Should I buy a GTX 970 second hand, or a brand new RX 480?


  1. Posts : 11
    Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit
       #1

    Should I buy a GTX 970 second hand, or a brand new RX 480?


    So, someone is selling a second hand, 5 month old GTX 970 4GB for £150. Should I get this or spend £210 on a brand new RX 480 8GB. I know that the 970 only really has 3.5GB of VRAM and the other 500mb is slower VRAM. I also know that AMD are good with their driver updates and the RX 480 will only get faster than the GTX 970 than it already is with age.

    Which one?
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  2. WOT
    Posts : 471
    Win 10 Pro 15063.332 (ex-Insider)
       #2

    The price difference between new and used would make a big impact on any decision I would make. I would also consider the trustworthiness of the used source as well. Also, a peek at a few benchmarks wouldn't hurt either:

    Should I buy a GTX 970 second hand, or a brand new RX 480?-gtx970.jpg


    Should I buy a GTX 970 second hand, or a brand new RX 480?-rx480.jpg

    Now, since I actually prefer AMD graphics' solutions, this would be a no-brainer for me.

    Good luck with any decision you make.

    Regards,

    WOT
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  3. Posts : 1,327
    Windows 10 Home x64
       #3

    Well, I'm an Nvidia man these days but I would be very cautious about a second hand card.
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  4. Posts : 848
    Windows 10 LTSC
       #4

    The RX 480 is future proof. The GTX 970 barely matches the RX 480 in DX 12 and Vulkan API games.
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  5. Posts : 4,453
    Win 11 Pro 22000.708
       #5

    Speaking as someone whose most recent AMD purchase was a 7970 (all nVidia since then), get the RX-480.

    I suppose that you could consider 4GB version of the RX-480 if you wished to save something like £40, but you'd get lower performance even for applications that didn't need 8GB of VRAM, I believe.

    In the current nVidia lineup, a GTX 1060 would be competitive in performance with the RX-480, but the 1060 might be a bit more expensive, with only 6GB of VRAM.
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  6. Posts : 5
    Windows 10 Version 1703 Build 15063.13
       #6

    I would rather Buy AMD Radeon cards than Nvidia ones. I prefer Radeon than Nvidia bro.
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  7. Posts : 53
    Windows 11 21H2 22000.100
       #7

    If your looking at the rx480, i would wait til the 580 is released probably this month
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  8. Posts : 11
    Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit
    Thread Starter
       #8

    Thanks for everyone's input... I think i'll save up for the RX 480 8GB or the new Vega GPU lineup. Afterall, AMD cards do age like a fine wine. Coming from experience, my R9 270X has only performed better and better since buying it in 2014.
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  9. Posts : 4,453
    Win 11 Pro 22000.708
       #9

    felgate11 said:
    I would rather Buy AMD Radeon cards than Nvidia ones. I prefer Radeon than Nvidia bro.
    AMD's drivers used to be rather quirky, but I haven't tried them in a while. (I see that the 7970, my latest, was introduced 5 years ago.)

    AMD seems to be on a bit of a roll at the moment, but I suspect that people who are prepared to pay are still getting Intel and nVidia. I'd like to see AMD get back to being the clear performance leader (like the Athlon X64 CPUs, back in the Socket 939 days), but I'm not holding my breath waiting for that.
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  10. Posts : 33
    Windows 10Pro 64bit
       #10

    felgate11 said:
    I would rather Buy AMD Radeon cards than Nvidia ones. I prefer Radeon than Nvidia bro.
    I am the other way around, but i think we should compare thar cards instead of discussing if we like apples or grapes the most?

    Take a look here ect : GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon RX 480 Hardware Compare: Graphics Cards, CPU & SSD Comparison
    But since one of the cards is 4GB and the other is 8GB i might be more tempted with the 8GB one.
    Do you know that guy that sells the secon hand card? if not, then i would be carefull, if you do and you know that hes stuff is ok, it might be worth considering :)
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