Graphics Card upgrade

[jarulezz]

Hi,
I am looking for an upgrade of a graphics card for a friend who has these specs:
ASUS P8H77-V
Intel Core i5-3470 (LGA1155)
Corsair XMS3 DDR3 8GB
(Currently) Nvidia GTX280
Corsair CX750 power supply

I built this system for him back in 2013 and he's looking to upgrade his GPU.
I found 2 contenders: the GTX950 and the AMD R9 380, which are both within his budget.

But, I have seen that this in the footnotes for the AMD R9 380:

Utilization of PCI Express 3.0 bandwidth requires a mainboard equipped with a PCI Express 3.0 PHY. Not all mainboards feature this technology – check with your component or system manufacturer for specific model capabilities.

I know what standard PCI-E slots are, but have no idea what the PHY slots are...
So, my question is: does his motherboard have those PCI-E PHY slots?

Also, which one would you recommend?

 

[AnonymousSurfer]

His motherboard does not have the PHY slots. Can you post links to the two cards you were looking at (site wise). My suggestion would be to get the GTX 970. I have currently have an R9, and while it works great, it has had its problems in the past. I have used both Radeon and Geforce over the years, and Geforce has given me less grief.

 

[jarulezz]

Thanks for the info!
So, I was looking at the GTX950: Amazon website
And the R9 380: Amazon site, but there isnt much more point pursuing this one if it wont work on his mobo

His budget is £200 (about US$260).
I've had Radeon for about 7 years now, just because I can never afford an nVidia card with similar quality haha

 

[HardReset]

But, I have seen that this in the footnotes for the AMD R9 380:

I know what standard PCI-E slots are, but have no idea what the PHY slots are...
So, my question is: does his motherboard have those PCI-E PHY slots?

PHY means physical layer. Just ignore those footnotes as Nvidia cards are also PCI Express 3.0.

R9 380 is good choice. Generally AMD cards are much better on upcoming titles because better DX12/Vulkan support. Also Nvidia's driver support for previous generation cards are much worse than AMD's so I don't recommend any Nvidia card that is not 10xx series.

 

[EndlessWaves]

Thanks for the info!
So, I was looking at the GTX950: Amazon website
And the R9 380: Amazon site, but there isnt much more point pursuing this one if it wont work on his mobo

His budget is £200 (about US$260).
I've had Radeon for about 7 years now, just because I can never afford an nVidia card with similar quality haha

For that budget An RX 480 is the obvious choice. The 4GB version comes in around £180-185 with the more popular 8GB version around £220. It's substantially faster than the 380 it replaced, around 390 speeds or ~70% faster.

It's a fairly new chip launch so not all the custom cards are out yet, and it's in demand so there's a lot of awaiting stock listings and prices are probably a little higher than they will be in a month or two if he's not in any hurry.

PCI-Express is backwards and forewards and compatible and while some workloads may benefit from the faster speeds of 3.0, gaming generally isn't considered to be one of them.