Gpu for wow

[pkm]

Moving into legion I really want to replace my aging 7870 with a more capable gpu. CPU is a 4790k not oc. I have looked at the Radeon 480 and gtx 1060 as both seem to be fine (according to Google) when it comes to 60 fps @ 1080p.

My main concern is cranking up the graphics settings without taking a massive hit to fps. Mythic archimonde was hell on progression as I could just barely see the aoe puddles on the ground in last phase and putting up the graphics settings then dropped my fps low to make it choppy to the point of screwing up rotations and such.

From what I'm reading is I don't need the 8gb vram if I'm not using 1440p monitor, but the 4gb versions of the 480s are barely any different in price anyway. Direct x12 is going to be a thing soon but I'm not switching to windows 10, for reasons.

Any other gpu recommendations? Or should I try to oc the 7870 graphics or something?

[Deleted]

Ebay is your friend.
Get a £40 750to or 950.
BoOm.

[Mythbredor]

Ebay is your friend.
Get a £40 750to or 950.
BoOm.

Don't know if I would recommend buying a card from ebay, they can be sketchy at best. However yes the RX 480 and a the GTX 1060 are both fine cards. You aren't going to be able to do much overcloking the 7870 sadly. Having extra VRAM isn't a huge deal tho, so either of those cards will work. You should also overclock your 4790K you'll gain some performance if you do (personally I still think you should upgrade your GPU).

[Doomislav]

For wow I'd recommend an nvidia product. IVe had both over the years, and a a lot happier with nvidia. I currently have a gtx760 and have no problems with frames at all. If I were buying a new one I'd get an 1060.

[Hellfury]

AMD 480x
Nvidia 1060
Nvidia 970

Are good solid choices for WOW, if u feel like spending abit more for other games a 1070 is a great choise

[Thunderball]

Depending on your budget: GTX 1060 6GB>GTX 1060 3GB>RX 470>GTX 950>GTX 750 Ti. Do not buy anything else (unless you get a massive discount), it's not worth it atm.

[Skylarking]

Depending on your budget: GTX 1060 6GB>GTX 1060 3GB>RX 470>GTX 950>GTX 750 Ti. Do not buy anything else (unless you get a massive discount), it's not worth it atm.

What about the 3gb 1060 vs rx 480 8gb?

[the boar]

is it a 7870 GB or XT? they are quite different.. also what driver version?

[Bigbamboozal]

Nvidia cards typically perform better than AMD cards in Blizzard games. It just depends what your price bracket is.
If you keep your GPUs for a long time, Radeon GCN GPUs retain and gain great amounts of performance as the years go by.
If you upgrade annually, Nvidia is the best option.

I would recommend NOT getting a previous generation Nvidia GPU... mainstream driver support for previous Nvidia GPUs are dropped and their performance is often crippled in newer games as a result.

If you have the money, GTX 1060 6GB probably your best option if you mostly play Blizzard games.
The other option is the RX 480/470 - both the GTX 1060 and RX 480/470 are very compelling GPUs.

You recommend him a 750 Ti when the HD 7870 is already better than a 750 Ti
lol


Ebay is a very good option for second hand GPUs. You just have to know how to look for the right ones and be sure to ask the right questions.
I've got many GPUs second hand from ebay, and none of them were defective or scams. (Although all three of them were 290X's - XFX 290X 8GB, 2x Sapphire R9 290X Vapor-X's)

Not to hijack the thread or anything...but since you mention it, how DO you look for the right ones and what ARE the right questions to ask? Not asking for a huge indepth study, but just some advice and guidelines for 2nd hand GPU shopping on ebay if you could?(ty)

[pkm]

is it a 7870 GB or XT? they are quite different.. also what driver version?

Not xt. I just run whatever the latest drivers are.

I'm starting to lean towards the rx 480. But to save some cash I'm opting for the 4gb one. Performance wise I read it's not a huge difference from the 8gb.

But will the 4gb vram become a bottleneck in the future for 1080p/60fps gaming?

Ive actually found a website that is offering rx 480 8gb for $370 AU. Which is roughly the price of the 4gb versions. However it's the HIS brand and I've not heard much about them. How are they in terms of cooling and noise?

[Thunderball]

What about the 3gb 1060 vs rx 480 8gb?

RX 470 8GB. Dont even take RX 480 into account, it's not worth it. NVIDIA has an edge in WoW so if you can afford a GTX 1060 you get it. If you dont have enough money for a GTX 1060 next up is RX 470.

[Deleted]

What is your budget? for 1080p gaming 4gb vram is going to be plenty for almost everything, the RX470 gives very similar performance to the RX480 almost not worth spending the extra on the RX480. Be careful with the 3gb 1060 it is not the same card as the 6gb 1060, less cuda cores and not worth the price point imo. While you are upgrading GPU can you please buy an aftermarket cooler and overclock the processor, you will likely see most gains through that.

[Life-Binder]

GTX 1060 6GB is about 20%+ faster than a RX480 in WoW and Overwatch (probably other Blizz games too)

for WoW 60 fps @ 1080p even the lesser 3GB 1060 will still be enough/overkill even with 10 Legion graphics settings

[Mythbredor]

What is your budget? for 1080p gaming 4gb vram is going to be plenty for almost everything, the RX470 gives very similar performance to the RX480 almost not worth spending the extra on the RX480. Be careful with the 3gb 1060 it is not the same card as the 6gb 1060, less cuda cores and not worth the price point imo. While you are upgrading GPU can you please buy an aftermarket cooler and overclock the processor, you will likely see most gains through that.

Yeah the 470 would be better than the 480 for him, however I still think a 1060 would be a slightly better option if the OP plans to do anything other than play WoW. I don't think we ever confirmed if he had a stock cooler or not, but in my earlier post I suggested overclocking his CPU which would net him some more performance in WoW.

Get a GTX 1060 3GB, 6GB if you don't mind the small increase in price.

Yeah 1060 is a very good card, I would almost always get the 6GB in this catagory, if not you should get the RX 470.

[Life-Binder]

if WoW is your main game absolutely DO NOT get any AMD card

Nvidia is generally faster on DX11, but the gap is even bigger on Blizzard games (WoW and OW for sure) for whatever reason

[pkm]

What is your budget? for 1080p gaming 4gb vram is going to be plenty for almost everything, the RX470 gives very similar performance to the RX480 almost not worth spending the extra on the RX480. Be careful with the 3gb 1060 it is not the same card as the 6gb 1060, less cuda cores and not worth the price point imo. While you are upgrading GPU can you please buy an aftermarket cooler and overclock the processor, you will likely see most gains through that.

I'm not comfortable with over clocking heard bad things about it and I don't want to screw up as I have no other CPU as back up. I'd rather hold off on the CPU side until a time comes where it's going to struggle performance wise and then do it as I can't afford to have something go wrong.

Same with the gpu I'm looking for a long term upgrade. Mainly interested in making sure it will run wow for at least 2 expansions. Other games I'll be playing, bf1, but I highly doubt it will need much different specs from bf4.

From what I research, amd keep their older cards up to date with software and driver updates all the way, where as nvidia tend to stop supporting older hardware.

[Mythbredor]

pkm, in terms of longeivity I'd say 1060 all the way. Even more so that you're playing wow. Nvidias driver support is fine, even more so being that the 1060 has recently came out.

[Life-Binder]

From what I research, amd keep their older cards up to date with software and driver updates all the way, where as nvidia tend to stop supporting older hardware.

thats not true at all, right now the latest Nvidia current driver still supports GTX400 series from 2010, whereas the oldest supported AMD card in its current drivers is HD7000 series from 2012


also if you dont want to overclock manually then Nvidia Pascal is even better - their GPU Boost 3.0 automatically puts your frequency well above their stated max boost (both for reference and custom cards), its sort of like an automatic out-of-the-box OC

470/480 dont do that, and in fact, on stock coolers, they can throttle 100-150 Mhz below their stated default boost clocks and run ~1100-1200 Mhz instead of the cards stated 1266 Mhz

[vlobben]

One thing to keep in mind when it comes to GPU is that if you at some point are going to invest in a new monitor with g-sync (nvidia) or freesync (amd), the freesync monitor will be significantly cheaper. For me personally this makes me lean in favour of an amd card when I'm upgrading in the not-so-distant future.

[Deleted]

People buy a K CPU and are afraid of overclocking it O_O

I'd advise you to get a 6GB version of gtx 1060 and also a cooler for your CPU so you can overclock it. Instead of "hearing bad things" do some research on overclocking. If done properly [which is rather easy] it's very safe to overclock a CPU and FPS gains, especially in wow, will be noticeable.