Worth switching from gtx 970 to rx 480 for freesync?

[terwilliger]

Hello! I'm a first time poster, though this site has helped me a lot out with questions and problems by finding other posts. I'm posting to ask some advice on graphics cards.

I have a asus gtx 970 strix, which I'm generally still very pleased with except for the matter of choosing between occasional stutter with vsync enabled or tearing with it off. However, I recently purchased a 2560x1080 ultrawide monitor (75hz vs 60 in my old which has exacerbated the vsync issue..) that has support for freesync but not g-sync, and I've been thinking about selling off my 970 and replacing it with a rx 480 8gb.

I have read and watched many reviews and in general the 970 seems to be the faster card in terms of frame rate so I'm having a hard time deciding. I'd appreciate any advice from people experienced with this if it is worth taking a (sometimes substantial) frame rate hit in exchange for gaining freesync.

 

[koreanoverlord]

Hello! I'm a first time poster, though this site has helped me a lot out with questions and problems by finding other posts. I'm posting to ask some advice on graphics cards.

I have a asus gtx 970 strix, which I'm generally still very pleased with except for the matter between of choosing occasional stutter stutter with vsync enabled or tearing with it off. However, I recently purchased a 2560x1080 ultrawide monitor (75hz vs 60 in my old which has exacerbated the vsync issue..) that has support for freesync but not g-sync, and I've been thinking about selling off my 970 and replacing it with a rx 480 8gb.

I have read and watched many reviews and in general the 970 seems to be the faster card in terms of frame rate so I'm having a hard time deciding. I'd appreciate any advice from people experienced with this if it is worth taking a (sometimes substantial) frame rate hit in exchange for gaining freesync.

The 480 has had improvements in drivers since launch. I would expect it to beat a 970 in most games. However the performance will be nearly the same.

What games are you playing? We will not see Vega for a while and the 500 series is a rebrand.

If you decide to get a 480 it will be a sidegrade (with some DX12/Vulkan benefits).

 

[king3pj]

As someone who uses a 1440p 144Hz G-Sync monitor with a GTX 1070 I can tell you that these adaptive sync technologies are a pretty amazing improvement. That being said I would probably try to wait it out for Vega. If you are going to buy a new GPU for Freesync support you might as well get one that offers a noticeable performance increase too.

The only problem is that if there is a smaller Vega chip with performance similar to a 1070 it will probably be able to push out 75FPS+ in most games at 2560x1080 so you will be back to using normal Vsync instead of Freesync most of the time.

This is also a positive though. A 1070 equivalent AMD GPU would last for quite a long time when paired with a 75Hz Freesync 2560x1080 monitor. The best part of G-Sync/Freesync is that demanding games still appear smooth when they range from 45-65 FPS. A VEGA card should be able to keep you in that range or higher for several years.

 

[terwilliger]

The 480 has had improvements in drivers since launch. I would expect it to beat a 970 in most games. However the performance will be nearly the same.

What games are you playing? We will not see Vega for a while and the 500 series is a rebrand.

If you decide to get a 480 it will be a sidegrade (with some DX12/Vulkan benefits.

That's great news if that's the case that it has improved so it equals or beats the 970, that makes it a much easier choice. I'm currently playing Rise of the Tomb Raider on high/very high settings between ~50-80 fps so maintaining that performance (and capping to 75 fps) would be perfect for freesync. I think The Witcher 3 and Forza Horizon 3 will be next after i finish Tomb Raider I did consider waiting for a cut down Vega 480 successor like you said, it will take a while and also there's nothing concrete about how much better it will be, so you don't really even know what you're waiting for.

As someone who uses a 1440p 144Hz G-Sync monitor with a GTX 1070 I can tell you that these adaptive sync technologies are a pretty amazing improvement. That being said I would probably try to wait it out for Vega. If you are going to buy a new GPU for Freesync support you might as well get one that offers a noticeable performance increase too.

The only problem is that if there is a smaller Vega chip with performance similar to a 1070 it will probably be able to push out 75FPS+ in most games at 2560x1080 so you will be back to using normal Vsync instead of Freesync most of the time.

This is also a positive though. A 1070 equivalent AMD GPU would last for quite a long time when paired with a 75Hz Freesync 2560x1080 monitor. The best part of G-Sync/Freesync is that demanding games still appear smooth when they range from 45-65 FPS. A VEGA card should be able to keep you in that range or higher for several years.

That's usually my thinking too, I don't buy a new component if it doesn't significantly improve performance, but as you (and others) say that adaptive sync itself is an amazing improvement and, supposedly, would feel like performance boost, even at the same-ish frame rate.

About the Vega 480 successor exceeding 75 fps, couldn't I just cap the fps to 75? I did that back a few years ago when I had a 560 ti to cap games to 30 fps so that they could look decent so that should still work. Like you said Vega would (probably) be a lot more future proof, that's why i'm apprehensive about the 480 because it might not stay in the monitor's 48-75fps sweet spot for very long. So it's either freesync goodness now and risk serious buyer's remorse in a few months or so or dealing with the vsync/tearing while waiting for Vega.

I'm still a bit torn on this but with koreanoverlord's info about 480 performance improvements and king3pj endorsement of freesync, which was the two main concerns, I'm leaning much more heavily towards getting the 480 and probably will. Thanks guys for taking the time to help me out.

 

[king3pj]

I do endorse freesync with the caveat that I've never used it. I do have about 6 months of experience with my Nvidia equivalent G-Sync monitor though. Assuming freesync works as well as G-Sync (from everything I've heard it does) I can fully recommend using freesync.

To answer your question, yes you can cap your FPS at 75 by using vsync. What I do is force adaptive vsync in the Nvidia Control Panel. This means vsync is off unless my FPS reaches the maximum refresh rate of my monitor. If a game is capable of putting out 144 or more FPS vsync kicks in. You can probably do something similar to this in AMD's control panel.

The only thing that gives me any hesitation at all is that your monitor's freesync range of 48-75 FPS is relatively small. G-Sync works on my monitor from 40-144 FPS. This means I am in the G-Sync window for every game I play unless it is a simple game that is capable of more than 144 FPS.

This has been huge in Mass Effect Andromeda where I seem to get about 70 FPS during the actual gameplay but some of the cutscenes dip as low as 45 FPS. Because of G-Sync I probably wouldn't even notice these drops if I didn't have a FPS counter on but you might on your monitor since you would be switching in and out of your freesync range.

That being said, most games have more consistent FPS than Mass Effect Andromeda. If you were consistently getting the same FPS it would be easy to tweak the settings so that your RX 480 was always staying in the 48-75 FPS range.