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Budget gaming cards - 7770 or 5850 or ?? ($50-$70 used)

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paradigmGT

Member
I am looking to buy a used $50-$70 GPU to use for some gaming.

Would you guys go with a 5850, 6850 or 7770? Or is there something better for the same price from Nvidia?

Also anything to watch out for when buying a used card?

Thanks
 
In terms of performance, it is 5850>6850>7770. Same order goes for power consumption and age. So although the 5850 is arguably the fastest card of the bunch, it is also the oldest one which means it probably has the least amount of life left compared to the others.

Here are some benchmarks:
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/36269-amd-radeon-hd-7850-vs-6850-vs-5850-clocks/?page=3

Although that benchmark features only the 5850 and 6850, you can see that 5850 pulls ahead in most benchmarks. If you were to go with 7790 then its performance could be comparable to the other two cards in question, and it would still be slightly lower, but since you mentioned a 7770, you are looking at significantly lower performance compared to the other two.
 
7770 is a solid choice, as a 5850 owner I would recommend the 7770, performance is more consistent, it's not crap for tessellation, it doesn't suffer with lack of optimization for newer stuff and it uses less power, even against the 460 I would trade some overall speed for the advantages of the newer card.
 
I don't think you can find a 5850 for that price range. Maybe not even a 6850. People are still using them for mining crypto coins. Instead, it seems a much better price can be found for the Nvidia 460, so look into that.

Or, just keep waiting, and the difficulty for the crypto coins might get so high that people will stop using older cards like the 5850 to mine and then you can find them on craigslist and ebay for better pricing. Unfortunately, it still appears to be profitable to use a 5850 to mine with at this time.
 
i would also vote for 7770, but if i were to go used, 7850. a little sniping on eBay and you can get a reasonable deal.
 
Thanks for the input so far guys.

Given that I am using an Antec VP450 (450w bronze psu) to power my system (i7-4770k, 1 SSD, 1 3.5" 7200rpm, etc.), the 7770 might be my best option due to low power consumption?

Any other Nvidia cards to consider under a $100? The mining craze really has rocketed the values of the ATI cards.
 
GTX 460 is faster than a 7770 and that's without overclocking. GTX 460s typically do VERY well overclocking, without touching voltage, either. The headroom on a typical one is like 20% with no significant additional voltage and up to 40% with voltage, which is crazy.

Your PSU can easily handle the GTX 460 even with a pretty large overclock as long as you don't boost voltage much... voltage is what really drives wattage up.

If you don't want to overclock then also consider the AMD 7790 since it's not much more than a 7770 but has performance approaching a stock 7850, all while sipping only 80 watts.
 
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blastingcap said:
Good overclockers: hd5850, hd7770, and many more
Epic overclockers: gtx 460, hd7950

I used to have a hd5850 and it was a decent overclocker but not epic 🙂
Click to expand...

Sadly the only thing that held back my 460 was vram quantity (I only had the 768 mB version) and IMC stability when OCing vram. Was basically impossible to test reliability of VRAM overclocks because of it, just as annoying as when I was ocing my 7970s/7950s. Core clocked to the sky, I think I did 1ghz stable on my card easy.
 
If you can get all those choices for $50 - $70 then the choice is a no brainer. The 5850 is worth more now and will be in the future due to cryptocoin mining.
 
Communism said:
You're not going to get a 5850 for less than ~120 USD due to LTC mining craze
Click to expand...

What!? I have been trying to sell my 5870 at $110 for weeks now... I guess I should ebay it?
DigDog said:
i would also vote for 7770, but if i were to go used, 7850. a little sniping on eBay and you can get a reasonable deal.
Click to expand...

I highly doubt you will get a 7850 anywhere for less than $90-100. They are one of the best bang for the buck mining cards.
 
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No intelligent miner who pays for electricity wants those old, four-year-old cards when a 7850 gets better hashrates while drawing significantly less power and costing perhaps $120ish new if you wait for sales.

OP is asking for a gaming card. A GTX 460 1GB used goes for easily within the $50-70 budget of OP and is almost as fast as a HD5850 while tessellating far better and being a more modern design in general. A 7770 is in that price range but I've seen 7790s go as low as $80 after rebate before so I think that's also a good choice if he can afford it.
 
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blastingcap said:
No intelligent miner who pays for electricity wants those old, four-year-old cards when a 7850 gets better hashrates while drawing significantly less power and costing perhaps $120ish new if you wait for sales.

OP is asking for a gaming card. A GTX 460 1GB used goes for easily within the $50-70 budget of OP and is almost as fast as a HD5850 while tessellating far better and being a more modern design in general. A 7770 is in that price range but I've seen 7790s go as low as $80 after rebate before so I think that's also a good choice if he can afford it.
Click to expand...

True, but if they already have an old card laying around, they would rather add another one. Some of these older cards do not cope well with newer ones. Believe me, I have tried. I can't get my 5870 to mine along with any of my 7 series cards, and especially not my R7. Which is why I want to get rid of it.


I picked up two Asus 7790s for $70 after $40 MIR, MIR limit was 2, so I was in for two. But that was about a month ago, when the 7 series were being cleared out. I doubt we will see many deals like that again.
 
RaistlinZ said:
OP,

There's a guy selling a used 6870 for $75.00. That would be your best bet by a mile.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2361816
Click to expand...

for new games you can find graphs showing the 7770 outperforming the 6870
http://gamegpu.ru/images/remote/htt...t_GPU-Action-Battlefield_4-test-1920_msaa.jpg

but to be honest since it's running with unrealistic settings (should be high or med for these cards) it's not all that relevant, but still, old VLIW5 cards are not aging so well, and it's only going to get worse I think.

overall the 7770 is slower but, I think the combination of having the current arch, so current driver optimizations (including "Mantle") and the lower power draw can make it a more attractive product
 
SPBHM said:
for new games you can find graphs showing the 7770 outperforming the 6870
http://gamegpu.ru/images/remote/htt...t_GPU-Action-Battlefield_4-test-1920_msaa.jpg

but to be honest since it's running with unrealistic settings (should be high or med for these cards) it's not all that relevant, but still, old VLIW5 cards are not aging so well, and it's only going to get worse I think.

overall the 7770 is slower but, I think the combination of having the current arch, so current driver optimizations (including "Mantle") and the lower power draw can make it a more attractive product
Click to expand...


I recently sold my 7970 GHz edition to take advantage of the crazy prices. I got a XFX Ultra OC 7770 from BB on clearance for $83 as a stop gag until I get a new card (most likely end of the year or next year).

I am amazed at the little card. I had started Dishonored when I sold the 7970 and had to ship it. I have a 1440p monitor so I though I would not be able to play at all with the 7770 but I was able to finish it with everything in High and just AA off (but I always try to turn it off) and I was getting low 30s and high 60s at 1440. So that means the 7970 was getting 100+ easily. Really happy with the card. As a bonus it came with 4 games. I know it will not play most demanding games like Metro or Crysis but I already finished those with the 7970 and I have older games where the 7770 should do fine. I have Torchlight 2, Deus EX and some other older games to play and it should be fine. So u might want to check ur BB to see if they have some
 
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