Graphics Card Recommendations?

[vanquish]

I am currently running Catalina 10.15.7 on a B450 I Pro WIFI. CPU is Ryzen 5 2nd Gen 2600 and Graphics card is the XFX 7870 2GB.

Up until now, it has been fine but over the past two days it has locked up in World Of Warcraft. Yesterday it completely froze and I had to reboot. Today It was freezing with the beach ball of death...and then unfreezing but then there were loads of graphics artifacts on the screen and the frame rate was around 2 fps.

This only seems to happen in World Of Warcraft, however, as I also use Final Cut Pro I figured a newer card might be a good investment anyway?

The problem is I am not sure what to go for. Any suggestions?

 

[Aluveitie]

First, looking at the prices for new and even used cards, this is the worst time to buy one if you can avoid it.
Second, you didn't mention your budget, but if you can get your hands on a reasonably priced, used Radeon VII would not be a bad option regarding Final Cut Pro. The VII is in Gaming on the level of a 5700 XT, but shines in compute workloads. If they'd be available for MSRP, the new RX 6000 cards would probably be the best choice...

 

[vanquish]

Thanks. I have just been looking around and most AMD cards seem to be out of stock at all the retailers I have looked at. That is here in the UK. Might be different elsewhere. Never seen a stock shortage like this before.

So I think maybe eBay is going to be the place. Would rather have bought something new but I need something soon. I could probably go to around £200 for a card. I don't need something at the top end. Just better/newer than what I have right now.

 

[Gigamaxx]

Thanks. I have just been looking around and most AMD cards seem to be out of stock at all the retailers I have looked at. That is here in the UK. Might be different elsewhere. Never seen a stock shortage like this before.

So I think maybe eBay is going to be the place. Would rather have bought something new but I need something soon. I could probably go to around £200 for a card. I don't need something at the top end. Just better/newer than what I have right now.

RX 480/580 if you can find one.

don’t get a RX 580 2048sp the bios won’t work. These are a Chinese market version that is fine in windows but won’t work in MacOS unless you flash the bios.

 

[vanquish]

Thanks for those suggestions. I assume the RX 550 4GB is not going to work?

 

[Gigamaxx]

Thanks for those suggestions. I assume the RX 550 4GB is not going to work?

No, get a 560 minimum but don’t get the XFX RX 460-560 it too has a bad bios.

 

[vanquish]

Are there any particular issues with the XFX cards? They seem to be the cheapest but I have a vague recollection of some people having issues with them? There are a few XFX RX580 8GB I could potentially get but just want to be sure before I pull the trigger.

 

[Aluveitie]

If you want to look up specific models you can get a good summary here: https://dortania.github.io/GPU-Buyers-Guide/modern-gpus/amd-gpu.html

 

[vanquish]

Ok so that fits with what I remembered:

The only brand of GPU you should avoid with the Polaris series would be XFX, PowerColour, HIS and VisionTek as many users have had issues with these cards with viewing Clover and macOS booting but other users have found fixes/workarounds(though nothing consistent). This seems to be caused by having an odd VBIOS that doesn't communicate well with macOS and the only real solution is flashing another VBIOS which is not ideal for most users.