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Upgrade from 4850 worth it?

F

fiCti0naL

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 30, 2002
Messages
187
My system is a bit out of date as you can see in my sig. Getting really tired of how loud and hot this 4850 gets. If I was to upgrade to a newer card, would I see much improvement in performance or would my other system specs be a bottleneck? If not, what would be recommended with a budget of around $250 that would be fairly future proof when I update other components?

Thanks!
 
A 6950 would be a big upgrade. I recently went from a 4850 to my 5870 and it was a huge increase in performance.

I went from 40 fps in Crysis with high/medium setting to 45 fps with settings maxed.

So yes, anything from a 5850 and up would be a worthwhile upgrade.
 
I've found that some games stutter with my E6300 @ 2.8 Ghz, which went away with a Q9550 or Athlon X3. So you might run into issues there too. This was with a stock 4850.
 
Zoomer said:
I've found that some games stutter with my E6300 @ 2.8 Ghz, which went away with a Q9550 or Athlon X3. So you might run into issues there too. This was with a stock 4850.
Click to expand...

Yeah, a CPU upgrade is probably gonna be recommended at least down the line. You might be able to hold out till Ivy, or just see if BD is BA in this upcomming week :p
 
I ordered (2) HIS 6950 2GB cards on newegg for $500 ($229.99ea after rebate) they are due to arrive today. Take a look at some benchmarks and you will see that with a slight clock speed increase it beats the GTX 570 in 3/4 of games. 2GB of vRam helps at high resolution. Even if you choose not to OC it is still right there with the GTX 570 in most instances
 
MacLeod said:
A 6950 would be a big upgrade. I recently went from a 4850 to my 5870 and it was a huge increase in performance.

I went from 40 fps in Crysis with high/medium setting to 45 fps with settings maxed.

So yes, anything from a 5850 and up would be a worthwhile upgrade.
Click to expand...

WRX STI said:
I ordered (2) HIS 6950 2GB cards on newegg for $500 ($229.99ea after rebate) they are due to arrive today. Take a look at some benchmarks and you will see that with a slight clock speed increase it beats the GTX 570 in 3/4 of games. 2GB of vRam helps at high resolution. Even if you choose not to OC it is still right there with the GTX 570 in most instances
Click to expand...
did you guys even notice the context here? the op has an E7200 which would be a huge limitation for a 6950. WRX STI, overclocking the 6950 would result in zero gain for most games since his cpu would be the limitation anyway.

and as usual we need to know the resolution he is going to play at. I will never understand why people cannot provide all this info when asking for advice.
 
Yeah I noticed the context. He asked if a $250 card is a worthwhile upgrade over a 4850. Seemed pretty cut and dried to me. A 6950 will be a huge upgrade over a 4850 and I know from experience as I did just that.

And yes, his E7200 will be a limitation but its not like he's using a Pentium 4. He's still going to see a big increase in performance even with it seeing as maybe 2 or 3 games actually use more than 1 core.

We dont need to know his resolution either. The question is basically is a $250 card (6950, 5870, GTX560) going to be a big upgrade over a 4850. Irregardless or the resolution, the answer is going to be yes.
 
well the lower the res the more performance that would be wasted of course but an E7200 is a pretty large limitation for a 6950 in general too though. he would get worse performance with a 6950 in cpu intensive games than I do with my old gtx260.
 
Don't mean to hijack the thread but it beats creating a new one:
I have a 4850 right now and would a 6950 bottleneck by a Q6600 @ 3Ghz? Also is an Antec TP3 430W pushing it with this setup?

Running at 1080P btw.
 
Upgrade your GPU and you will notice a big difference even with your current CPU. Overclock it.
 
cannondale06 said:
well the lower the res the more performance that would be wasted of course but an E7200 is a pretty large limitation for a 6950 in general too though. he would get worse performance with a 6950 in cpu intensive games than I do with my old gtx260.
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I disagree. A E7200/6950 will be noticeably faster than a E7200/4850 no matter how you slice it or look at it. Thats the whole point of his post. Yes he wont see the 6950's full potential without upgrading to a beefier processor but he's still gonna see a big jump.
 
MacLeod said:
I disagree. A E7200/6950 will be noticeably faster than a E7200/4850 no matter how you slice it or look at it. Thats the whole point of his post. Yes he wont see the 6950's full potential without upgrading to a beefier processor but he's still gonna see a big jump.
Click to expand...
I did not say it would not be a huge upgrade but so would going with a 6850 or 6870. my point was that his cpu is not only a limitation for a 6950, but its also a limitation just for some games in general. if I lowered my E8500 to 2.4 it would match his E7200 and I have done that and tested many games. my gtx260 loses a huge amount of performance at those cpu speeds and a 6950 is TWICE as fast. there will literally be cases where he only gets 2/3 to 1/2 of what a card like the 6950 is capable of.
 
cannondale06 said:
did you guys even notice the context here? the op has an E7200 which would be a huge limitation for a 6950. WRX STI, overclocking the 6950 would result in zero gain for most games since his cpu would be the limitation anyway.
Click to expand...

That's pretty funny considering the last line in the OP's post:

fiCti0naL said:
My system is a bit out of date as you can see in my sig. Getting really tired of how loud and hot this 4850 gets. If I was to upgrade to a newer card, would I see much improvement in performance or would my other system specs be a bottleneck? If not, what would be recommended with a budget of around $250 that would be fairly future proof when I update other components?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

A 6950 would be an improvement even if it's bottlenecked and would make sense if the OP was planning to upgrade the rest of the system in the near future, a 560 ti is another option. If the OP isn't planning on upgrading the rest of the system in the next few months it might make more sense to get something cheaper like a 6850 or 460.
 
Ebernanut said:
A 6950 would be an improvement even if it's bottlenecked and would make sense if the OP was planning to upgrade the rest of the system in the near future, a 560 ti is another option. If the OP isn't planning on upgrading the rest of the system in the next few months it might make more sense to get something cheaper like a 6850 or 460.
Click to expand...
yes I 100% agree with the last part. I did not get the impression that the OP was planning on upgrading his cpu anytime soon. future proofing a gpu where you cant even really fully use it for several months is usually silly. by that time we will have better deals and maybe even better cards for the same amount of money. so having all that gpu power wasted for those many months accomplishes nothing.
 
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