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Upgrading GPU Soon, Looking for Additional Input

F

FelixRussia

Weaksauce
Joined
Aug 24, 2011
Messages
72
Like the title says, I'm looking to do an upgrade soon, fairly minimal, and I'm just looking for some outside opinions.

Current plan is to upgrade my two Sapphire 5770's to something better, and if necessary, I might upgrade my power supply as well. I am currently trying to decide between the following cards:

- 2 XFX or Sapphire 6870's: I believe that I could go with this option without having to upgrade my power supply

- 1 XFX 6950: Wouldn't require me to upgrade my power supply unless I went with possibly adding another if they don't sell out first

- 1 XFX/Sapphire 7870 or 7970: It would be one to start, with plans to add another down the line

- 1 nVidia GTX 680: Again, it would be one to start, with plans to add another down the line

Here's where I'm getting hung up: I really want to go with a next gen card (Either an AMD 7xxx or nVidia 6xx), however, I could still get pretty decent performance off of a previous gen card as well. After doing quite a bit of research (Reviews and User input), I know I would get the best performance out of the GTX 680's, I would still get really good performance out of a 7970, with the 7870 trailing behind that, and then I would still get a quality experience out of either the 6870's or 6950. Since I'm considering a 7970, my budget is roughly at the $550 mark, with a little bit of flexibility. Another thing I've been trying to take into consideration is the rest of my build. I know that with a next gen card, I'm going to run into bottlenecking, since my motherboard isn't PCI 3.0, but I'm also curious how the other cards would work out.

My current build is:

MSI 890FXA-GD65
Phenom xII 955
G.SKILL Sniper 1333 4gb x4
Sapphire HD 5770's x2
XFX Black Edition 750 watt

Any input at all would be appreciated.
 
Is it SLI/CF or nothing? Because if it is, the bottom 2 choices in SLI/CF are definitely overkill, considering you would not only have to upgrade PSU, but you'd also then be looking at some slight bottlenecking with your CPU.

That said, as attractive as the 6870s are right now (particularly the 2gb), is it enough of an upgrade from 5770 to plunk down ~$400-- that, I can't tell you.

Tell us about what you do with it: what games you play, if any; what resolution, how many monitors (because depending on the answer, saturating PCI-e 2.0/3.0 isn't your biggest concern yet)
 
If I go the 6xxx route, yes, it would be CF, that way I could run my current setup for the next couple of years (hopefully) without really needing to upgrade.

If I were to go the 7xxx/680 route, it would be the one card now and another later down the line if there is a demand for more graphics related processing. If that were the case, I would probably piece together a more thorough upgrade over time, so, bigger PSU, newer motherboard, and CPU. That would be a long term plan though.

Some of the games I've been playing recently are: Skyrim, Starcraft II, Assassin's Creed (Catching up, I plan on picking up Revelations in the near future), Borderlands (Again, planning on picking up the second one once it comes out), Deus Ex HR, I've been slowly working my way through Crysis, L4D 2, Lost Planet 2, and Serious Sam 3. I also plan on picking up Diablo III when it comes out. I rotate between these most frequently, however, there are others as well, probably not worth mentioning though.

I'm currently running only one monitor, its a hand-me-down Westingtonhouse, something like 37in or something, but I'm looking to move to something smaller at some point, perhaps back to my old 1440x900 monitor, maybe something a bit newer. I have it running at 1920x1080 through HDMI. I think if I were to go to a multiple monitor setup, I would only go with two, one screen for gaming/movies and then the second screen for monitoring temps/fans/chat/etc.
 
Pci 3.0 vs 2 won't bottle neck your new gen cards, they barely utilize the full bandwidth of the older boards as it is. The only thing that would hold you back is if you only have a 16x and a 4x pci slot. The two 6870 in crossfire will out perform the single flagship cards at this point how ever at a later point in time the flagship cards in crossfire/sli would be an amazing performance upgrade. So that being said if your resolution will work on a single flagship card now I would pick one of those and crossfire/sli later you'll be more future proof that way.
 
Ehh... sounds like you're totally open to upgrading at any and all points in the future. Which is good; wish I had that kind of money.

I would say, then, don't look too far into the future, because like I said, that CPU may bottleneck your 7970 CF. I say this because if you just had to upgrade your PSU to add on one more card, then that's one thing-- if you have to upgrade your PSU, mobo, AND CPU (because if you decide to CF the top card of this gen, you'll have to) then you may as well just do a tear-down then and there, and thus, that should be put off for another few years or so.

So that divides it broadly to two options:

1) Get that 6870 CF setup (~$400 total), enjoy it until you decide to upgrade your system;

2) Get the 680/79xx (>$400) and piecemeal your system bit by bit (>$120 PSU, $100-$200 mobo, etc.), and ride that for however long it lasts.

I like the former, but I'm also not a fan of incremental upgrades
 
Single card. 6950/70. Get new board next, then proc, then upgrade to 7970 or whatever suits.

6970 now
AM3+ board, 2 months
Pile Driver processor in Sept- Oct
79xx board(dropped in price by then) Oct- Nov
New Ram (16/32 GB of mega super low latency DDR3 1866+) - Dec- ish
New power supply Jan / Feb
Second 79xx or higher card (much lower cost)
 
Sorry I haven't replied back in a few days. Thanks for all the input guys. I think I'm going to look into either the 6870/6950 solution for the time being, and then go from there, perhaps save up the cash to do a completely fresh build in the next year or two.
 
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