at it ( until I retired it about 6 months ago ).