No one is going over 1080p with this card and the difference between 2GB and 4GB version of this card offer no performance increase in the majority of games at any kind of reasonable settings for the card. Even when allocated mory exceeds the 2GB. The only real exception being Vulkan Doom with very high settings.

Now £99.98

It needs dedicated decoding hardware built in (as all graphics cards have these days for h264 video). At the moment the lowest end graphics cards that can do it are this and maybe the gtx 950 I'm not 100% on that. There are others with partial hardware decoding (meaning it still takes some CPU processing power as well, or that they can do 8 bit but not 10 bit decoding). It's also supported by the built in graphics on some newer processors.

Alternatively a reasonably powerful processor like an Intel quad core can do it fully via software but thats dependant on resolution/bitrate (so a low end processor might manage 720p but not 1080p, and high bitrate 4k video would take quite a strong processor to decode smoothly and use a lot of power doing it. That's a bit vague because I haven't tested it extensively.

Awesome, thanks! Kinda new to this

What is actually needed to do this?

Thanks

How does this compare to a sapphire r9 270x toxic edition?

I picked one up for £70 at cex, wondering if I got a deal

Well I do hold a grudge, particularly when they act aggressively and try to dodge their legal responsibilities. Similar situation to yourself which wouldn't have occurred if I had used a proper retailer, such as Amazon. Lesson learnt, don't use Scam again.

Decent but 2GB really is the barest minimum to have in a graphics card these days. Even keeping the resolution down to 1080P you are going to be struggling to maintain high settings on newer titles. Not necessarily saying pay more though. As always the case if you are willing to step back one, even two generations, you can buy a lot more performance to the pound. Yes, that will mean buying from places like eBay and perhaps buying used but doing so can net you a lot more card for the same money. I got a highly factory overclocked GTX780 for about the same price as this, which performs at the same level as a GTX970 and to my delight I found it even has HDMI 2.0, which was super rare back then.

Not unless Scam have improved their aftersales customer care by 100%, I wouldn't touch these shysters with a barge pole.

Will this card be good enough to playback 4k 60fps content or even 5k?

Ebuyer have same model (different OEM) for a few quid less, with free shipping.

http://www.ebuyer.com/754200-powercolor-red-dragon-rx460-graphics-card-ebuyer-com-axrx-460-2gbd5-dh-oc?mkwid=s_dc&pcrid=51482416379&pkw=&pmt=&gclid=Cj0KEQjwo5--BRCS8ceLjv-XppUBEiQAGp15EGNI2FrlvqULfOPzmwlinDui9IJ5LneP6yiEPzM-MfAaAj4Y8P8HAQ

"I think a second hand R9 270x is a better choice" i think also

I realise I could wait for that but it would require a system upgrade which is pointless on a system which is also a home server with many hard drives. It would be a relatively minor drop in power consumption for what would be most likely a larger cost outlay than just getting one of these, and having to wait. By which time I could get a used one if these for less than this anyway... This really is looking like the cheapest option overkill though it obviously is.

I've been tempted by this because i want a card with low power requirements that can properly handle h265 video, gaming performance is not of real concern because i have a more powerful pc for gaming already, but im holding off for now because its ridiculous overkill for that purpose but its the best cheapest option currently. I wonder if they will release a lower end card any time soon... Alternative suggestions gladly accepted.

people on a budget would like this, good deal if it does everything you need.

I think a second hand R9 270x is a better choice

Second hand 780/970s are £130+ plus the extra power consumption.

It's pretty close, older games favour the 780 latest games favour the 970, but I don't just play the latest games and it isn't a 'normal' card as it has a decent overclock as standard and a huge triple fan cooler so could probably take a bit more OC if I ever needed to...

would this crossfire with a 7970 ?

Still packs more power than the ps4