HD 7870 or HD 6950

[Kato1144]

hey I'm currently building a gaming rig for a friend out of spare parts and i to deiced between the above mentioned video cards, now the answer may seem obvious but there a details to consider:

Now the hard part, I first have to decided what GPU to use, I know i said a HD 7870, and yes i do have but it has problems... I had to RMA once and visiontek were super difficult about it, I literally had to recorded the card glitching out in desktop hard before they would approve the RMA, and even after RMAing the card and getting it back it still was troublesome, although not as fricking bad as it was before hand but still, so some drivers would work with the card no problem others would cause BSOD, my brother used this card is his PC before getting a RX 480 and he has had no issues since, so I'm a little hesitant giving this card to Mike who is not very computer literate. Soooo I think I might instead give him my tried and true HIS HD 6950, overclocked to 880MHz on the core and i think i was also a 3GB card maybe... maybe not will have to look, either way it has no problems, I used it as a primary and secondary GPU in a tri fire setup right up until i got my GTX 1070, it is more power hungry then the 7870 and i don't think it is quit as powerful but it is still a solid card. So what do you guys think 7870 or the safer 6950, I think the 6950 will be the better bet or should i uses the 7870, witch can use the crimson drivers unlike the 6950...

So you can see my dilemma with this, do i get the newer but possible more problematic card or go with the older but unsupported and power hungry card... I can't decide...
I would also like to get some games working before handing over so he can get to enjoying the system right away, also would like to see how the old 650watt PSU will handle the load of a GPU, so this is my next question would i be in serous danger of something bad happening if i plug in a GPU with no case support like so:

if this will end in disaster pls let me know but if you have done this or seen this done with no issue i would like to know that as well, any help will be appreciated.

 

[Araxie]

1-) you will have no issues running the card in that way.. specially if its going to be for a short period of time.

2-) ok about the GPU dilemma, my answer is.. "None", yeah. none of those cards sell both in Ebay, i've seen some 7870 around 80$ and the 6950 should be around 40$ with that pick a cheap GTX 1050 and you will be giving him a new sealed GPU with way more Gaming performance than those both cards together.

 

[Kato1144]

1-) you will have no issues running the card in that way.. specially if its going to be for a short period of time.

2-) ok about the GPU dilemma, my answer is.. "None", yeah. none of those cards sell both in Ebay, i've seen some 7870 around 80$ and the 6950 should be around 40$ with that pick a cheap GTX 1050 and you will be giving him a new sealed GPU with way more Gaming performance than those both cards together.

ok i was just worried a bump might kill the whole PC or something if the GPU is not secured, as for your suggestion I can't do that for several reasons, first and for most I'm giving him the PC on Monday most likely, second of all even if i did sell both cards for what you priced them out and that is a if, I would still be 40$ short of the cheapest 1050 I could get plus shipping, everything local is even more, so it needs to be one of the two



EDIT: HD7870 vs 1050, opps i read the numbers wrong, it actually outperforms the 1050 in Memory bandwidth and Texel rate by 34% and 48% respectively, it losses in pixle rate by 35% but that is more than acceptable, I think the 7870 will be just fine performance wise

 

[dgacioch]

If its being used as a gaming rig, is it possible your buddy might kick in a couple bucks for a card upgrade? Im not sure either of those cards would give a decent experience at 1080p unless you were playing older titles.

 

[Kato1144]

If its being used as a gaming rig, is it possible your buddy might kick in a couple bucks for a card upgrade? Im not sure either of those cards would give a decent experience at 1080p unless you were playing older titles.

no he wont even spend money on more HDD capacity, I gave him a 60GB SSD for windows and a used 500GB HDD for storage that is not in good shape i told him this and ask him to buy a better HDD and he just said "if it dies then i will get a new one" so ya i highly doubt he is going to spend money on a GPU after he has to buy a Case, Windows 10 OEM, keyboard, and monitor, there right there will be like 300-400$ depending, as for the card i used the HD 6950 just fine up till recently, yes it was in a tri fire of 6950's but i had to turn off crossfire for many games and it worked just fine at 1080p high detail on almost every game i played like GTAV: had to turn off crossfire and everything was set to high except texture detail was normal, 60FPS all day, as for the 7870 I was still doing all my brother games at 1080 and a high FPS then i was getting some times, it just had the buggy shit going for it and he had some frame issues with the starwars battlefront until he turn it down to normal detail so i think they both can still preform, i'm probably going to go with the 7870 and see if it give me issues

 

[bboynitrous]

I think the 7870 is still supported in the drivers from AMD so I'd go with that if I had to choose between the two.