I've just done an upgrade (to this is anyone cares) too so this is that one 6 month window every 5 years where I actually know about this stuff.
AMD cards tend to be better value for money (just in terms of FPS per £ like) and are the better choice if you're 100% certain that you'll never want to use Linux ever.
That particular card is the revised edition of the previous-generation's hardware. It's not the new architecture like the rest of the R9 family, it's essentially a reworked 7870. It's still going to be way faster than what you have now but If you can nudge it up to a 280 or 285 that'd be worth it since they are both the new architecture.
AMD CPUs are generally not a good choice for gaming. Most games, just due to the kind of stuff they do, don't make much use of multiple cores and Intel chips just have *much* better single core performance. DX12 will change that a *bit* but not enough to really matter. So if gaming is your primary concern you'd probably be better off with a slower-clocked Intel with half the cores, it'll actually perform better.
For stuff that *does* make use of multiple cores (compiling, encoding stuff) AMD chips are great because they just load them up with loads of cores/threads.
There's no benefit in getting the 1866 RAM over 1600 RAM. There's a trade off between speed and latency and after a certain point faster speeds make no difference (benchmarks demonstrate this really clearly). Having said that there's like £2 difference between the 1600 and 1866 so it's not a huge deal. I assume you're getting 1x4gb (and thus not getting the benefits of dual channel) with a view to getting another 4gb stick later?
I still just read way too many people complaining of weird game issues with AMD cards, like stuttering frame rates and the like. I was wondering if they still need rescuing with those Omega drivers I used to need to use waaay back, and now they call their own drivers Omega?! It's a crazy world is PC stuff.
I'm going to do that pc part picker thing because I keep forgetting what I've got. Need to re-learn to overclock my CPU as well since it's supposed to be good at it.
Odd one. I have standard Catalyst drivers on my system and it's silky smooth in Mass Effect 3, Skyrim and any other game I've thrown at it. No stuttering at all and no stability issues either. My old 5770 was also fine with no strange stuttering - apart from its more limited horsepower of course.
Maybe this is an old Crossfire/SLI related issue perhaps?
Don't think so, I've seen it loads in general recent PC game threads where people are having various problems. Are you playing anything newer? Maybe the drivers have been long since patched for those games.
ATI/AMD drivers have never been as good as Nvidia's, yeah. I don't think the problems are often show-stopping (on Windows at least) though. Nvidia's definitely *better* but they're also more expensive so if you want the most FPS on a tight budget then AMD's the way to go I think.
I'd be intrigued to see a few. The drivers argument has been around for nearly 15 years, yet for me I've had no real problems with playing any games with either an Nvidia card or an AMD/ATI card. Skyrim also ran fine when I installed it just after release day (so long before any driver issues could be patched).
The only experiences I've had so far is that I've never had an AMD/ATI card die on me due to shitty engineering, whereas I've lost a £260 GeForce 8800 due to that (which is kind-of annoying).
Still, my current card is now a couple of years old and maybe others are having problems with newer games. Just nothing I've personally come across so far it must be said.
I think I have a 7850. I definitely had stuttering in Skyrim and I think I posted something about it on here back in the day. I think a patch or new driver helped things but I don't remember it going away completely. Not sure if that was an AMD thing or not.
Can't sat I've noticed any stuttering in anything else, though I don't really play many games. Last one was Deus Ex and that played smoothly.
bastard by name