THE YEAR OF THE GRAPHICS CARD
FOR THE LAST FEW YEARS, I’ve been clamoring for something exciting to happen with PC components. Call me old school, but I’m still hanging on to years gone by, when there were 10 graphics cards companies, 10 soundcard companies, and an intense amount of competition. It felt like we were just boosting clock speeds, and adding noninnovative checklist items to products. I mean, RGB lighting is all the rage recently, but it lacks the jenesaisquoi.
But 2016 has been an excellent year for innovation, and the credit goes to VR. When the Rift and Vive looked like they were going to shake things up, I knew we were about to receive a nice shot to the arm in the graphics department. Lo and behold, both AMD and Nvidia are now pushing on that front harder than ever. And thus, we now have on our hands some very bold offerings from both companies, but in very different and complementary directions.
AMD’s new Radeon RX 480 breaks the mold in terms of price-performance ratio. Coming in at $200, you’re getting excellent 1080p performance, and a very good experience at 1440p. AMD is adamant that its new RX series will help usher in VR at a price point everyone can afford. Although I’m enthusiastic about the company’s ambitions, there’s stillill more work to be done on the rest of thehe system. Getting a headset alone will cost st three to four times the cost of an RX 480.0.
On the high-performance side, Nvidiaia has gone all out. Its GeForce GTX 1080 80 and 1070 really shocked the gaming ng world, and with good reason. Double the performance of two GTX 980 cards, and leapfrogging over a $1,000 Titan X—the old Titan X, anyway—the new GeForces would be happy in any gaming system. But performance isn’t the only thing Nvidia has been working on. The new Pascal GPUs also bring along several features that significantly improve performance in VR. And now you also have the company’s new GTX 1060, which is pitted directly at AMD’s RX 480.
So, is it the right time to upgrade? Actually, right now it’s a builder’s dream. The new graphics chips from both GPU houses are more affordable than ever. Competition is ripe, and if I were building a new system, I’d probably put my money on a GTX 1080 for a high-end build, and an RX 480 for an entry-level system. All the usual board companies, such as Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, Sapphire, XFX, and Zotac, have their own offerings at various prices. When was the last time we had both good pricing and lots of choice?
But, I’m not building a new system. What if you’re just upgrading, like me? Well, that would largely depend on what you have now. If you have a GTX 970, 980, or 980 Ti, you’re still in pretty good hands. With prices on last-gen cards being axed by the new breeds, it may make sense to go SLI or CrossFire.
In my situation? I’m still rockin’ threeway 980 Ti.