Guys, chill out, it's Christmas. 

If I'm not mistaken you guys are missing something. Actual resolution and quality of the images you uploaded.

EDIT: A few screens from my own system taken just now. RX 480 4GB, i5 4590, 8GB RAM. Average FPS 70-75 - drops around 10 frames in heavy firefights, average CPU usage around 90-95%. Average VRAM usage well under 4GB. All settings maxed out at 2560x1440.

The pics you uploaded have a resolution of 1600x900 instead of QHD. Maybe image quality got degraded when you uploaded them?

Tell me you don't see a difference.

Your image is 1080p, which is what you intended I believe.
Not surprising if Zer0's images look inferior in this comparison. Also why do screenshots have a 24 bit color depth? Don't modern games render frames at 32 bit color depth?

As for the CPUs, I still use an old Core i5 2400 for my gaming purposes and it seems to be quite capable of giving me the performance I need (most of the time near 60 fps since I use FRTC with my GPU to cap my fps at 60, my monitor is only 60Hz.) I game at QHD with most settings maxed out except Depth of Field, Motion Blur (I'm not really comfortable with these two settings on) and sometimes Anti-aliasing.

Warning - a rant about CPU stuff ahead

A modern CPU will surely perform better thanks to improvements in clock speed, internal bus speeds, instruction sets, lithography. For instance mine support only AVX while an i5 6500 supports AVX2.0. (AVX = Advanced Vector Extensions for instruction sets) These improvements can be handy for CPU intensive games. And lithography is that spec you see in processors in nano meters. 32nm , 14nm etc. It usually refers to the diameter (or radius) of the thinnest wire in the CPU. So lower lithography means more stuff is crammed into the CPU die.

Fun fact :- People say CPU developments have slowed down a lot recently. Can you guess why? One of the reasons is that it's almost impossible to reduce the lithography any further. Atomic radii of the atoms in CPU are around (0.1 - 0.4) nm! Can you imagine how thin the wires are already? Try to reduce them further and we gotta tackle things in quantum mechanics. So now we gotta improve what we have instead of cramming more stuff in. And what we have, has already been improved immensely.

But major improvements in modern CPUs are in integrated graphics and protection technologies, not really important when it comes to gaming.

But there are minor step downs in modern CPUs as well. For instance TDP (Thermal Design Power). Mine can safely run hotter than most modern ones. This is mostly because of a manufacturing technique Intel adopted after 2nd or 3rd gen CPUs in order to cut down costs.

So the performance gain when it comes to gaming, is way too low considering the cost of upgrading to a modern CPU. Therefore it's not really necessary to upgrade your CPU constantly. That means an i5 6500 will perform at satisfactory levels for a long time.

As for the CPUs, I still use an old Core i5 2400 for my gaming purposes and it seems to be quite capable of giving me the performance I need (most of the time near 60 fps since I use FRTC with my GPU to cap my fps at 60, my monitor is only 60Hz.) I game at QHD with most settings maxed out except Depth of Field, Motion Blur (I'm not really comfortable with these two settings on) and sometimes Anti-aliasing.

Yes chill, it's Christmas : D ... As i said earlier, i game with an i7 2600k processor which is a superior processor to yours, but have run into stuttering issues with few games that were launched recently.

1 Watch Dogs 2 stutters like hell when driving on ultra, when on foot it works great. It runs ok when you lower the graphics though, but the game doesnt look as good with jagged edges.

2. Can't get stable 60fps in Forza Horizon with everything turned ultra and 2x anti aliasing turned on. There are times when fps drops to as low as 39 which is playable, but according to benchmarks, the game should run better with my 1060 card.

3. Call of Duty Inifinity Warfare - For some weird reason i had to lower settings on this one as well. The game runs butter smooth on certain areas and then starts to stutter. It is not a lag that i get, it is more like a stutter.


So these are three major titles that i have not been able to get satisfactory performance with my rig.

I assume this may mainly be down to lack of ram more than the processor.  Maybe i7 2600k is still enough. 

My motherboard only have two ram slots, so it's difficult to have extra ram which is why i thought maybe it's time that i go for an overall upgrade.

I also run with 8GB ram and it can't be Ram also. RAM should only be a problem in Quantum break and Batman Arkham Knight without any patches. Anyways an over all upgrade is neat coz it gives you a fresh PC. And you get 3+ years warranty which is good. My PC upgrade cycle has always been 3 years.

Just have issues with above games, everything else works great still.

Just have issues with above games, everything else works great still.

Check you cpu usage/ gpu usage etc.. in game. Then you ll get a clear idea what's the bottleneck if there is any. You can run afterburner to check these stuff.

3. Call of Duty Inifinity Warfare - For some weird reason i had to lower settings on this one as well. The game runs butter smooth on certain areas and then starts to stutter. It is not a lag that i get, it is more like a stutter.

I play Infinity warfare. yeah, it stutter a lot that is not due to you cpu or gpu. It is a bug and they released a update to that. Update gives the smooth gameplay but there is another issue related to the game texture.

Just have issues with above games, everything else works great still.

1. I haven't tried WD2 yet, but Watch Dogs had the exact same issue. It was something to do with distant textures not loading efficiently when you are moving fast. This was fixed in a patch sometime later. A temporary fix would be lowering the draw distance until the issue is fixed. Again, this is experience from the first game, so this could be completely different.

2. I'm currently getting an average of 60-70 FPS on Forza Horizon 3 at 2k without AA. The occasional drops to 40ish FPS is well documented, and seem to be an issue with the port. High memory bandwidth seems to help, so try overclocking your memory.

3. As someone already mentioned, Infinity Warfare stuttering issue was fixed in a patch. Updating your game should fix it.

1. I haven't tried WD2 yet, but Watch Dogs had the exact same issue. It was something to do with distant textures not loading efficiently when you are moving fast. This was fixed in a patch sometime later. A temporary fix would be lowering the draw distance until the issue is fixed. Again, this is experience from the first game, so this could be completely different.

2. I'm currently getting an average of 60-70 FPS on Forza Horizon 3 at 2k without AA. The occasional drops to 40ish FPS is well documented, and seem to be an issue with the port. High memory bandwidth seems to help, so try overclocking your memory.

3. As someone already mentioned, Infinity Warfare stuttering issue was fixed in a patch. Updating your game should fix it.

i wonder what the 1070 is best at then
is rx480 is playing 1440p with no problems, why wont amd label it abudget 1440p card, instead of vr to masses
i had a 1070 so at my resolution of 2560*1080 the card has wasted potential
the rx480 i had did work well when it worked avg around 70 to 80 on horizon 3 with drops to 50 in surfers paradise
tldr; get rx480 if u have 1080p or 1440p 1070 is just wasted potential unless u have a 1440p 144hz[low quality albeit]

i wonder what the 1070 is best at then
is rx480 is playing 1440p with no problems, why wont amd label it abudget 1440p card, instead of vr to masses

Because VR is more exciting than 1440P. The GTX 1070 is for 2K60, just like buying a RX 480 or GTX 1060 for 1080P.

Because VR is more exciting than 1440P. The GTX 1070 is for 2K60, just like buying a RX 480 or GTX 1060 for 1080P.

not many can afford a vr headset, but most can upgrade their monitors

@Zero
hey zero
what kind of settings are you using on your 480 4gb
have you undervolted it?
can i get some info about undervolt settings, overclock settings
what software you use trixx or afterburner?
 

@Zero
hey zero
what kind of settings are you using on your 480 4gb
have you undervolted it?
can i get some info about undervolt settings, overclock settings
what software you use trixx or afterburner?
 

I generally don't tweak voltages for 24x7 overclocks. IMO the loss in efficiency and increased risk of damage is not worth the extra 1-2% of performance. Currently running at stock voltage. Haven't tried my hand at undervolting yet because I haven't had time.

I used AMD Wattman built into the driver. Core is at +5% (1390Mhz) and memory is at 2000Mhz (8000Mhz effective). Running the card for the past month or so without any issues.

I generally don't tweak voltages for 24x7 overclocks. IMO the loss in efficiency and increased risk of damage is not worth the extra 1-2% of performance. Currently running at stock voltage. Haven't tried my hand at undervolting yet because I haven't had time.

I used AMD Wattman built into the driver. Core is at +5% (1390Mhz) and memory is at 2000Mhz (8000Mhz effective). Running the card for the past month or so without any issues.

sapphire rx 480 nitro+ 4gb?

sapphire rx 480 nitro+ 4gb?

Just Nitro - no plus. The + has a slightly better cooling and RGB lighting.

Just Nitro - no plus. The + has a slightly better cooling and RGB lighting.

thank you for your information zero