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Upgrade from GTX 260 to ???

A

amadeus00

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 30, 2005
Messages
136
Hey folks,

I've been out of the gaming world for a while as you can see with my current GTX 260 card. I'm looking to upgrade with a budget of about $250 but no more than $300. I run multiple monitors for photo editing but not necessary needed for gaming. I typically games in 1920 x 1200.

I've been looking at the 7850, 7870. I take it the PhysX is not that big of a deal since most games are offloading it to the CPU. Given my spec and requirement, are there other cards I should be looking at?
 
I forgot to mention that I run a KUHLER H2O 920 on the CPU and I like to keep my system quiet. Please also recommend brand for quiet operation.
 
what software do you use for photo editing?

I remembered reading a post in another thread that might make this relevant.

E4g1e said:
First off, which version of Photoshop are you planning to get? Elements? CS5.x? CS6?

In most cases, you will need (relatively speaking) a lot of RAM for any version of Photoshop. Go with 8GB of RAM if you're going to have a separate small, fast disk for the scratch file (16GB or more RAM would be better).

If you're going to use the latest CS6 version of Photoshop, get a relatively fast GPU from either AMD or Nvidia since CS6 uses OpenCL instead of CUDA for GPU acceleration (but please be advised that AMD gaming GPUs significantly outperform otherwise comparable Nvidia GPUs in OpenCL performance due to the relatively weak OpenCL performance of the GeForce GPUs - to the point where a $500 GeForce card might not perform any better than a Radeon card that costs half as much in Photoshop).

If on the other hand you're going to use only Photoshop Elements, any plain old cheapo GPU or even integrated graphics will work just fine since that version does not offer much if any GPU acceleration at all.

CPU wise, go with at least an Intel i5-3470.
Click to expand...
 
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At $300, get a Gigabyte Windforce 7950 for $300, flash the BIOS if it's the locked version. A 670 is nice too, if you can find it at that price.

At $250, get a 7870XT for around $220-240.

Unless you're constantly photo-editing, a top card from either brand will do you good.
 
I had a GTX260 with an E8500 before I upgraded to my current system. I went for the gigabyte 7950 because I really liked the cooler. If you keep the fan speed down around 30-40%, it can be nearly whisper quiet IMO. Even when I leave the fan speed to auto, I don't think it really ever exceeds 40-45% fan speed when gaming....but I'd have to check. I start to notice it when the fan speed starts to exceed about 50%.

Anyway, I paid $400 for it about a year ago. You can snag one for $300 now. I think it is a fantastic bang/buck card. The 7870s are also quite a good deal, too.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125414&Tpk=gigabyte 7950
^^ even comes with two free games.
 
Honestly I would stick with the green team. I went 9800 -> 4850 -> 5850 -> 6970 and finally got sick of AMDs drivers. I have two 660Ti's now and I feel the experience is definitely better. $250 to $300 will get you a 660Ti with a non reference cooler and possibly a 670 with a reference cooler.
 
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