Seems like a deal... (at least, DAMN, is that all mine is worth now??)

Looks like it's gone down further, to £156!

Lot of card for a relatively little money - especially if you qualify for free delivery. It is going to be a hot and noisy way to get a thank you card from your electricity supplier though.......

I may be upgrading this Black Friday/Cyber Monday....... damn you sales!........

so are these power hungry, is a 970 more efficient

Around 250W. For comparison, an R9 280 is 225W. It will keep you warm in winter :smirk:

I'm considering this as an upgrade for my 7870. I only game at 1080p so will the 3gb be enough? Or hang on for a 290/390 deal? Decisions decisions.

That actually isn't as bad as I thought. Obviously the furmark result is pretty bad, but furmark is designed to stress test the crap out of a card and push it to its limits. The Crysis result is a much better judge of real world performance.

Amount of VRAM used and the amount needed are completely different. And it depends completely on resolution and settings as well. Most games I play don't exceed 2.5GB.

Decent if you manage to overclock it safely, you can pretty much get the same performance as a 970 for a fraction of the price, minus .5gb vram. Heat added.

Of course they are different, don't patronize me, but logic suggest that 3GB days are numbered just as 2GB already is. Are you seriously, in all your infinite wisdom REV6, suggesting this is not the case??
Come on, you are supposed to be helpful.
Your suggested 2.5GB is nearing that 3GB limit already.
AMD or NVidia < 3GB GPU either is or will cause problems in the near future.

It goes gtx780 < amd 280x < gtx780 < amd 290x. I have a 290x and that just plays Fallout 4 on Ultra at 1080p. So I would very very much doubt a gtx780 could deal with it. I have a i7-3770k and 16GB of ram btw.
But yeah, 3GB is plenty for 1080p, just anything below a 290, 290x or gtx970 would struggle with GTA V and Flallout 4 on ultra.

Here is a comparison the card against some more recent cards from the nVidia website. Performance is closer to that of a GTX 970 than a 960 - i'd even say exactly between a 980 and a 960. Of course this is just one chart using one test but from what i've generally read that sounds about right. Very hot for the price, i'd get one myself but I bought a similar performance card from the red team for a similar price a few weeks back.

Damn.... I just bought a Radeon R9 380 4GB card last night for around £170. Is it worth returning the 380 and getting this? I want the card to last quite a few years before the next upgrade.

Don't feel insulted every time someone questions your logic.
I just said, VRAM used and needed are completely different, I also said that most games I use don't exceed 2.5GB. You're saying 4GB and more is the minimum. I don't think so.

Insulted by you, lol no. Im just pointing out your childish ways when you know full well I know the difference.
As you are in that mode so will I be. Learn to comprehend properly. 3GB is not enough if you plan on keeping this GPU longer than 6 months. Why do you think AMD and Nvidia are no longer releasing 3GB < GPU's anymore. Christ, if what you say is true they should still be manufacturing them. Perhaps you should ask one of them for a job as it seems you could help them cut costs by lowering the amount of VRAM in their GPU's.

Childish ways? I think you need to read what I said again, maybe a few more times.

What are you talking about they don't release GPU's with < 3GB?

AMD R9 285/380 were 2GB VRAM GPU.s
GTX 950/960

People buy bigger numbers you know that.

3GB VRAM is going to be obsolete in 6 months. How would you know that?

Someone has asked if this card with 3GB is a good upgrade from their 7870 (a £75 card second hand) for 1080p gaming. At this price there is absolutely no point in getting 4GB of memory because the card won't be powerful enough to get to the point where it needs 4GB.

rev6 has phrased everything very reasonably and in my opinion is 100% right, so ease of a bit maybe.

Obsolete:
no longer produced or used; out of date.

As far as manufacturing is concerned, 3GB is already obsolete.
I did NOT, again learn to comprehend, say that 3GB< GPU's will be outdated in six months, I did suggest they will struggle more by that time which they will.


2GB GPU's have not been manufactured for at least the last six months for the obvious reason that you are failing to comprehend. I'm done with you and your infinite wisdom. There is enough dialog here to warrant people read further into it if they choose.

The GPU's you highlight were released a long time ago - They don't make them anymore!

Actually you are wrong, this card is powerful enough to use 4GB if it were available.

If the question was "I want to be able to play at 1080p and ultra on all the latest games over the next 2/3 years, will this be enough?"

I would say no, but not because it has 3GB of ram, but because it is a £165 card and would not be powerful enough in general. Has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of ram.
But I'm not sure if that was the question and it's tricky to answer without saying what settings they game at and what titles they play.

but at unplayable fps

3GB is generally fine for 1080p right now. A 4GB obviously offers better future-proofing. Personally I think that memory usage is only moving in one direction...

Passmark G3D Mark Scores from http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

GeForce GTX 970 - 8656
Geforce GTX 780 - 8028
Radeon R9 390 - 6772
Geforce GTX 770 - 6145
Radeon R9 380 - 5547
Radeon R9 280X - 5225

Personally I am only buying 3GB or above, interesting to think they've made 4GB cards that aren't actually powerful enough to use that...or is that rumour control trying to justify when they only have 2GB?

@Overclockers, if I spend over £100 with you I would expect free delivery, integrate it into the price as this rant and your policy makes us both look cheap.

Passmark isn't a good place to look for gaming. The 780 is much higher than the 290x, but in gaming, the 290x will outperform in most things, maybe minimum FPS will be higher on the 780 (AMD drivers) but that's about it.

http://forums.evga.com/VRAM-Usage-at-5760x1080-Read-and-decide-if-the-GTX-78039s-3GB-is-enough-m1959317.aspx

Guy testing gtx780 at 5760x1080, only one game does the gtx780 use more than 3GB and that is at unplayable fps.

I've got a 650Ti Boost and don't know what's the next upgrade step for me ? ? ?

Okay thanks for the input. I'll stick with my current card.

​Seconded. A 390 definitely wouldn't perform worse than a 780. If you take into account the margin by which the 780 is supposed to be ahead it's clearly not right. A 390 trades punches with a 970 at 1080p (970 perhaps being a little better) and the 390 just about beats it 1440p and increases the margin at 4K.

IMHO I think all 3 cards are very good and will perform to an acceptable level up to 1440p right now. Get the cheapest one to do you for now, then wait till Pascal is released in 9-12 months and price dropped in 18. Might be a better investment to go large with the next family of cards cause they supposedly are going to massively jump up in performance - which could mean they could last for longer.

Would be ok to replace my old GTX260, it's an old gaming PC and I'm looking to update it all after Christmas, but looking for something I can just use in it now until I upgrade. I only play iracing. I've also just bought a 600w bronze PSU. What MB and CPU would be half decent to go with this.

better start spamming them posts

Excellent price.

I bought one of these 2nd hand in April for £180 and it really is very very fast. Maxing out everything at 1080p so far.

nice deal, I bought a 780 evga sc acx from amazon for 160 lets hope its a B1 revision, its coming tomoz

Ditto, almost purchased the 6GB version of this for £199 last night. I then spent a few minutes on google to find out they are crippling the 7 series cards in driver updates.

Found a gtx 970 for £224.99 inc delivery and so tempted.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/ZOTAC-GeForce-Blower-Graphics-256bit/dp/B00PLC0COG/ref=sr_1_49?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1448551746&sr=1-49&keywords=r9+390

Honey, I found a great black friday deal for a 3 fan heater...

You are categorically wrong on this one. NVIDIA and AMD both are actively manufacturing 2GB cards.

Not sure how many people need to counter this, but we've all "read further into it" and the fact remains, they both are producing 2GB cards.

960 for NVIDIA and AMD 380 are the best examples.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Radeon_Rx_300_series

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_900_series

But, you know, you could just call everyone childish for going against your word, up to you.

Already mentioned this, but it seems they overlooked... It's like saying 4 core CPU's are useless soon because we have 6/8+ cores. Developers need to target the most market otherwise what's the point. Crysis is usually the only real game that pushes the envelope, but apart from that, not many do.

madness - my GTX 770 4GB with sizeable factory overclock (coupled with i5-2500K @ 4.8GHz and read from an Intel 530 SSD copes just fine with ultra - maybe others are skimping on HD & CPU - of course benchmarks are apples & pears in my experience as everyone's configs are so different

GTA V everything maxed out even Advanced Settings? What FPS do you get.

I've got this on XB1 so never bothered (transferred characters from 360) - I heard it's a real hog - doubt I'd get 60fps, but I'd be surprised if I didn't get a very playable 45-50fps @ 1080p - however all speculation on my part and we'll never know. Witcher 3 with max settings @ 1080p does about 45-50fps, you get the idea

I find GTA V more optimized than The Witcher 3... Rockstar did a great job.

Unfortunately: not available anymore :disappointed:

Oos :disappointed: