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Upgrading my Dads Aging 5850

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deadman_uk

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 30, 2003
Messages
2,036
I'm looking for a replacement card for my dads old 5850. The card needs to support Direct X 12 and handle moderate gaming at 1080p. His budget is £150 (please no American prices, here in the UK, we get a lot less for our money). Any ideas? I have no problem buying if the card is used on eBay. His CPU is an i5-2500 and he has an SSD.
 
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lol yeah i'm running that exact video card on my core 2 quad extreme cpu, i feel like like the CPU and non-SSD is bottlenecking
 
750ti is a great card for Core2 based systems. Or just go as big as your want, then transfer it over when you upgrade the remainder of the system.
 
His CPU is an i5-2500 and he has an SSD. Sorry, I forgot to mention that before.
 
GTX 960?

Quiet, efficient, supports DX12 and full H.265 support. It's a good 1080p card for around your price range.
 
It's the k version, I believe I overclocked it slightly. I'll look into the GTX 960 and the R9 380 thanks all.
 
If I were to get a card, it would have to have more than 2GB of ram for GTA V to run at medium-high settings. Since both cards can come with 4GB, those are the versions I will look into (if budget is allowed) Thanks
 
Yeah i would be looking at the 4gb cards as well but your going to have to up your budget to around £180 for a new card with 4GB.
 
Are there any fees from buying outside of uk for uk residents? Just how exactly does that work? Seems like i once bought a headset from uk store long ago and the currency conversion killed me. But now as a whole it appears video cards in general seem about the same after conversion
 
If you buy from an eu country there's no import duties but shipping fees can still be high. From outside the eu its not worth it as you would pay 20% on top of the total price.
 
deadman_uk said:
I'm looking for a replacement card for my dads old 5850. The card needs to support Direct X 12 and handle moderate gaming at 1080p. His budget is £150 (please no American prices, here in the UK, we get a lot less for our money). Any ideas? I have no problem buying if the card is used on eBay. His CPU is an i5-2500 and he has an SSD.
Click to expand...

Bless you for mentioning the UK prices. I moved here for work/my British wife from the US last year and still balk in indignance every time I need to buy something. EVERYTHING is more expensive here, and electronics are 30-40% more. Good thing my family visits and I get to travel home often... But yea... you normally will get hit with 20-30% import charges if buying from the US + expensive shipping.

Everyone says it's the VAT that bumps up the price, but that's only half of the price increase. You guys (and me now...) generally just get shafted on everything as far as price e.g. electronics, living space etc. Trying to look for a house now and I pissed of our agent yesterday telling them they needed to show us something that wasn't an "800 sq ft hobbit hole" (I guess I just need to adjust my expectations) :p

As for your pop's upgrade, I'd suggest a 280x or GT 960 like others.

IMPORTANT QUESTION: What kind of PSU does your father have? This may decide what GPU you can get.

Also, have you considered going for something used? You'll get a lot more bang for your buck, especially in the UK vs. new. I have a 290x up on Ebay I expect to sell for £150, for example -- unfortunate that I have a bid on it since I'd let you have it otherwise.
 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gigabyte-Nv...e=UTF8&qid=1437581298&sr=1-11&keywords=r9+280

This little guy fits your budget and is only a few percent slower than an R9 380. I have a GTX 960 2GB paired with an i5-4590 and does very well with my 1920x1200 monitor with moderate gaming and excellent with my older 1680x1050 monitor. They're thrifty enough on power that regardless how old your dad's power supply is if it can run an HD 5850 it will run a GTX 960 with ease.
 
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Yeah, don't settle for less than a GTX 960 or an r9 280/285 card. Anything less will not be a sizable performance improvement, as the HD 5850 was pretty powerful for it's time.

If power consumption is a concern I'd lean toward the 960, but both are about the same performance-wise.

Also, the 2GB versions don't seem to be a limiting factor on GTA V at 1080p ultra:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/04/27/grand_theft_auto_v_single_gpu_performance_review_part_1/6

See where the 2GB 960 is as fast as a 3GB GTX 780 on the last comparison graph? Ram isn't really the limit there. Also: if you can wait a week or two before you upgrade, this site should be doing a review shortly on 2GB versus 4GB in the GTX 960 and R9 380. They will certainly include GTA V in that test :D
 
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My dad has a Corsair HX650W PSU I believe, or something like that. Thanks all for the help and comments. I have upgraded my 7970 with a 980 Ti and may sell this to my dad at a discount price instead of getting a new card. It's not a DX12 card but that's the only negative I see.
 
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