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~$160 GPU purchase advice?

K

Kevmanw430

Senior member
Hey guys, I'd really appreciate some opinions one what GPU to put in my upcoming "budget" build. The build will have a 550W PSU, an Intel Core i3-3220 and 8GB RAM. I have a GPU limit of ~$160. I am very much considering used cards. My current choices are below, but any other suggestions would be great.

AMD-

6950/70
7850
5870
6850/70 X2 (If I could find it at that price point, not likely)

Nvidia-

GTX 570
GTX 480
GTX 460 X2
GTX 560Ti

I realize that there may be power constraints with any of the SLI/XFire configs, and I may get a better PSU if possible. Thanks in advance!
 
I would definitely say the 7850. I don't really like to recommend old Nvidia cards with the new generation out, but the 560ti or 570 aren't bad choices. Neither is the 6950/70. What resolution are you playing at? I'm thinking any of the ones I said are fine if you can find a deal out there.
 
MSI 7850 2GB Twin Frozr III/OC $170 AR AP.

It's not a good idea to drop to G850. It will bottleneck a 7850 in many games, not to mention something even faster. i3-3220 $120 is the lowest you should consider.

You don't need a 550W PSU to run this, 400W is more than enough - do you already own the unit?
 
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I have not bought anything yet, and am salvaging an ODD and HDD from another system.

The 7850 was my first choice single GPU wise, but do you think it would make sense to go with dual 460 GTX 1GB cards instead? I can get a decent deal on them for less than a 7850 would cost, while keeping the 550W PSU.
 
Kevmanw430 said:
The 7850 was my first choice single GPU wise, but do you think it would make sense to go with dual 460 GTX 1GB cards instead? I can get a decent deal on them for less than a 7850 would cost, while keeping the 550W PSU.
Click to expand...

No the 1GB memory will become a limit for higher res textures and mod. Not to mention Nvidia doesn't always get SLI profiles out for games at launch.

You're best bet is a decent 7850 that either comes factory over clocked or you can over clock it yourself a bit.
 
Kevmanw430 said:
Hey guys, I'd really appreciate some opinions one what GPU to put in my upcoming "budget" build. The build will have a 550W PSU, an Intel Core i3-3220 and 8GB RAM. I have a GPU limit of ~$160. I am very much considering used cards. My current choices are below, but any other suggestions would be great.

AMD-

6950/70
7850
5870
6850/70 X2 (If I could find it at that price point, not likely)

Nvidia-

GTX 570
GTX 480
GTX 460 X2
GTX 560Ti

I realize that there may be power constraints with any of the SLI/XFire configs, and I may get a better PSU if possible. Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

I would agree with the HD7850 recommendation of most of the other posters. On the nVidia side, I would pick a GTX660 or 660Ti in preference to any of those older cards, as the latest nVidia generation is much, much more power efficient than those older cards. (That is of course unless you can get a super low price on a used card.)
 
Grab a GTX 460 1GB version . Then later on you can SLI with another 460 1GB and it will be as fast as 480 if not fsater.
 
A 7850 overclocked will likely outperform 460 SLI, while using much less power giving you the benefit of 2GB VRAM.
 
@Tweakboy I'd put both 460's in at start if I went that route.

The 7850 seems like a great card, and an awesome overclocker to boot.

One last question, if I can get a 6970 for about $25 less than the 7850, would it be worth it, or would the 7850 still be superior?
 
Kevmanw430 said:
@Tweakboy I'd put both 460's in at start if I went that route.

The 7850 seems like a great card, and an awesome overclocker to boot.

One last question, if I can get a 6970 for about $25 less than the 7850, would it be worth it, or would the 7850 still be superior?
Click to expand...

At stock clocks the 6970 will win in a lot of games, an overclocked 7850 will flip that though if you get a decent OC. It really depends on whether you're willing to OC, and if you're willing to spend the $25. If you overclocked the 6970 it would still be competitive with the 7850. 6970 consumes a lot more power as well.
 
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Thanks. I'm an avid overclocker, and as such, it's a shame my budget doesn't allow for a K series CPU. AMD's CPU's are attractive somewhat, but I don't think I'm going to go with any of them.

On the GPU side, I think I'm settled on the 7850. Thanks to everyone who gave advice! Much appreciated!
 
Altough you've already decided, just to reaffirm your choice, the 7850 is a great choice and can be a beast of an overclocker if you are willing to play with voltages and you get a solid model. You then won't be as dependent on drivers and profiles and third party tools as you would be with a multi-gpu setup.

Also to back up what lehtv said, you don't want to go back from a quad core at this point. There are already a few games out there that choke on a dual core and most likely many more will be coming shortly. I recently went from a 4Ghz C2Duo to a 3.5Ghz C2Quad on one of my pc's because the dual core tanked on a couple of games I was trying to play on that machine.
 
Sorry to revive the thread, but I need a little more help. I'm settled on the 7850, but I have a choice of CPUs to pair with it. For about the same money, I can use either an i7-920 or an i3 3220. For about $50 less, I can go with a an i3 2100, which might free up enough to jump up to a 7870 or maybe a really good deal on a 7950.

So, for pure gaming performance, which CPU would you choose? Power consumption is of no concern, but the overclockability of the i7 is important.
 
i7-920 would require you to use the X58 platform that is obsolete. You would have to buy a used motherboard and it wouldn't support new features like USB 3.0, SATA 6gb/s, PCIe 3.0 and so on. i7-920 also lacks integrated graphics (good for backup) and consumes much more power than an i3-3220. i3-3220 performs better in 2-core apps than a stock 2.66GHz i7-920, about the same in 4-core apps, and few games scale beyond 4 cores so performance wise the i7-920 is pretty pointless - unless overclocked near 4GHz.
 
I've found a 7950 cheap enough that I could fit it in my budget if I went with the i3-2100. I think that's what I will go with, as long as the deals are still present in a few days. Should be a killer system at 1080p!
 
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