Upgrading from a 5870...finally about time?

S

SkyMonkey

Gawd
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I've been keeping an eye on the last few generations of hardware from both AMD and Nvidia, and until this last one, nothing has really looked all that attractive an upgrade from my 5870. I like to try to get a 2x+ improvement in FPS at 1920x1200 before I upgrade, and that's finally the kind of generational improvement I'm seeing on benchmarks on the high end single GPU cards at this point (680 and 7970). I bought the 5870 when it was near bleeding edge, and while in most of what I am currently playing, it's still going strong, performance in some games is starting to lag a bit. In Skyrim most notably, I can't use the high-def texture packs, and only get around 30-35FPS at (somewhat tweaked) ultra settings. Since I'm finally getting more time to game after a very crazy 8 months at work, and will be going back to Skyrim shortly, I think I'd like to upgrade in the next month or so.

I'd prefer to purchase a card that will last me 2-3 years, and has a path to a higher resolution display as well. I can spend the money on the highest single GPU performers, and I prefer to stay away from SLI/CF in all forms. While I don't really strongly feel the need to upgrade at this point (catching up on backlog at the moment, and Diablo 3), when I go back to complete Skyrim and tackle Deus Ex: HR, Batman AA/AC, and other newer games, I'd like to be able to crank things way up and get at least 60FPS.

I'm thinking I'd get good longevity out of either a 680 or 7970 at this point, though they've been out long enough now that I'm wondering what's next on the horizon (mainly for price drop reasons on these cards). I currently am running an i7-920 at 3.7GHz, so there's no upgrade for me there without a motherboard swap, and I'm not really feeling CPU limited at this point. I think one of these cards would easily outlast this CPU. And between the 680 and 7970, performance on the games I'm looking to play seems to indicate a 680 would be the better bet; though I do like the idea of the 3GB of VRAM on the 7970.

Thoughts?
 
Toss a coin to decide! You can't, from what I've read, go wrong with either one when buying a single card. At your resolution, you'll be enjoying great FPS. Check some reviews for your favorite games and you'll see.
 
Dont rub it in, I am still running my 5850. Been thinking about upgrading though; 670 and 1900x1200 (currently at 1680x1050). If you are going with a 680 or 7970, you should be good for another 2-3 years with similar lifetime performace of your 5870 assuming you picked it up when it was king.
 
im waiting for 8XXX to upgrade from my 5870. and its killing me!
 
Well......

I have both.
I think the 7970 for your resolution would be tough to beat. It has the price, power and VRAM to last a while. (I have Crossfire, that is a can of worms currnetly, but a single card is very good)

Now the 680 FTW or Lightening with 4GB of VRAM might also whet your whistle. The price is higher though......that's where the AMD card might be the winner.:D
 
Did you try overclocking to 986/1300MHz? Works better that way.

If you look at TeraFlops a stock GTX680 would be a 0.1 downgrade! 7970 has 3.7TF and yours has 3.2TF.

I would wait for the "BigKepler" GTX685 coming out in October with 4.1TF 2048SPs and 512-bit VRAM(384GBps) according to rumor.

The "Venus XTX" (40% faster than 7970) Radeon HD8970 will be out by Christmas with 4.7-5.4TF 2560SPs and 160TMUs(!) 384-bit VRAM(288GBps) and hopefully 48ROPs. I bet you will be kicking yourself when that happens.

If the GTX685's 512b VRAM or the HD8970's 48ROPs turn out to be false rumors that will be disappointing but those two are the most farfetched.

On the CPU front, I agree, until they return to triple channel I won't be upgrading. Even at 5.2GHz Ivy/SandyBridge chips (22GBps) can't match my 4.2GHz Nehalem's 25GBps RAM copy in AIDA64 v2.6 and just matches the 20GBps read. I beat even a stock 3960XEE on L2/L3cache writes too. And with 2122 MemoryMarks I beat a 5GHz 3930K in PassMark.
 
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Since you mention Skyrim, I can share my experience with that game using a 7970.

My relevant specs
- i7 920 @ 3.6GHz
- Single reference 7970 @ 1125/1575. 12.8 WHQL drivers, 12.7 CAP3 profiles
- 2560x1600 resolution. Things should be much smoother at your resolution.

Skyrim settings
- Ultra with 8x MSAA, 16x AF
- Custom shadows using the ini settings found here
- Texture Pack Combiner v1.66 from Skyrim Nexus. This mod combines 20+ high texture mods for Skyrim into one neat package. I've installed every texture suggested in that thread, going with 4096x4096 wherever possible.

I mostly get 60 fps while playing, occasionally dipping to 50. The only problem I've encountered so far is when I go into heavily forested areas. The Texture Pack Combiner mod includes the LushTrees, which greatly increases the number of branches/leaves on trees. Combined with turning on tree shadows, this leads to ~30 FPS in those forest areas, which is noticeable.

Also with these Skyrim settings, I notice that my GPU uses up all 3GB of VRAM in the forest. So if you really like your Skyrim ultra HD textures, I'd recommend going with 3GB.
 
If your going to upgrade I would get the 7970 for the extra ram.
I have a 5870 and not going to upgrade it yet,waiting to see what next gen xbox is all about before upgrading. It could be dx12 or something that could instantly out date our hardware.
 
455olds said:
If your going to upgrade I would get the 7970 for the extra ram.
I have a 5870 and not going to upgrade it yet,waiting to see what next gen xbox is all about before upgrading. It could be dx12 or something that could instantly out date our hardware.
Click to expand...

dont get your hopes up. ;)

thats not to say it wont be dx12. dx9 was 2002, dx10 was 2006, and dx11 was 2009. so dx12 by 2013 or 2014 is very reasonable. just that if they are dx12, then computers will have been for at least a few months already, and that there is no way that the hardware they put in a $300-400 console will even come close to what you can do with a $500-1000 gaming pc.
 
im in the same boat. I have crossfired 5850's. (one new, one bought in FS/T a year later) I have the itch to upgrade but even if I spend 450 on a 7970 it will only be about 20% better than my setup * based on GPUreview specs. (I also game at 1920x1080). I think ill wait until the 8xxx gen before I upgrade again.
 
I was going to upgrade also, and go back to a multi-monitor setup, but with the 7970 6gb and it's missing dp ports I decided to wait at least another gen, not a lot of gaming time and just not a big enough improvement on my asymmetrical crossfire setup for me yet.
 
honestly the 5870 still has life in it. if you don't mind running cf for a bit i would look into that. but upgrading it right now would be a little late. so waiting might give you the upgrade bug but at the same time when the new line up of card do come out it would be a more notable performance increase
 
The Saphire Toxic 6GB 7970 has two Mini-DisplayPorts, I think you just get a mini-to-full DisplayPort cable supporting 1.2?

I agree that it's totally needed as the best cheap HD3D monitors require this for 120Hz.
 
Same boat. I'm leaning towards the 660gtx ti it's at a decent price point. Plus you can sell your card for 125-150 on the forums depending on how desperate you are.
 
I'm thinking of going 5850 to GTX 660ti as well, just waiting for a drop in price (I'm not fussy, 10% is enough) so that I'm on budget!).
 
OP if you want to get a card now get the HD 7950 OC. or you could wait for the HD 8950 to launch in Jan 2013. If you decide on getting a HD 7950 , the Sapphire HD 7950 Vapor-X with 950 Mhz boost is a good option.
 
Floppington said:
Source?
Click to expand...

No confirmation I know of, but that would be keeping with AMD's release schedule for the last few years... And they are very much looking to balance their books so I doubt they would push it back purposefully.
 
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