If I replace my video card, how much performance gain will I notice?

Specs are in my sig.

I would be replacing it with a "mid range" nvidia card. Something around the 200-250 range.

Primarily I play WoW, Skyrim, Crysis 2. Modern games are still playable on my system.

You would get noticeable gains, but I would overclock that cpu before I think of putting money into upgrades.

I'd wait for the new GPUs. Going from a 6950 to a 7950 isn't going to be a tremendous performance boost for the money.

For help in comparing benchmarks, your 2GB 6950 is about equal to the 2GB GTX 650 Ti Boost ($150ish).

For $250 you'd be looking at the 2GB GTX 760, which should be about 50% faster than your 6950. If you're getting 40 FPS in Crysis 2, you'll get over 60 FPS with the GTX 760. It'll blow WoW and Skyrim out of the park, but the 6950 should be doing those pretty well already.

a nice boost. Id do it unless you are able to go AMD as well. the 8xxx are around the corner.

With a 6950 unless you're running into obvious performance issues, probably not enough gain to justify the cost of the upgrade. That's a very personal issue though, everyones tolerance is different. The 9xxx amd and 8xx Nvidia cards should be a nice upgrade in that price range though.

I wouldn't mind upgrading my 6970 but I'm holding out for one of the new AMD video cards supposedly available at the end of October. If anything else, the 7xxx cards are likely to get a price cut at the same time.

I noticed that your current card is actually an okay one, and I agree with the previous comments in this thread...overclocking that i5 to let the 6950 stretch its legs at the high resolutions will provide you more of a boost than replacing the video card.

Fooshnik said:

I'd wait for the new GPUs. Going from a 6950 to a 7950 isn't going to be a tremendous performance boost for the money.

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I jumped from a unlocked 6950 to a 7950 and it was tremendous in areas like eyefinity as to allow higher settings. the trick is to sell your current card which has good value because of mining which i got $180 for mine in April and then buy your new card..

Dark12 said:

You would get noticeable gains, but I would overclock that cpu before I think of putting money into upgrades.

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Yeah I was looking into this. It's still fast, but I think my performance issues are due to things like ground clutter and whatnot. IIRC that's a CPU issue.

Thanks to everyone for the info, much appreciated!

Edit: Also I'm seeing a lot of AMD recommendations in this thread. I thought nvidia was currently the one to go with for the mid range market?

OP HD 7950 is the card to get. best perf at USD 250. with a game bundle to sweeten things even more. remember the HD 7950 boost cards come out of the box at 925 - 1000 mhz and overclock to 1100 - 1150 mhz , matching HD 7970 Ghz perf.

the person who said HD 7950 is not a big jump over HD 6950 is just not stating the facts. the HD 7950(1.15 ghz) is roughly 65- 70% faster than a HD 6950 OC (950 mhz). but the most important thing is in the latest DX11 games with MSAA its a clear doubling of perf. thats because HD 6900 cards were poor in tesselation and compute

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/HD_7950_X2_Boost/8.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/HD_7950_X2_Boost/31.html

BF3 1920 x 1200

HD 6970 - 40.3
HD 7950 iceq x2 - 67.1
HD 7970 Ghz - 78.9
HD 7950(1200 mhz) - 82.9

so go for the HD 7950. its a no brainer, an avg HD 7950(1.15 Ghz) beats a golden GTX 760(1.3 ghz) . HD 7950(1.15 ghz) and GTX 670(1.25 ghz) are closely matched competitors trading blows depending on game.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/07/02/msi_n760_tf_2gd5oc_gtx_760_overclocking_review/5

Honestly, when looking into upgrades myself a few months back, I upgraded from two 8800 GTS to two 6950's unlocked to 6970's. The 50's versus the 70's aren't a GIGANTIC jump, but it is noticeable, and right now the 70's can be found relatively cheaply in trades and whatnot. I'm thinkin if you happen to be on a budget, you could always run a crossfire setup and call it good for a while. My 70's in crossfire are maxing everything out, and can survive Witcher 2 maxed out with Ubersampling at a normal framerate, so I would say you're not far off of a comfortable goal.

If you can sell the HD6950 for $150 or so I would consider it.

A 6950 is only worth about $120-$130 tops now. But if you can find a buyer for it at $150, definitely sell.

I upgraded to a 7950 from a 6950. I noticed a pretty good jump in performance at 2560x1440 resolution. It's MUCH smoother now.

if only there was a way to know...like looking at reviews maybe?