Gadgetory

hey guys welcome back to another harbor unboxed video recently I put together a video comparing the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti against AMD's Radeon rx for 64 gigabyte and rx 470 graphics cards in terms of pricing the 1052 I pretty well slots in between those two AMD products and while better value than the rx for 64 gigabyte by a country mile I might add if you're willing to spend a little bit more than we recommended the RX 470 as it's a seriously good buy however if you can only afford to spend around say 150 u.s. or two hundred and $20 readers then the GTX 1050 - I appears to be the best value option at this price point or is it recently when doing a bit of poking around for second-hand deals on eBay and some PC forums I noticed a few Radeon r9 290 graphics cards we're going for what I felt were very very low prices some sold for as little as a hundred and fifty dollars and we are talking Australian dollars here hell that's gtx 750ti money still for the most part 290 seem to be fetching around $200 and that's still very cheap for what is essentially an r9 390 well it is in our 939 with 4 gig of ram but let's not into that rabbit hole the r9 390 is currently retailing for around $400 which makes these $200 to 90s all the more surprising within videos new GT x 1050 Ti selling for at least 220 ozzie this made me think which is faster I then spent another second or two mulling that one over before realizing the answer was obviously the r9 290 but how much faster is the r9 290 I hear you ask well let's find out and while we're at it why not throw in an RX 470 as well good idea for this test I've selected 6 new games all of which were benchmarked 1080p on a core i5 rig to avoid any controversy on this one what am I saying this is a GPU comparison controversies all part of the fun anyway in an effort to keep most happy we've ditched the core i3 rig for a more middle-of-the-road option in the core i5 6400 so not a core i7 not a core i3 hope I'm sitting safe on the fence for this one as always the latest drivers have been used for testing and since I ran these benchmarks over the weekend all the numbers are nice and fresh finally I'm not interested in how these graphics cards comparing games released in 2013 the year the r9 290 hit shelves I want to know what it has to offer gamers today when compared to brand-new GPUs of similar costs such as the rx 470 and GTX 1050 TI right so let's get to the good stuff then first up we have Deus Ex mankind divided the game every ethics touting radon rockin freesync boasting fanboy were demanding reviewers use the next 10 years I kid of course anyway here we find some very interesting results very exciting results for those in the market for a second-hand r9 290 AMD's old 2nd gen GCN architecture still has some fight no yet the 290 came out swinging delivering an average of 66 fps making it 16 percent faster than the rx 470 not only that but it was almost 80% faster than the gtx 1050 TI I know that this is an AMD supported title but damn that's a real pantsing once again it looks like the right gear for this war is the r9 290 here the r9 290 was 17% faster than the RX 470 and 54% fast in the GT x 1050 Ti and that there is a very impressive win for the old 290 as this is a title well optimised for NVIDIA hardware for testing f1 2016 we use the built-in benchmark with heavy rain enabled and like max Verstappen the 290 had no trouble delivering a strong result in wet conditions although the 290 did fall a few frames behind the RX 470 in this title the performance was still mighty impressive and enough to see the gtx 1050 trail by 34% margin when comparing the average framerate results call of duty infinite warfare the game literally no one's playing anymore was tested using the maxed out quality settings with SMA a enabled here the r9 290 was again a few frames slowly our x4 70 but I have a 50% fast and the GTX 1050 Ti so a strong result for AMD is high in 2013 graphics card for those of you that find Cod to slow paced we have titanfall 2 and for those that want to play titanfall 2 it well over 60 FPS for that breaking the bank we have the r9 290 the r9 290 pulled ahead of the RX 470 rendering 12% more frames it was also 37% fast in the GTX 1050 TI for good measure not playing either infinite warfare or titanfall 2 well we don't blame your battlefield one doesn't need space or max suits it has good graphics and quality game planetside it also has DirectX 12 support though that feature is a little questionable right now the raid on graphics cards were tested using DirectX 12 while the geforce card the gtx 1050 TI in other words was tested using DirectX 11 DX 12 does suffer from larger dips in performance so for now those minimums do look a bit dodgy still if you switch either the rx 470 or r9 290 over to DirectX 11 the average framerate looks much the same while the minimum is much improved so you might be wondering why do we test AMD cards with your index 12 then well because if we don't where somehow Nvidia shells and since Nvidia aren't paying us why take the heat right speaking of heat let's check out how much juice these GPU suck down mmm yeah the catch the 290 is a bit of a power Pig total system consumption reached 330 watts that's certainly not extreme but it's well over double what the GTX 1050 TI configuration hit it's also over 100 watts more than the RX 474 a similar level of performance thankfully to combat the inevitable high thermal load that comes with that kind of consumption most 290 graphics cards feature huge heat sinks and array of fans finally a look at efficiency by comparing power consumption and average framerate performance I know most of you guys aren't in a scatter plots here so an easy to digest bar graph has been included as you can see overall the 290 was on average 8% fast and the RX 470 but push power consumption 55% higher in the process not an ideal scenario but we kind of knew that was coming given the two nineties well-documented tendency to gobble up those watts I probably shouldn't admit this but that was fun I have fond memories of the Radeon r9 290 series back in October of 2013 the mind-blowing the complex r9 290x landed boasting 2,816 cores and a $550 asking price to match it was a big middle finger to Nvidia at the time taking their Titan nearly half the price and as expected this gutsy play provoked a response from Nvidia that response was the GTX 780 Ti but once again stealing in videos Thunder was the 290 series AMD came out with the vanilla 290 priced at just $400 it didn't just take out the GTX 780 but to a degree also the 290x offering similar performance at a fraction of the price memory lane now exactly three years later I find myself once again recommending the r9 290 as one of the best value options for gamers so then the volcanic islands love some fire left in them yet see what I did there yeah the nerdy guys will get it comparing the GTX 1050 Ti and r9 290 is a bit like a head-to-head battle between a price and a Hummer the 290 was hands-down faster 54% faster on average in fact still fuel efficiency isn't great total consumption was almost three times higher it's a staggering figure as significant as that figure is though I'm sure many gamers will be able to live with it all that extra performance from the r9 290 at the same price is probably too difficult to pass up given what we've seen here if power consumption isn't of great concern I feel the r9 290 provides gamers with the most bang for their buck again these graphics cards are readily available on the second-hand market for around $200 Ozzy sometimes even less and that actually makes them a bit cheaper than the GTX 1050 Ti if pricing is similar in your region then I highly recommend checking out the r9 290 well that's all from me on this one guys I hope you enjoyed the comparison and if you know of any other really good secondhand graphics card buyers let me know in the comments below and I'll do a bit of investigating and compare it to a current generation GPU to see which one delivers the most bang for your buck with that I'm your host Steve and I will catch you guys next time you