Upgrade a RX480 8gb or not?

[IFR2015]

Hi everyone,

Just got an amazing deal on a AOC Agon 31.5" 144 hz monitor. I have a XFX RX480 8gb and was wondering if it's a good idea to upgrade the graphics card too. I use this CPU to work and some FPS gamming (pubg, csgo etc). Don't mind setting everything on ultra, and I actually run csgo on the lowest settings 4:3 stretched on a Sony TV. Now with this new AOC things might change. I wasn't thinking about upgrading now so cheaper is better if possible. Amd Vega cards are really expensive now so I'm considering maybe an used Vega 56 around U$350-400 because of the Freesync, or an used 1080 non TI (would lose the freesync) or even a RX 580 and save some money. The RTX2080 just came out and maybe prices will go down, so the last option is to keep this RX 480 and maybe wait a Black Friday deal and spend U$300-400 on a new card or even don't upgrade at all. I read a lot of opinions saying that Freesync is not that important and I should buy the 1080, others say Freesync it's a must and others say that I should stick with the RX480 because upgrading to a RX580 isn't worth it. All suggestions are welcome, thank you!

i7 6700k
24gb HyperX 2133hz DDR4
Corsair CX600 80plus bronze
AMD Radeon XFX RX480 8gb

 

[gmmichaeljiang]

Since Freesync is open source, most monitors will have freesync. If you get a good deal on an nvidia card, take it if you don't mind the screen tearing. However, if I were you, I would wait for a good deal on a vega card or just stick with the rx 480. In fact, the rx 480 is only about 10% worse than the gtx 1060. Sticking with the rx480 for 1 more year or so wouldn't hurt while you wait for gpu prices to decrease.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

What resolution is the monitor? rx480 is pretty powerful at 1080p but if running at higher resolution you may want an upgrade. since you dont mind lower settings at 1080p the 480 should make use of the higher refresh rate of that monitor. If you do upgrade the rx580 is only marginally faster than the 480 so i would not reccomend that route. this can be seen here
http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-RX-580-vs-AMD-RX-480/3923vs3634

 

[gmmichaeljiang]

The monitor is 1080p because he is getting the freesync version of the 31.5" agon

 

[renz496]

First about Freesync: while it is a good feature it only matter a lot low frame rate (usually below 60). At high frame rates the return starts diminishing and to some people screen tearing becoming much less an issue at very high frame rates. That's why for nvidia Gsync owners at high frame rate they turn off Gsync and instead enabling ULMB. So you can make your decision based on this info.

About upgrading to be honest i'm not sure if price will go down further. With nvidia pricing their new series much higher than their previous series the 10 series will not drop much in price. At the very least they go back more in line with it's original pricing after crazy hike during the mining craze. AMD probably have no intention to officially drop vega price either.

Going with RX580 will not going to improve your performance that much. RX580 just an overclocked RX480....with massive power increase in tow.

 

[IFR2015]

Since Freesync is open source, most monitors will have freesync. If you get a good deal on an nvidia card, take it if you don't mind the screen tearing. However, if I were you, I would wait for a good deal on a vega card or just stick with the rx 480. In fact, the rx 480 is only about 10% worse than the gtx 1060. Sticking with the rx480 for 1 more year or so wouldn't hurt while you wait for gpu prices to decrease.

First about Freesync: while it is a good feature it only matter a lot low frame rate (usually below 60). At high frame rates the return starts diminishing and to some people screen tearing becoming much less an issue at very high frame rates. That's why for nvidia Gsync owners at high frame rate they turn off Gsync and instead enabling ULMB. So you can make your decision based on this info.

About upgrading to be honest i'm not sure if price will go down further. With nvidia pricing their new series much higher than their previous series the 10 series will not drop much in price. At the very least they go back more in line with it's original pricing after crazy hike during the mining craze. AMD probably have no intention to officially drop vega price either.

Going with RX580 will not going to improve your performance that much. RX580 just an overclocked RX480....with massive power increase in tow.

Thank you all for these really quick replies! The monitor will be on 1080p, and when I play I go even lower to boost the fps, I think I'll keep my RX480 for now. I'll search a bit more cause I'm not an expert but I still didn't quite get the reason that on higher frame rates Freesync doesn't matter much and some people turn off Gsync, that would definately make me buy a 1080 later this year because it's much cheaper per fps than the Vega.

 

[renz496]

The idea behind VRR (varriable refresh rates) is to match monitor frequency with frame rates. That way the "slowdown" or smootheness we see in game when frame rate going down is lessen. But at high frame rate we might not see a diffrence in smoothness between for example 90fps and 80fps. For majority of people 60fps is already very good. Even frame rate jumping between 50 to 60 are not really that distracting for most people. For people with Gsync monitors they have options to enabled ULMB and disabled Gsync (The two cannot be activated at the same time). For freesync based monitors capabilities like ULMB are manufacturer dependent. They have to include their own tech similar to ULMB though the restriction should be the same as Gsync monitors: VRR cannot be activated along side low motion blur effect. It must be one way or another.