After months away, some old friends have returned to the US parts guide.
Prices of AMD graphics cards have been on a rollercoaster ride in recent months. The cryptocurrency craze in the US had caused a spike in demand for high-end video cards used to mine Bitcoins, Dogecoins, and the like, especially among AMD cards.
Image from VR-Zone’s review of the cards
AMD has released its latest cards, the R9 280X, R9 270X, and R7 260X. While the names are new and complicated, the chips inside are the same chips we have been seeing for the last two years.
The cards that have launched so far: R9 280X == 7970GE at $300 R9 270X == 7870 OC at $200 R7 260X == 7790 OC at $140.
I’ve been playing the Battlefield 4 beta, and it’s definitely taxing my system. We’ll see how things improve by launch time, but it might be time for an upgrade.
Benchmark results have already been popping up, and paint an interesting picture of performance. Battlefield 4 (BF4) appears to be well-threaded, with AMDs 8-core FX-8350 and FX-8150 doing very well, being competitive with Intel’s quad core i5’s and i7’s. It also seems to favor AMD graphics cards this time around. This makes sense, since the new consoles use 8-core AMD CPUs, as well as AMD GPUs.
The Nvidia GTX 760 was released yesterday. It has slightly-below 670/7970 performance, but the price is $250 – $260, making it a steal. It makes the 7870 XT/Myst ($250), 660Ti/7950 (~$280) obsolete at their current prices. The available-for-purchase models of the 760 are only about ~4%-5% behind the 670/7970, while costing $100-$130 less. Logically, that means that above the ~$200 price point, only the 760 and 770 are worthy purchases.