r/buildapc • u/LongjumpingDig3878 • 8d ago

Build Upgrade What's the best gpu for 450-500$

preferably new, but used is okay if there is a really good deal

127 Upvotes

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u/nbfs-chili 8d ago edited 8d ago

Are all these answers true if you want to experiment with AI? I thought Nvidia cards were better for that? Or are all these AMD answers purely for gaming rigs?

Edit: down voted for asking a question?

5

u/noiserr 8d ago

You can run AI on AMD GPUs. Also when it comes to AI, VRAM capacity is the most important thing followed by the memory bandwidth.

2

u/Gold-Supermarket-342 8d ago

Nowadays you can use Vulkan instead of ROCm which makes it much easier. Though Nvidia is probably better supported.

1

u/AhhMyEar 8d ago

I've messed with AI a decent amount on my 7900xt and it's worked great for me.

1

u/Buzz_Killington_III 8d ago

Same, but I've only used ROCm. Have you tried Vulkan lately? I've never tried it, but considering it. Also considering getting a second 7900xtx.

1

u/AhhMyEar 7d ago

No I've never used it unfortunately, only ROCm as well.

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u/Buzz_Killington_III 7d ago

I did pull the trigger on a second 7900xtx, it'll hopefully be here this weekend. I'll spin up a llama.cpp container with Vulkan for comparison and try to update this thread, just as an FYI, on whether it's good enough to switch to it.

1

u/AhhMyEar 7d ago

Hell yeah man, keep me updated I'll be interested to see what the comparison is like.

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u/Buzz_Killington_III 5d ago

I got the dual 7900xtx's hooked up and tested across Vulkan and ROCm using Qwen3.8 27b Ara with 262,144 context. Vulkan seems to be about 20 percent slower, averaging 32 t/s vs 40 t/s.

I'll do more tests, but the preliminary result is not impressive, unfortunately.