And graphic card

[swaglordchris]

I've had my graphics card for about one year and I'm wondering when is the best time I should upgrade or replace it ?

 

[cdabc123]

what is it?

 

[Gam3r01]

When it doesnt fulfill your needs anymore.
I can still run games that I play on high/ultra with my 760. So I am not in the market for an upgrade.

 

[swaglordchris]

My graphic card is a xfx r9 280x

 

[mdsiu]

When you move to a higher resolution screen, if you are upgrading from a very budget GPU to a higher end GPU, etc.

What do you have now? What CPU do you have? What resolution do you game at?

 

[GamingMaster]

The r9 280X isnt a bad card. The r9 Fury X is coming out so its probably best to sell it now or near future.

 

[Gam3r01]

The Fury X is already out, and the 980Ti is a better card.
Dont look into upgrades until your current card fails to do what you want. You dont have to upgrade because its been a certain time period.

 

[swaglordchris]

I have the xfx readon r9 280x and a 6 core and processor and I game at the max resolution I can @mdsiu

 

[pete_101]

Are you not happy with the card's performance anymore? Unless you enjoy spending money to always have the latest stuff, there is no need to upgrade until what you have is no longer fulfilling it's purpose. Graphics cards can last for many years and the only reason to upgrade is because you are either playing in higher resolutions than earlier or the latest games run too slow. OR you simply want to have a more powerful GPU and max out everything you play.

 

[mdsiu]

I have the xfx readon r9 280x and a 6 core and processor and I game at the max resolution I can @mdsiu

Sounds like you are happy with what you have and not looking to upgrade.

 

[MarkW]

The time to replace it is when you are no longer happy with its performance in the games that you play. Until then, you are happy. Why change anything?

Sometimes, even once you reach the point where you start wondering if it isn't time to upgrade, there is nothing at a reasonable price that would be worth the money to do the upgrade. So then it is a waiting game to see what comes out in the next wave of video cards.

Right now, both AMD and Nvidia have been stuck at the 28nm node for nearly 4 years. Both had planned on moving to 20nm several years ago, but TMSC, the fab both companies rely on to make their GPU's, never released the technology on the 20nm node to allow for GPU's to be very high performance.

Now TMSC has created the high performance technology that both companies need on the 14nm/16nm node to create high performance GPU's. Rumors say both companies have already taped out their next GPU. Now the process of making first run silicon starts, and then months of testing, evaluating the silicon, and the beginning of new driver code begins. Sometimes they find issues with the silicon, and have to make modifications, and start all over with a new tape out. Eventually, they have silicon they can sell, and they go into production.

At this point, a good guess on when we might see some of these new smaller but faster chips is second quarter next year.

So when to upgrade is when you want something faster, and there is a faster GPU available at a price you are willing to pay.

 

[rhysiam]

Graphics cards have been stuck on 28nm since the 7970 (interestingly, basically the identical card to our 280x) was released in late 2011. It's looking like next year we'll finally be seeing cards on 16nm, which is actually a double jump because the 20nm process never saw the light of day in graphics cards. You can add to that the benefits from HBM of speed, power efficiency and size, and (we expect) HBM v2 addressing the 4GB limitation that the first generation cards have (like the Fury & Fury X).

There are good grounds to expect 2016 releases will show some pretty substantial performance and efficiency boots in graphics.

You can always wait for the 'next thing' in computing, but given you have a working card that's doing the job, and there are real signs of substantial improvements in the next 12-18 months, my advice would absolutely be to save and wait for next year.