Upgrading on a budget

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Docjon

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 18, 2011
Messages
100
I have a GTS 250. It's the last piece of my PC that I haven't upgraded over the past year and I'd like to upgrade it, but, you know, money. Money's short, so what can I do on a budget of $100-$150 that would be worthwhile? I was thinking I probably should look for something in the $150-$200 range and wait for a sale over the holidays.

I'm running Win7 64-bit, 8 gigs RAM, i5 2500k, and a GIGABYTE GA-Z68P-DS3 motherboard. I have an Antec EarthWatts EA-650 Green power supply.

What it will be used for, in case it matters:
In the past few months I've been playing Battlefield 3 (kind of tired of it), Borderlands 2, Dungeons & Dragons Online. I might pick up Skyrim if it goes on sale over Christmas, and I'll probably get the new Bioshock eventually.
 
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You could go with something like this and when it gets too slow add another and run in xfire. This is faster but costs more. With two 6850s I can run games about 90% max quality and stay over 50fps, this is on a 2500k running at 4700.
 
I must admit, this generation AMD dominates the sub $150 range. Go with a ghz edition 7770. The 7770 card is awesome. It wipes the floor with Nvidia cards of the same price. I sell quite a few of these in a week, customers are always surprised by the speed.

Battlefield loves AMD cards, and skyrim is notorious for running MUCH better on AMD 7k cards over 6k series. Overal skyrim like Nvidia cards, but in that price range most Nvidia cards are left in the dust.
 
my rommate had the same budget for his gpu, he ended up getting a galaxy 560 and he has been playing bf3 fine.
 
If you can only spend $150 on a new card I would give some consideration to the Sapphire HD 7770 GHz Edition, Sapphire HD 7770 GHz Edition OC, and the Nvidia GTX 550 Ti (or the GTX 460 Ti which has come down a lot in price and can still be found in stock at many retailers). The Sapphire HD 7770 OC is not the best price to performance ratio card, but is no slouch either. Sapphire creates value for it by including extras and providing a nice overclock over stock.
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http://www.futurelooks.com/sapphire-radeon-hd-7770-ghz-edition-oc-video-card-review/3/

&

XFX R7770 Black Edition Super Overclocked Review

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/02/14/xfx_r7770_black_edition_super_overclocked_review
 
7770 is probably the fastest you can get in your budget. 7750's are also available a bit cheaper and you can get 7750's that take up only a single slot rather than needing a 2nd slot for the cooler.

Personally I've been looking into a Sapphire 7750 low profile as it's both cheap and flexible in that I can put it in a low profile mini-ITX case or a normal case since it comes with both full height and low profile adapters. That may not be important to you, but if you're considering an HTPC build or easy to carry LAN rig it may be of interest.
 
Please elaborate. I haven't been keeping up on BF much this year. I've been super busy for the most part.
 
Thanks for the responses. So far, it looks like the 7770 is the best one recommended in my price range, and it appears to be a decent improvement over my current GTS 250. I'll keep checking here for further suggestions - I'm not buying until Black Friday at the earliest anyway, so there's plenty of time to compare different cards.

Pity, Newegg has a warehouse in my state now, so I have to pay 9.5% sales tax when I order from them. Naturally, I don't order much from them these days. I used to love ordering from Newegg.
 
Imo, you should consider scrapping the top half of your budget and getting a 7850 1 gig. Would be well worth it.
 
you can find 7850's for around that price range with the sales that been going on. i probally wouldn't shoot for anything lower than that. the 7770's are alright, but there kind of choked because of the interface. the biggest thing is..what resolution are you running on your monitor? if your doing 1080p or better, i'd be looking at the 7850. i would also grab the 2 gig version. i seen over at newegg some of them are under the $200 mark now.
 
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Spend the extra money and get a HD 7850 2GB. the performance improvement with the HD 7850 2GB over the sub 150 cards is massive. The HD 7850 is a powerhouse. At 1 Ghz it matches GTX 570 / GTX 660. at 1.2 Ghz it matches GTX 580. the PCS+ HD 7850 comes clocked at 1 Ghz. for less than 200 bucks its an awesome card with a free game (Farcry 3). what more do you want :D

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131472
 
Thanks for the advice folks. I'll be looking for a deal on the 7850, as it DOES seem to be quite a bit more powerful than the 7770. I hope I find one!

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/536?vs=549

I may not find the deal I need on the 7850, and have to settle for the 7770. :( I'd really like to get the 7850 for the purpose of future-proofing my rig (and being able to jack up the pretty settings, of course), but we'll see how it goes.

Thanks for the help. I really appreciate it. Wow, I'm up to 21 posts, and it's only taken me a year. At this rate, they'll let me post in the Hot Deals section by Christmas of 2014! Then I'll BE somebody!
 
Yeah, it takes forever to be able to post in Hot Deals these days if you aren't much of a poster and more of a lurker.

Back in the day I recall there not being any limitation at all. Then again I forgot my original username when I stopped coming to the forum for a few years since I posted so little I didn't log in much. Now I'm only a Limp Gawd after an additional nearly 8 years, but I've been around since the beginning. Kind of sad I couldn't remember my account name and didn't have access to the email address the account info would have been in anymore.
 
StormUP said:
Yeah, it takes forever to be able to post in Hot Deals these days if you aren't much of a poster and more of a lurker.

Back in the day I recall there not being any limitation at all. Then again I forgot my original username when I stopped coming to the forum for a few years since I posted so little I didn't log in much. Now I'm only a Limp Gawd after an additional nearly 8 years, but I've been around since the beginning. Kind of sad I couldn't remember my account name and didn't have access to the email address the account info would have been in anymore.
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I've done that as well, now I try to keep track of my passwords/logins better. What really annoys me is that, IIRC, it used to take 25 posts to qualify for Hot Deals when I registered. Now that I'm finally creeping up in number, I took a look again and it's 50! Man, talk about your moving goalposts. :( I have to check the sub-forums and see if they have a BS forum. I could contribute quite often there. :D

Back to our regularly-scheduled thread:
The 560 TI's performance looks good, but while this place claims it should be in the $169 range, I haven't seen it for anywhere near that price. I'm probably going to go with the 7770. Money's tight, and I probably won't get a deal I like on the 7850. Pity. Looks like a real nice jump in performance. Oh well, we shall see what develops in the fullness of time.
 
Unless you can get a 7770 for close to $100 new, I would skip it. they even go used here for about $85, pretty often.

The 6950's should be getting cleared out and they basically match the 7850, ignoring overclocking. But you really should just wait and see what kind of deals come down the pipe. I wouldn't be surprised if you see a $7850 for $150 sometime in the next month.

Also be sure to check newegg's open box section multiple times per day.
 
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thanks for the tips :) I could use a lot of them, and gonna upgrade my pc soon :)!
 
Docjon said:
I have a GTS 250.
In the past few months I've been playing Battlefield 3 (kind of tired of it),
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You don't say? I thought my 260GTX ran BF3 beta like s#it.

Yeah 5xx or 7xxx and an SSD is what your system needs to balance out.

This is why I don't understand people..... X person buys a 2500k and OP'd$ mobo just to match it with a 250 GTS, and GAME!....really!? Coulda got a 70 dollar AMD QUAD CPU from anytime in the last 2 years and matched your system with a GPU most likely 2x-3x the power of a 250 GTS, that you've been running all this time...ouch. Live and learn.
 
How about the 3gb Radeon cards... Are there any games that need that much ram or is 2gb cards more than enough? Or should I wait until next year when the 8xxx series cards are released
 
chameleoneel said:
Unless you can get a 7770 for close to $100 new, I would skip it. they even go used here for about $85, pretty often.

The 6950's should be getting cleared out and they basically match the 7850, ignoring overclocking. But you really should just wait and see what kind of deals come down the pipe. I wouldn't be surprised if you see a $7850 for $150 sometime in the next month.

Also be sure to check newegg's open box section multiple times per day.
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Newegg now has a killer after rebate price on a 7850. check the Hotdeals section!
 
I have a 7850 in my secondary system, and cannot recommend it highly enough. Handles 1080p quite well, and is a great balance of $/fps
 
Just a quick update. I hate to bug people for help and then never tell them how it worked out. Doesn't seem right to not finish the story.

I got the 7850 from Newegg. More than I wanted to spend, but I really wanted something that'll last a few years. For $149 + ~$15 tax plus Far Cry 3 for free, I figured it was worth it. The framerates are great, but I'm still fussing with the monitor & Catalyst Control Center trying to get everything to look good. It's weird, and I don't know if it's real or imagined, but everything looks darker and/or less vibrant.

Anyway, thanks for the help. Much appreciated.
 
Docjon said:
Just a quick update. I hate to bug people for help and then never tell them how it worked out. Doesn't seem right to not finish the story.

I got the 7850 from Newegg. More than I wanted to spend, but I really wanted something that'll last a few years. For $149 + ~$15 tax plus Far Cry 3 for free, I figured it was worth it. The framerates are great, but I'm still fussing with the monitor & Catalyst Control Center trying to get everything to look good. It's weird, and I don't know if it's real or imagined, but everything looks darker and/or less vibrant.

Anyway, thanks for the help. Much appreciated.
Click to expand...

Naturally, there are going to be gamma and color differences between camps (AMD/Nvidia). I also think that Nvidia may have their digital Vibrance feature turned on by default, though its been a few years since I've actually owned one. Anyway, AMD has an equivalent feature in their driver called "Color Vibrance". It can be found in "video --> color". They are basically a color saturation/color contrast dial.
 
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