RX XXX VS GTX 10XX for low spec or old system gaming?

[Zilog]

This is not intended as a fanboy type question but just wondering if anyone has done tests on the newest cards on lower spec or old systems? In general the addition of a modern graphics hardware is a great way of cheaply transforming a relatively mundane system in to a perfectly usable gaming system. Often however graphics card perform radically different on lower spec systems than what reviews on high spec systems may show.

For example if we skip back a few generation and have a look at some of the higher spec cards from NV and AMD they both made some great cards but that had interesting quirks. The NV cards for example are a bit more picky about the PCIe bus. If you don't have a full 16 lanes to play with or are stuck with older PCIe 1.0 slots the NV cards would see a greater hit in performance than AMDs. These older NV cards also have a slightly less complete implementation of DX12. In some rare occasions with games that NV cards would have to fall back on the CPU for the missing compute. In so games that required this were far more effected by CPU performance on NV cards than AMDs. The NV cards did have an ace up there sleeve in Physx. AMDs cards had no hardware implementation of Physx so any games supporting this would be greatly effected by the performance of the CPU in the system unless the effects are disabled. Knowing these traits can greatly help many pick the card that would get the most out of there system and the games they intend to play.

So I am wondering if anyone has done any similar investigation in to the newest generation of chips? Have things changed much?

 

[Zilog]

Just stumbled across a video that actually sheds some insight on the subject. if anyone is interested this is the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjZ3MmxP0Fg

 

[daxzy]

Just stumbled across a video that actually sheds some insight on the subject. if anyone is interested this is the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjZ3MmxP0Fg

It's an old review so the results are just a data point now.

 

[MrTeal]

Honestly, unless you're really worried about power consumption if you're looking at transforming a 5+ year old system to a gaming rig you might as well look at the used market for your GPU as well. New GPUs aren't terrible values, but you can buy a good aftermarket cooler 290 for decently less than a 4GB RX470 while being higher performing. nVidia is tough since they hold resale value so well, but if you're holding on to a Nehalem system without a planned upgrade path, an old AMD GPU isn't a bad option if you can find a gamer card instead of a miner card.

 

[ConsoleLover]

From what I've seen just from various youtube videos of people with varying CPU's and the RX 480 and 1060 gpu's when I was looking for what GPU to buy, it seems that there is no significant difference in terms of Nvidia or AMD, with eurogamers youtube tech channel showing somewhere up to 10% difference in performance when using older CPU's, same goes when using slower ram for example.

Unless you have a really old CPU, I wouldn't worry too much about it, though it seems as if Nvidia cards like the 1060 are a tiny bit better in few of the games when using older CPU's. Anything from Intel I5 2000 series and up would be perfectly fine and there won't be any significant difference.

 

[Madpacket]

For DX11 Nvidia is still generally faster with slower multithreaded CPU's but AMD has caught up in DX11 pretty significantly with newer drivers. I believe as long as you shoot for second gen GCN or newer you should be fine. GCN 1.0 is starting to lose some of the more advanced support due to lack of ACE's so I would shoot for at least a Hawaii based GPU or newer if buying used AMD.

The 1050 Ti's are pretty decent cards but depending where you live can be much too close in price to the RX 470 which is quite a bit faster at the expense of power consumption. Personally I think the 4GB 480's offer the best bang for the buck if you catch a decent sale, but some will argue 4GB isn't enough. XFX, MSI and Sapphire make decent RX 480 cards. The other brands aren't bad but read reviews as they may have certain limitations.

The 3GB 1060 is decently fast but has some frametime issues likely due to RAM limitations, a little unbalanced. It benches well on paper but the 470 is probably a smarter purchase if both are at the same price.