New Graphic card with 4gb vram?

I have been slowly building mainly gaming PC and lately i have been interested to stream and record gameplays at 1080p & 60 FPS and perhaps other tutorials/guides in the future.

Now i am looking for those 4gb vram graphic cards and they arent that cheap yet for my wallet at least so i try to find powerful but also on budget balanced between card.

I found couple cards that have 4gb vram and they are much cheaper than other 4gb vram cards, so i am wondering how these cards will actually perform for gaming and streaming and overall whats the big difference between these 4gb vram cards to other much more expensive ones?
These are the two cards i found at 240e price:

Asus STRIX R9 380 4GB OC DCII 2xDVI/HDMI/DP

ASUS STRIX GTX 960 DirectCU II 4GB OC GDDR5 PCI-E 3.0+HotS-kood

Also would like to hear if ppl have experiences with these cards and if u would recommend witch one of these, or maybe u have other cards in mind?


Right now i have not bad at all card (asus gtx 660 oc 2gb vram) but its not quite enough for recording gameplays at the settings i would like to and it only have 2gb vram witch wont be enough for future gaming, maybe with low settings but thats not quality i want to stream.
For cpu i have bit old but still very powerful i7 2600 @ 3.4ghz with turbo boost it runs @ 4,2ghz, 12gb 1333 ram, ssd, antec 500 case with good airflow and it has good updating room in the case.

Asus STRIX R9 380 4GB OC DCII 2xDVI/HDMI/DP = Cheaper , better quality output

ASUS STRIX GTX 960 DirectCU II 4GB OC GDDR5 PCI-E 3.0+HotS-kood = more expensive , faster

My opinion anywhoo

Side note : get the OOB OC'ed version if possible of whichever you decide.

I can stream or record at higher than 1080p and ive got an old machine with the spec listed below. I think its more to do with your hard drives and motherboard than the gfx cards unless you are playing the latest games at max settings.

For a lower spec PC that runs most stuff at medium and older stuff easily on max, it has no trouble. I record raw video to the large storage device then use SSD drives for editing once the raw data is compressed to a decent video file type.

[this is a 5 year old pc running win 7 on the same install since day one]
first gen i7 @ 3ghz
6 gig tripple chan ram
EVGA GTX 570 classified edition
OS drive SSD
large storage western digital black 1tb
a few other SSDs

I would imagine any of the latest cards with +2gb ram would be able to do what you want just fine.

a reply to: romilo

Asus is always a cost effective choice for a gamer slab..
Gothrog's got you steered right although I've had good
luck in the old days with an nVidia or some GeForce spinoff...
Some guys are brand loyal, but the Korean and Chinese card
manufacturers are ironing out their GDDR5 problems quickly.

or even native. If you're using GDDR5 in the first
place and have the right output holes in your motherboard;
look into how your intended apps handle onboard chips.
It's always going to be cheaper and it's one less set of glue
chips for the vid signal to squeeze through, however fast
the card design.

I've pulled a bargain basement genuine nVidia with only
a Gog and a half of DGGR3: but it'll run rings around my
last one with only a half of generation 2. My main deal
is AutoCAD-- and the rendering's assisted with Autodesk
specific drivers, but polygon rendering is the same whether
you're rotating a supercharger or blowing a tank.

If your machine is fast enough to eat the game frame I
usually make my rule of thumb at least a quarter of the RAM
the graphics chip population... some people go even half.

I have a Plait GTX 770 4gb about 2 or 3 year's old that performs exceptionally well. When I got her she was around £300 probably a lot cheaper now since there are 970s out.

GTX 960 is a good card for the price but if possible you should aim for the 970.

if you aren't buying it soon I would recommend waiting and seeing what AMD/NVIDIA will pull out with the new HBM/HBM2 cards which will have at least 16GB and possibly have double the performance per watt from the current gen cards.

Thnks for replies, i think i will just wait at least couple months more and keep an eye of the markets.
I would save for 970 since it have 4gb vram and its fast but after i read its actually have 3.5gb fast ram and 0.5gb very slow ram, its no go for me. For example games like Ark survival evolved requires allot of ram to play with nicer graps and few other games right now does also and gtx 970 have troubles with those games coz of slow 0.5 vram in its 4gb vram, i do not even understand why they added slow part for that ram..

a reply to: romilo

Yeah Biigs is right. The card alone will not guarantee anything. you need to match the speed of the card to the transfer speed of the motherboard/ram and the read and write speed of the HD.

A couple of things.

1) Don't get hung up on the RAM. That's not an indicator of the speed or capability of the card - EXCEPT when you're talking about playing very high-resolution games (games store textures on the VRAM, the higher resolution the game, the more RAM you need because the textures take up more space). Bottom line? If you're talking about 1080p gaming, 2gb is adequate. 4gb is good - but that in and of itself doesn't make a card good.

2) What you're looking for, then, is the speed of the card itself, which is primarily down to the GPU. In this instance, the 380 and the 960 are relatively comparable cards, so you're not going to go wrong with either. Generally the R9 380 has better performance overall than the 960, and tends to be more overclockable. nVidia currently has a better reputation as far as drivers and stability are concerned though, so there's that to consider as well.

My advice, however:

If you're planning to be streaming, and hoping to be future-proof, I wouldn't buy either of those cards. Save up for a little longer and buy a better card. Being patient now will save you from having to replace a 380/960 in the near future.

If you target for a medium range gpus such as 380 and 960 then the 4 gigs will not help you much, maybe only with photoshop applications, not with games. Because of the memory speed and gpu power.

For 380 and 960 2-2.5-3 max is more than enough.

a reply to: Ploutonas

I am still looking and waiting but what you meant by "For 380 and 960 2-2.5-3 max is more than enough." ?

Atm i am thinking that gtx 970 while it seems to come down as reasonable prices 250e lowest that i found in amazon! Just that vram is still bothering me to get this card.. I have not decide yet but i think i will get an 1440p/144hz screen at some point and 970 vram scam might be big factor at that point, i been looking some gameplay videos that actually uses over 3.5gb vram and gtx seems to have some stutter problems after 3.5gb, since the rest 0.5gb is very slow vram, i have no idea why they did that card like that and dares to market it as 4gb vram...

Also i seen that 380 does fairly well with 1440p gaming actually, just has to lower some graphics bit but it runs good gaems.

Ive just got my 4k 28" monitor and im waiting on my extra motherboard ram (from 6 tripple chan to 12 gig triplle chan) + 970gtx with 4gig.

I let you know how much of an upgrade it really was from the 1920x1200 24" with the gtx 570 (1.25gig ram).

a reply to: Biigs

That should be major upgrade, although i found out that amazon sells in British pounds and converted to Euros it is not obviously 255e but something over 310e and that is over my wallet capabilities.

Also i couldnt afford an 4k monitor anytime soon but it would be cool to hear hows the differences between 1k-2k-4k gaming, later i would get an 2k monitor and that is one reason i would get an 4gb vram card now.