So, first off, I know a lot of you are going to suggest Nvidia cards. No, thank you. I want to support the little guy, plus I think red is a better color for systems then green. :P
On to the question then... With all the fantastic newish AMD cards, I'm a little lost as to the sweet spot for 1080p gaming. I was thinking about an upgrade (tax refund time!) but I'm not going to want to spend extra money if I can avoid it.
I know I want a high end card, 390, 390x, Fury, Fury X, but a) money, b) waste of horsepower (not electric power, Wyo's way low per KwH), c) CPU will bottleneck my system at that point. Probably badly.
So... for a little context:
I'd like pretty 60fps in:
ETS2 Skyrim STEP Fallout 3 modded to hell Your average, non-impaired Minecraft modpack (I get that this is mainly CPU bound, but I'm exhausted and will forget the question if I wait till morning) Car Mechanic Simulator (Yes. It's relaxing.) Borderlands Pre-Sequel maybe?
I'd like pretty 30fps: Shadow of Mordor Fallout 4 XCOM 2 (yes, optimization issues, I've heard)
Sweet spot 1080p card would be the Sapphire R9-390 Nitro OC.. This is in my opinnion the best bang for buck card for 1080p gaming. There are also cheaper 390´s then the Sapphire one. But in my opinnion the Sapphire is the best card out of the bunge, It has the best cooling unit on it from all 390´s.
Just going to add something else to what @MisteryAngel, Just get the highest end card that you can get and forget about it. As that may be a waste its really not. You are able to prepare for the games that you may not know of that you want to play in the future as they get announced which are mostly going to be more graphically intensive which means higher system requirements and then you regret not getting that high end card back in the day when you have money to spend.I have been there should have saved more money to get my R9 290 Tri X OC instead of my 270x Asus TOP when I had income. Now I do have some income coming but it's not enough for my needs for living.
Another suggestion for the 390, but you may want to consider waiting for the Polaris line up which should come before August (they said "in time for the back to school season").
Although I am a pleb. I have not ran into any problems with the R9 290 Tri X out of the box overclock. I run games, and HD video without a flaw. All at 1080p.
I don't why everyone is recommending R9 390. That's what I was considering for my 2560x1080 ultra-wide monitor. I'd say the sweetspot for 1080p gaming, especially if you don't need absolute maxed details/filters AND 60FPS would be a R9 380/380X. Or maybe they are unaware of your CPU being an A6 (is that correct - got it from your profile)?
From what I read on reviews the only issue with the R9 380x doesn't add enough performance over the 380 to justify its price premium, especially when factoring OCing the 380; in other words the 380 has a better bang for the buck and still in the same league. If you don't mind turning down MSAA the 380 should get 1080p 60FPS on most titles at high settings. If you don't mind 30FPS, you could probably crank every detail on most any game at 1080p. If you find a 380X within $5-$10 of a 380, definitely go for a 380x.
I think you might run into some issues with your CPU if you do have a dual-core A6, especially with CPU-bound games, but I don't think that should stop you from something like a 380 - you could always upgrade to a quad-core Athlon for dirt cheap to alleviate CPU bottlenecks. I think the Athlon/380 would be a balanced combo
I personally have an R9 380 Nitro 4GB from Sapphire and an FX 6350 with 8GB of RAM. I upgraded from an R7 265 2GB essentially a <~$100 upgrade. I don't have a big game collection but using Skyrim as for a basis, I am running on maximum settings 2x anti-aliasing and several graphical mods at 1080p. I can maintain high 50s FPS during gameplay with my 380. Since I am running different settings than when I had my R7 265 can't really compare. The R7 265 could play at 1080p but was not a silky smooth experience.
However I can compare my experience of my R7 265 with R9 380 with CSGO. I played both at 1080p. In order to keep my FPS up, R7 265 was running low/med settings and it would still drop from my 60FPS target. I am playing on max settings with my 380 with 2x AA and will consistently run at 60FPS.
Personally I am very satisfied with the performance of my 380 and don't feel like I am leaving anything on the table. I considered a 390 but since I am gaming strictly on 1080p 60Hz monitor and will be for another couple years. The 380 made sense for me.
Honestly, I have a Powercolor 380 with 4GB of VRAM and a 21:9 3440x1440 monitor. I run all the games I play on either high or ultra at 60FPS. I am sure that if I were to play some of the real high end games I would need to upgrade, but my monitor is a lot more pixels than your 1920x1080. I wouldn't freak out about getting a much stronger card than mine if I were you.
In all honesty a r9 290 or a r9 390 will do you right for maxing out 1080P games. And will allow you to play at 1440P with only turning down 1 or 2 settings and still maintaining visual quality, your current limitation will be your CPU . I do recommend on getting a 4core Athlon or An A10 . If you get the A10 you can pick up a 280 for dual graphics mode( at least that's what I think I might be wrong) but I do reccomend a single strong GPU over crossfire.
A 380 is pretty fine for 1080p even, if you want power effeciency for for a nano before they all sell out. Otherwise AMD pretty much owns the mid range right now, the only competitive card from nvidia there really is the 950>370, but the 370 is usually a good deal cheaper than it.
If you are feeling adventurous and are getting a 390...http://www.overclock.net/t/1567179/activation-of-cores-in-hawaii-tonga-and-fiji-unlockability-tester-ver-1-6-and-atomtool My sapphire didn't unlock, and last I checked that was the same across the board for sapphire cards.
Yes I play almost all of those games in a 290 and it will run as you want. I have a FX 6100 CPU so I am limited that way but the 290 is good for the games. All but borderlands runs great, borderlands is fairly CPU heavy compared to the others for what ever reason but still runs great it can just have dips every now and then.
Edit: I read some saying 380, yup would also do good, I would say the 390 solely on the skyrim/fallout mod front with the 8gb of vram to help out with that, you did say heavily modded.
well if he own an dualcore A6, then the cpu will be a bottleneck anyway. Even with a 380. If he want to upgrade his cpu and mobo aswell, then he should not botter with any amd platform but just go with an i5.