Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unboxed if you missed it last week i suggest going back and checking the in depth benchmark video that we put up which compared all the current generation GPUs in a good list of games I think it was about 16 games in total which were 2016 releases and yeah like I said we compared all the current generation GPUs but in that video I didn't go into too much depth at the end of sorta to say which GPU I picked to be the winner at each sort of price category and as a result quite a few of you asked me to create a shorter video so that is the video that is in 20 minutes long and just give my personal sort of opinions and picks at each price category as to which GPU is the best so that's what we're doing today so let's get on with it right now is actually a really good time to make some picks and not just because I recently completed over 1500 benchmark runs at this point product availability is good for both companies and consumers can easily pick up a graphics card at the advertised MSRP so it'll be nice to make some recommendations without having to take inflated prices into account the following GPU Peaks are based primarily on that data gathered from the current generation GPU benchmark video just mentioned but some of my own personal preferences at each price point will help me determine a will weigh on my Peaks so keep that in mind and when my sort of personal preferences do come up I will discuss those anyway let's get on with it starting with what I like to call the entry-level GPUs for those with roughly $100 to spend you of the choice of either the rx 460 or gtx 1050 for me the geforce gtx 1050 2 gigabytes seems like the obvious choice here it was 13% faster at 1080p in our recent benchmark video and given it cost just 10% more that gives it a slightly better cost per frame ratio thats there was such a small margin you could really go either way the reason I'm going green here is down to the fact that the gtx 1050 is actually a greener product consuming less power despite being faster also a big win for me is the fact that in order to extract maximum performance from this graphics card and extend power connecter isn't required some will no doubt argue that the RX 460 unlock which brews performance by roughly 5% makes it a better buy well in my opinion it doesn't yes if the unlock does work you can look forward to up to 5% more performance but with aimed at effectively blocking the unlock with their relived drivers it just isn't worth the hassle in my opinion so let's lock in the GTX 1050 and move on moving on to what I'm calling the budget mid-range segment we have a rather open-and-shut case for months now we've been calling the RX 470 the best value mid-range contender and with ambhi's improved relive drivers and invidious unwillingness to drop prices of the GTX 1063 gigabyte it remains the valued champ in short the RX 474 gigabyte is just 5% slower than the gtx 1033 gigabyte while it's priced 15% lower meanwhile the 1052 i gets touched up worse than any race car driven by Richard Hammond it's a complete write-off when looking at the cost per frame ratios the 1052 I is over 30% slower and less than 20% cheaper for those of you are wondering should you buy the a kilobyte version of the RX 470 short answer hell no that would be a worse decision than the hamster calling back into another rocket car although the RS 470 really isn't a great deal slower than the true mid-range contenders I know that this is the pic that will interest many of you guys the most it's probably also the one that will get fanboys scrambling for the dislike button if they don't happen to agree with me anyway not at all concerned with that let's get to it not beating around the bush the three gigabyte GTX 1060 gets wiped out by the RX 484 gigabyte as the radeon GPU was faster in our latest benchmark session meanwhile the full gigabyte 480 was just 5% slower than the 8 gigabyte model while costing a little over 15% less we're still foreigner the 4 gigabyte 480 was just 2% slower than the 6 gigabyte 1060 despite costing around 20% less since day one we've been recommending the 4G by our X 480 over the more expensive at gigabyte model and we're yet to discover a playable scenario where the a gigabyte model provides better performance for example when using our 8 gigabyte AMD reference card which can be limited to a full gigabyte buffer using a custom bios we found no difference in performance between running the card with a full gigabyte or 8 gigabyte memory buffer and yes we also looked at frame time performance anyway if using it spending the extra money now means that the our X 480 will be future proofed then go for it either way I pick - the RX 480 as the best value mid-range performance option for around $400 gamers will run into the geforce gtx 1070 and so now this graphics card has no real competition a bit like a polar bear in a petting zoo it tears everything else to pieces of course you are paying for those pixels to glide over your screen in perfect harmony you could argue the fury X is the word the alternative but for roughly the same price there are too many shortcomings for me to recommend that product I'll have a video on this soon but for now I feel like the more modern gtx 1070 is where your money is best invested moving on to something more extreme we find the geforce gtx 1080 something like this big beefy sucker from gigabyte their extreme edition card and there are some that will argue that the 1080 is really just a mid-range GPU with a high-end price judo will act competition and you know that may be the case but the truth is a $300 1080 apart from being awesome for gamers would probably also see AMD go the way of the dodo faster than the t1 0 to 100 time regardless of your opinion there is no changing the fact that upon release eight months ago now the 1080 smashed out of the park delivering 30% more performance than the gtx 980ti and fury x and if the framerate performance wasn't impressive enough the power consumption was sure to blow some socks clean off as the gtx 1080 consumes no more powers and last season's gtx 980 and that there is an incredible leap and efficiency having settled at a cost of roughly $600 u.s. the gtx 1080s cost per frame ratio in relation to the mid-range current generation gps isn't great essentially you are paying almost a hundred and forty percent more so not quite 70% more performance when compared to the six gigabyte GTX 1060 of course high-end GPUs have always come at a price premium so this isn't exactly surprising in any case if you seek extreme 1440p or even 4k performance then there really is no better alternative how right now there is no alternative so to recap the pics are as follows the geforce gtx 1050 2 gigabyte radeon RX 474 gigabyte radio an RX 484 gigabyte geforce gtx 1070 and the geforce gtx 1080 that pretty much makes up the a-team i think it's fair to say right now the entry level or mid-range market segment is very competitive and excluding the geforce gtx 750ti there aren't really any poor choices here as a side note i should point out that as AMD's previous generation GPUs head out the door there are some great bargains to be had many of you have been pointing to AMD's Radeon Fury the air-cooled non ex model and it just shows $300 u.s. it does seem like a great Buy that said the sapphire nitro model which is selling for just under 300 dollars u.s. is only available in limited quantities and pricing isn't great everywhere for example it's a horrible purchase down under anyways inclusion I think it's fair to say it's great seeing such strong competition in the $100 to about 250 dollar price range and let's really hope AMD can help us out very soon in the high-end market segment and if it's not too much to ask bring down those prices just a little bit and yeah anyway if you disagree with some of my picks or perhaps all of them let me know in the comments section below I'm your host Steve and I'll catch you on the next one you