Upgrade from 6970 to 770 - how substantial?

G

gmreplay

Weaksauce
Joined
Dec 27, 2010
Messages
92
I'm looking to upgrade from my HD 6950 (shaders unlocked to 6970 specs). Given my budget (about $300) I think the GTX 770 might be the best upgrade path. I'm wondering how substantial of a FPS difference I should expect if I go through with this.

I game at 1440p, I'm using a 2600k OC'd to 4.5ghz with 8gb of ram. I play a wide variety of games including Wolfenstein: The New Order, Bioshock Infinite, CSGO, Red Orchestra 2, Tropico 5, and a bit of War Thunder.

Right now I get 40-50 FPS in Wolfenstein running on mostly high settings. I only pull about 35 FPS in Tropico 5.

Using sites like GPUboss, it looks like the 770 is only about 10% faster than the 6970 in raw horsepower. This isn't really enough to justify laying out $300. Should I expect to see a bigger change than these numbers would indicate?
 
If you have a $300 budget you might look at the R9 290. If you are willing to get a card used for a couple months in a mining rig you can land one of those babies around $250 maybe less if you win an auction.
 
With a 290 what kind of performance boost are we talking about versus the 6970? I'd really like to get at least a 50% improvement over what I'm seeing now.
 
I'd wait. As should you....

New Nvidia cards will cause AMD's prices to drop....

An R9 280 3GB should be under $200 after rebates soon....
 
R9 280s are being phased out for the R9 285 in AMD product lineup. So if you wait too long you do run the risk of existing inventory running out if you want a new card.

If you're interested in Wolfenstein it won't let you run Ultra at 1080p with only 2gb VRAM I believe.

GPUboss is not a good sole source for video card performance comparisons, and actually might be a bad idea as "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" as evident by what it is showing to you. Use actual review tests instead, you can find larger databases with numbers at places like Techpowerup, Anandtech or Tom's Hardware.

If you aren't looking to go for used AMD cards or the slashed prices on things like the 280 and soon 280x as well which are being phased out then I'd wait if possible.
 
Odellus said:
using internet 2 hard

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1061?vs=1068
Click to expand...

I've already done those sorts of comparisons, as I said in my first post. Reading comprehension 2 hard, eh? Anyway in your link the benchmarks are only about 10% different, which is what I saw in my searches too. Yet the FPS differences seem significant (maybe 50-70% difference). Anyone know why that is?

Between the 280, 280X, and the 770, which is going to be the best value for 1440p play? They all seem fairly similar.
 
770= GTX 680 with a few updates.
280x = HD 7970

Both cards are one series higher than what you have. Thus there is little value to upgrading to either card. Now a real upgrade would be:

GTX 780
or
R9 290

Since the 800 series is coming soon from Nvidia it doesn't make sense to get either of those until you find out what Nvidia does with their existing inventory of high end cards. You have a a 1440p monitor. I wouldn't get a card with less than 3GB of memory on it. No way in hell I would. Skyrim with mods pushes 3GB to the limit.

Now if you REALLY can't wait and want something now, then consider a used card off EBAY. A HD 7970 should cost less than $150. It is the exact same card almost as a 280x. R9 290 go for $250 or so.

Hope that helps. Good luck!
 
gmreplay said:
I've already done those sorts of comparisons, as I said in my first post. Reading comprehension 2 hard, eh? Anyway in your link the benchmarks are only about 10% different, which is what I saw in my searches too. Yet the FPS differences seem significant (maybe 50-70% difference). Anyone know why that is?

Between the 280, 280X, and the 770, which is going to be the best value for 1440p play? They all seem fairly similar.
Click to expand...

i really don't know what you're talking about. in my link it's comparing a 290 to a 6970, and the 290 is 90-120% faster in every benchmark, and a 770 is 80-100% faster in every benchmark. questions like these are extremely easy to answer. find benchmarks for games you play and see what performs best for the most amount of money you're willing to spend.

anyway, new cards are coming out next month. just wait.
 
I went from two 6970s that were overclocked to over 1GHz each to a single GTX 780 overclocked to ~1.3GHz. The rest of my system is basically the same as yours, 2600K at 4.6GHz, 1440p monitor, etc. I noticed a pretty significant increase both in synthetics and actual gameplay.

Of course, since the upgrade I've only been going back and playing older games lol.
 
I upgrade my unlocked 6950 to the MSI 770 Lightning (when you could sell them for $350). Big difference in noise, heat, and performance.

But if you're not getting that much for the 6950 sale, I'd wait until next gen. Better gains will be had with the same budget IMO.
 
cageymaru said:
770= GTX 680 with a few updates.
280x = HD 7970

Both cards are one series higher than what you have. Thus there is little value to upgrading to either card. Now a real upgrade would be:

GTX 780
or
R9 290

Since the 800 series is coming soon from Nvidia it doesn't make sense to get either of those until you find out what Nvidia does with their existing inventory of high end cards. You have a a 1440p monitor. I wouldn't get a card with less than 3GB of memory on it. No way in hell I would. Skyrim with mods pushes 3GB to the limit.

Now if you REALLY can't wait and want something now, then consider a used card off EBAY. A HD 7970 should cost less than $150. It is the exact same card almost as a 280x. R9 290 go for $250 or so.

Hope that helps. Good luck!
Click to expand...



Exactly!!
 
I would have to say that a 6970 to a 770 or a 280X is a big jump in performance. I used a 6970 and while it was decent for the time several years ago, there were some pitfalls to the cayman architecture.

Remember, DX11 was an achilles' heel to both the Evergreen and Cayman; both of those cards did fine in DX9 but really suffered in terms of DX11 performance particularly with tessellation. However, Tahiti fixed those issues, and Kepler does well in DX11 as well.

The jump in performance is very large I feel like. However OP, you should still wait a month. Even if you want a 770, i'd suggest waiting for the 800 series cards next month - even if you don't get an 800 card, it should have a shakeup on the rest of the market in terms of prices. Hopefully anyway. So there's no reason to not wait a couple more weeks,
**UNLESS** you get an incredible deal on a 770 / 280 type of card. And by incredible, I'm talking 150-200$ if that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top