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Sugaree

n00b
Joined
Mar 4, 2009
Messages
16
Heyas.

I currently have a gtx260 that's about three years old.
I run it with a 32" westinghouse (VR3225) at 1920 by 1080 resolution.

I'm looking to upgrade my E8400 CPU to a 2500k/3570k and wanted to ask what would be a good GPU to upgrade to.

Is an Nvidia 560 Ti a nice upgrade for my resolution, or will I be better off waiting for the new 660 Ti when it launches?

Does AMD have a good card at $300 or less to consider?

Budget is $300. max, any advise is appreciated.
 
Wait for the 660 Ti. Or if you can stretch it a bit, go get the 7950/670.
 
Sugaree said:
Heyas.

I currently have a gtx260 that's about three years old.
I run it with a 32" westinghouse (VR3225) at 1920 by 1080 resolution.

I'm looking to upgrade my E8400 CPU to a 2500k/3570k and wanted to ask what would be a good GPU to upgrade to.

Is an Nvidia 560 Ti a nice upgrade for my resolution, or will I be better off waiting for the new 660 Ti when it launches?

Does AMD have a good card at $300 or less to consider?

Budget is $300. max, any advise is appreciated.
Click to expand...


max budget 300 makes it a little tough especially with the 7950 coming so close. but the 660 should drop the price of it pretty easily thats my guess.

anyways. @ 300 i'd probably get this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125418

the 7870 is consistently praised throughout reviews and it highly overclockable. its great for the money spent

again though generally nvidia releases cause price drops in AMD products.

i dont wait for price drops any more though. by the time it happens you will want something else. buy the card you want and can afford..
 
I hate Nvidia, I myself would say a 7870 and overclock it, very easy to do, and if you get something like a 7870 Twin Frozr III from MSI or a Sapphire 7870 OC you`ll love it, the factory OC models are nice, but both mentioned cards are simply amazing, there will also possibly be 7790 which may be a good path.

Either way, a factory or self clocked 7870/7950 is comparable to faster depending on game, and if you are doing "work" stuff, then the AMD cards are valid, 1920x1080 is the best place for the 7870 or gtx600 series, they generally do not like higher res WITH eye candy turned up.

I would personally say 2500k with a good motherboard, and a 7870 OC OR 7950 OC, 660Ti are good enough cards, no doubt, but there are certain things in which they are not that good at, the limited bus width will make a difference depending on the game, either way, I do not think you can make a bad choice here, its preference.

maybe if I can make suggestion, pay a bit more and get a card designed for OC(7870 HAWK or SAPPHIRE HD 7950 OC 3GB GDDR5 950 MHz Edition or the various 660ti offered), this way here you get the best it can offer mostly due to slight better bining and better coolers, get a good cooler for that cpu, OC it, best all around for ya :)
 
Buy an AMD card right now would be like buying an AMD processor right now. There is way better tech out for the same price from a different brand...
 
Dasuchin said:
Buy an AMD card right now would be like buying an AMD processor right now. There is way better tech out for the same price from a different brand...
Click to expand...

wtf are you talking about. and you dont know the price of the 660ti. AMD and NVIDIA are very comparable GPUs.
 
Thanks for all of the responses.

After reading them and looking at a few links, it seems that the 7950 and the 7870 are closely matched in price, with the 7870 being slightly cheaper over all....

I should have mentioned that I'm using a CM Storm Scout case and only have 10.5" of space available for the card. The card that Dremic linked doesn't have size specs on Neweggs page, but other three fan cards of similar type list longer that 10.5 inches. I'll keep looking at specs as I like the cooling potential of that card.

I will read up on the 7870 vs. the 7950 as far as performance goes, as I can see the 7950 getting really close to $300. with a nice sale, if it out performs the 7870...

Thanks for the link for the 660Ti as well. It's good to see that there are three strong choices although I hadn't found an official release date for the 660Ti yet.

I'll update this thread, and once again thanks much to all who replied.
 
Sugaree said:
Thanks for all of the responses.

After reading them and looking at a few links, it seems that the 7950 and the 7870 are closely matched in price, with the 7870 being slightly cheaper over all....

I should have mentioned that I'm using a CM Storm Scout case and only have 10.5" of space available for the card. The card that Dremic linked doesn't have size specs on Neweggs page, but other three fan cards of similar type list longer that 10.5 inches. I'll keep looking at specs as I like the cooling potential of that card.

I will read up on the 7870 vs. the 7950 as far as performance goes, as I can see the 7950 getting really close to $300. with a nice sale, if it out performs the 7870...

Thanks for the link for the 660Ti as well. It's good to see that there are three strong choices although I hadn't found an official release date for the 660Ti yet.

I'll update this thread, and once again thanks much to all who replied.
Click to expand...

two weeks the 660ti comes out
 
Dasuchin said:
Buy an AMD card right now would be like buying an AMD processor right now. There is way better tech out for the same price from a different brand...
Click to expand...

yeh, I had to say the same, its preference, just as with cpu, getting one doesnt always mean you are making a horrible choice, its preference. Sometimes you can save a few $ overclock and get near the same performance, sometimes the experience is near identical and getting the "name brand everyone gets" amounts to nothing really gained.

Just as an overclocked 7970 can keep up with a 680, and overclocked 7950 is easily able to keep up to a 670, a 7870 overclocked is also able to be as fast as a 7950, there is no way Nvidia would be fool enough to allow a 660 overclocked to bridge the gap over the 670 to equal the 680, so therefore, its unlikely to be "better" in every regard.

If gaming is the only thing needed, the 660ti when released, or the 7870 OC/ with overclocking(non reference cooler) will be very good choices.

Sapphire 7870 OC if I recall correctly is 10.5 as it is more or less the size of the pcb used, the msi ones I believe are a touch longer. For canadians, the best choices seem to be Asus(not greatest cooler this time around) XFX(again not greatest cooler) Msi(wonderfull cooler very overclockable) sapphire(sux you have to ship to states then overseas far as I know, beyond this, they have the best 7870 out there tied with the msi 7870 hawk)
 
not to mention, 7870 OC are under $300, and if the 660ti is say, $220 all in, there will be some penalty for that low of a price :p
 
OP If you have saved USD 300 for a graphics card I would advise you to spend a little bit extra to get the MSI HD 7950 OC. comes with a HD 7970 PCB as confirmed by the newegg user reviews and the hardforum post below. the newegg user reviews for this card are very positive (83% of them gave 5 eggs )

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127667
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1704168

clock for clock HD 7950 is 3 - 5% slower than HD 7970. you can easily overclock this card to 1 - 1.05 Ghz at stock voltage and 1.15 Ghz with voltage tweaking.

here is a HD 7950 OC (900 Mhz) voltage overclocked and compared with a ref HD 7970(925 Mhz)
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/03/01/xfx_radeon_hd_7950_black_edition_video_card_review/8

HD 7950 (1150) will be easily 30% or more faster than a HD 7870 (1250 Mhz) .

About the card dimensions you could ask the hardforum member FaRKle0079 who created the above thread on the MSI HD 7950 twin frozr
 
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Once again, thanks for the additional suggestions and info.

Dremic - If that two weeks estimate is pretty sound, I guess I should wait to see the reviews of the 660's when they are officially released..

Dragon and Raghu - Thanks for the suggestions. The 7870 is within my budget and the 7950 slightly above, but I think I'd lean toward the 79 series if I go with AMD for the resale value of the newer generation down the road.

The review of the OC'd 7950 vs the 7970 is impressive from a performance, temp, and power draw point of view. I also see that the newegg details page lists the card at 10.28" length, short enough to use in my Storm Scout.

I'll have to read up more to see if there will be aftermarket cooling design 660ti's available on release date, or if there will just be reference design cards for a few weeks after release. I'd like to see a comp of a Twin Frozr 660ti vs the twin Frozr 7950 that raghu linked.

Good thing is that over the next few weeks I can put away another $30.00 or so to get a slightly better card, and the rebate on the Twin Frozr 7950 is good until 8/31/12 so the price shouldn't go up by then.

Thanks again.
 
Sugaree said:
Once again, thanks for the additional suggestions and info.

Dremic - If that two weeks estimate is pretty sound, I guess I should wait to see the reviews of the 660's when they are officially released..

Dragon and Raghu - Thanks for the suggestions. The 7870 is within my budget and the 7950 slightly above, but I think I'd lean toward the 79 series if I go with AMD for the resale value of the newer generation down the road.

The review of the OC'd 7950 vs the 7970 is impressive from a performance, temp, and power draw point of view. I also see that the newegg details page lists the card at 10.28" length, short enough to use in my Storm Scout.

I'll have to read up more to see if there will be aftermarket cooling design 660ti's available on release date, or if there will just be reference design cards for a few weeks after release. I'd like to see a comp of a Twin Frozr 660ti vs the twin Frozr 7950 that raghu linked.

Good thing is that over the next few weeks I can put away another $30.00 or so to get a slightly better card, and the rebate on the Twin Frozr 7950 is good until 8/31/12 so the price shouldn't go up by then.

Thanks again.
Click to expand...

unfortunately reference cards usually come first! you are smart to go for the 79 series anyways, those are amazing cards and an amazing value. people talk about the 7950 a lot on here.

AMD had a good generation this year the reviews are all glowing and the overclock capabilities are insane.

no matter what sounds like you cant make a bad decision. look at 660 reviews and watch those 79xx series prices in the next few weeks
 
Also 6970 will get you the same performance of a 7870 and can be bought for less than 200 on the forums.
 
Sugaree said:
Once again, thanks for the additional suggestions and info.

Dremic - If that two weeks estimate is pretty sound, I guess I should wait to see the reviews of the 660's when they are officially released..

Dragon and Raghu - Thanks for the suggestions. The 7870 is within my budget and the 7950 slightly above, but I think I'd lean toward the 79 series if I go with AMD for the resale value of the newer generation down the road.

The review of the OC'd 7950 vs the 7970 is impressive from a performance, temp, and power draw point of view. I also see that the newegg details page lists the card at 10.28" length, short enough to use in my Storm Scout.

I'll have to read up more to see if there will be aftermarket cooling design 660ti's available on release date, or if there will just be reference design cards for a few weeks after release. I'd like to see a comp of a Twin Frozr 660ti vs the twin Frozr 7950 that raghu linked.

Good thing is that over the next few weeks I can put away another $30.00 or so to get a slightly better card, and the rebate on the Twin Frozr 7950 is good until 8/31/12 so the price shouldn't go up by then.

Thanks again.
Click to expand...

OP if you are overclocking HD 7950 is going to be similar to GTX 670 perf wise. I have no doubt that a HD 7950 is a much better card than a GTX 660 Ti. The only constraint you need to check is the card dimensions and whether it will fit your case.
 
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