I am looking at a GPU in the $500 range. I was originally going to get the PowerColor Red Dragon 6800XT, but saw that the Sapphire Pulse 7800XT is essentially the same price.
I know that the 7800XT is newer, but it only has two fans. I’ve also heard that the performance improvements in the 7000 series are minimal compared to the 6000 series.
Also this is minor but my local Micro Center does not have the 7800xt in stock, but I could get it from Newegg.
I use a 1440p monitor. Any opinions one which I should get?
Both are sufficient. The 7800XT is barely faster than the 6800XT, it could almost be considered negligible. If given the choice (all else being equal), I would go with the 7800XT, just for the fact that it’s newer and therefore comes with a slightly better feature set.
That being said, the 7800XT has worse energy efficiency than the 6800XT. I don’t remember the numbers off the top of my head, but if you care about either energy efficiency or heat output, I would consider looking into that before you make a decision.I’ve heard that you can knock off like 50% of the energy usage for 20% less performance from the 7800XT, but then that brings up the issue that if you’re willing to do some performance tweaking on the 7800XT, you’re likely also willing to do performance tweaking on the 6800XT. So, your mileage may vary on that.Edit: I misremembered - 7800XT is more power efficient than 6800XT. There should be no reason to go for the 6800XT if they’re the same price
Sorry but where are you getting the energy efficiency figures here?
Bear in mind that NV2X doesn’t report TBP in software (it will report 255W total graphics power, which is not inclusive of VRM and other board power losses), whereas NV3X does. 68XT is a 300W GPU, and I think NV32 draws less (at least in terms of peak TBP)
You’re correct, I misremembered (I was thinking 6800 non-XT vs. 7800XT). I’ll edit my comment with a correction
Ah, no worries
How’s the cooling in your case? if you have tons of airflow and already keep things cool, you’d probably be fine to go with the 7800XT, even with the worse cooling solution. If things are tight and warm in there, you’d probably want to avoid the 2 fan blower :c
Good point! I have a Fractal Meshify C. The cooling hasn’t been a problem for my current 2-fan 5700XT
Edit: I also have an 850W PSU so that won’t be a problem for either card
Are you me? haha I was also interested in getting a Powercolor Red Dragon 6800XT, but then I researched a bit and read that Powercolor is somewhat of a second-tier GPU maker, so I’m going to go for a Sapphire Nitro+ 7800XT (not the same price, but only a little more expensive, 540 vs 605 -different markets-).
I have a Meshify C as well, and the Nitro+ is 320mm long while on Fractal’s website they list 315mm as maximum GPU length with the bottom front fan installed. To solve the problem of having a 320mm card with a front fan I researched a bit and found out that there are slim fans, so I will get a Arctic P14 slim wich is 16mm deep (compared to 25mm standard fans), and things should fit like a glove (telling you this in case you also go for a longer card)
Either card is solid. Are you specifically looking at reference designs or are you including AIBs as well?
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