Hardware & Technical New GFX cards?
- Thread starter crabduck
- Start date
GTX 970 or 980. The 970 is just over £200 I think and it was near a titan on the benchmark.
I was wondering that, as far as I could see on a brief look was that the 280X was a 7970 with an extra 50Mhz squeezed out of it, but didn't know if it had anything else under the hood to make it worthwhile - it compares nicely with the Nvidia GTX 770 on price point and performance.
The 290 may be the way to go - Tom's Hardware seems to favour them in last months round-up and Overclockers have some reasonable prices as well.
The 290 may be the way to go - Tom's Hardware seems to favour them in last months round-up and Overclockers have some reasonable prices as well.
Have a Google for 'gfx card hierarchy'. You'll see that twin 7970s aka a 7990 is tier 2, there really isn't a lot out there more powerful. 970 sli would be a slight step up but not massive. You have the r9 295x2 which is currently slamming everything but that is a dual GPU card and costs nearly a £1000.
980 sli would be a STEPUP and you'd be looking at £800 for the pair
980 sli would be a STEPUP and you'd be looking at £800 for the pair
I think that is because that was before the new Nvidia's came out. I'm not someone who feels strongly about Nvidia and Ati but I think if you wait for the next round up then the 780 and 790 will come out on top. The 780 is very reasonable for it's performance. Also if you look at the power used it's pretty obvious it's a step forward in efficiency which just adds to the cost and performance.
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Please bear in mind that the performance difference moving one generation will not be that great and possibly not worth it at all. If you are not using an Intel CPU then you you should look at getting one as AMD CPU's cannot compete for gaming. (I wish they would)
If you are determined to upgrade I would either go R9 290 in 2 way Crossfire or GTX 970 in 2 way SLI.
AMD have slashed their prices to compete with Nvidia. Don't forget to check Amazon for PC parts as their return policies are great.
Sapphire R9 290 for £227 GBP
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sapphire-TR...ie=UTF8&qid=1412942684&sr=8-1&keywords=r9+290
EVGA GTX 970 for £270 GBP
http://www.amazon.co.uk/EVGA-NVIDIA...e=UTF8&qid=1412943104&sr=8-7&keywords=gtx+970
EDIT: Do not forget how power hungry the R9 290's are. You will need a beefy PSU not only with a high enough wattage but also with a high number of Amps on the 12v rail. This is very important. I would always advise a single 12v rail over split rails as it is far simpler to configure, not having to divide components between rails.
If you are determined to upgrade I would either go R9 290 in 2 way Crossfire or GTX 970 in 2 way SLI.
AMD have slashed their prices to compete with Nvidia. Don't forget to check Amazon for PC parts as their return policies are great.
Sapphire R9 290 for £227 GBP
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sapphire-TR...ie=UTF8&qid=1412942684&sr=8-1&keywords=r9+290
EVGA GTX 970 for £270 GBP
http://www.amazon.co.uk/EVGA-NVIDIA...e=UTF8&qid=1412943104&sr=8-7&keywords=gtx+970
EDIT: Do not forget how power hungry the R9 290's are. You will need a beefy PSU not only with a high enough wattage but also with a high number of Amps on the 12v rail. This is very important. I would always advise a single 12v rail over split rails as it is far simpler to configure, not having to divide components between rails.
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Thanks for that - a useful eye eopner
Thanks, interesting links and good points. I should have said in my OP that it's a AMD specific board so ATI cards are my only real option short of a complete re-build.
Thankfully power isn't an issue, I heavily over spec'd all the components when I built the original machine - like you I favour a single rail.
Thankfully power isn't an issue, I heavily over spec'd all the components when I built the original machine - like you I favour a single rail.
Just built a cheap and cheerful gaming machine with an XFX R2 290 Dual Dissipation card in it. It's great.. locked at 60FPS even in and around the stations. Very impressed but may add another for a little more wiggle room once I get an eyefinity setup.
AMD 3+ 4350 Black Edition 4Ghz Octocore CPU
Asrock 990FX Killer Mobo
8 GB of Kingston Hyper 1886 RAM
M.2 Crucial 120GB SSD for Windows 8.1
Seagate 1TB 7200rpm 64MB 3.5" HDD
XFX R2 290 Dual Dissipation 4096MB GDDR5
Corsair C60 Closed Loop Water Cooling
750W PSU
Lite-on 24x DVD/CD
AMD 3+ 4350 Black Edition 4Ghz Octocore CPU
Asrock 990FX Killer Mobo
8 GB of Kingston Hyper 1886 RAM
M.2 Crucial 120GB SSD for Windows 8.1
Seagate 1TB 7200rpm 64MB 3.5" HDD
XFX R2 290 Dual Dissipation 4096MB GDDR5
Corsair C60 Closed Loop Water Cooling
750W PSU
Lite-on 24x DVD/CD
I would stick with the 7970s imo, they should handle anything you throw at them! I have one and it performs well on most games I have.
What games do feel they struggle with?
But if you've got an itch that needs to scratched by all means grab another card!
The conservative side of me would look into the 970 because of its impressive price/performance and power consumption.
But for raw power then you need to look into the higher end twin GPUs, because anything else is certainly a downgrade to what you already have!
What games do feel they struggle with?
But if you've got an itch that needs to scratched by all means grab another card!
The conservative side of me would look into the 970 because of its impressive price/performance and power consumption.
But for raw power then you need to look into the higher end twin GPUs, because anything else is certainly a downgrade to what you already have!
Surely your CPU socket allows for an upgrade there? There is only one decent AMD CPU for gaming, the FX 9590 with its 4.7Ghz stock clock and it's 5Ghz turbo speed. If you are not already running this chip, and your motherboard can support this CPU then I advise putting this bad boy in.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-360-AM&groupid=701&catid=1967&subcat=1825
For £173.99 GBP this thing actually comes close to Intel CPU's in gaming.
You confused me slightly saying you are limited to AMD graphics cards. You can still run Nvidia graphics cards. However if I were running an AMD CPU I would probably run AMD graphics cards too.
If you are not running an FX9590, then I would get one. Pair that with two R9 290's or two R9 290X's and you will have a decent amount more horsepower.
I personally wish I went for dual R9 295 X2 Dual GPU cards. That way I could have gone for four way Crossfire without the need to employ the PLX chip on my motherboard.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-350-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1515
The only problem with this is the price. £1359.98 GBP (£679.99 x2) is a little bit too much money for a graphics solution that will not scale in all games.
With the current price drop on the R9 290's I may pick one up as the R9 290 can be mixed with the R9 290X which will give me 3 way Crossfire. Also there is no need for Crossfire bridges on the R9 290's
I have a GTX 760 2GB on core i5 2600K, 1080p.. 60fps everywhere. All in a mini ITX case too.. Don't need the latest to be the greatest.
GTX 9xx have given Nvidia a temp advantage but once AMD R9 3xx arrives in new year AMD will have advantage until 2016 when Nvidia start to use same memory tech. I am waiting for r9 380x myself should arrive February.
Rumour has it that the R9 390X will be the first reference watercooled single GPU card. It will use similar watercooling to the R9 295 X2. That would be epic.
The 290 is only around 20-25% faster than a 7970, so not that much of an upgrade performance wise unless you're running out of vram.
What cpu, motherboard & psu do you have, and what resolution are you gaming at?
Not bad at all. Just ditched Vsync and gained another 40 FPS... So heavy traffic areas, open play around iBootis, getting over 100FPS. Much better than the 13 FPS I was used to on my Asus "gaming" laptop
Computer salesmen are like the car salesmen of the future I swear to god lol
Computer salesmen are like the car salesmen of the future I swear to god lol