...No, that doesn't logically follow in any real capacity. Blower-fans are a very different beast from the coolers we normally see, and have a very specific use-case. Aftermarket cards will always have enough bells and whistles to have meaning in buying them over the reference card.
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Yeah. The heatsink is actually really small from what I saw in videos. It astonished me that they had such a big cooler for such a small heatsink.
I have no issues with my 7950 (it runs everything I need, keep in mind I just play WoW and rocket league at 1080p). The only problem is it gets to like 80c while playing WoW and it gets loud. I bought the reference cooler, so I had it coming. So yeah, I think I'm going to be getting the Sapphire 480, it looks really nice. hopefully its quiet and has a fan off mode like you said. We'll have to wait for reviews.
Rumors suggest the 1060 will be out the 17th. That's pretty quick all things considering.
So I am currently running a GTX 680. I can pick up a RX480 for $499NZD and can also get a GTX 1070 for $849NZD.
Any advice as to what one to go for?
What resolution and at what FPS do you play games? For 1080p at 60Hz a 1070 is kinda overkill. If you plan to play at higher resolutions and/or FPS I would suggest the 1070, or if you can wait, I would suggest to wait till Vega is out and prices drop on the current top end cards.
For the 1070/1080's I would think that the RX 490 would be enough to drop prices. That's rumoured to be out sometime soon as well, but I wouldn't expect it much sooner than Holiday season. Considering the amount of 1070/1080's that are in stock and at MSRP, you might as well wait until October to buy one. Vega I think is 2017.
MMO-Champion Rules and Guidelines
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10145/...ris-comes-vega
Meanwhile AMD has also confirmed the number of GPUs in the Vega stack and their names. We’ll be seeing a Vega 10 and a Vega 11.