HD 7850 Crapped itself? Possibly looking for budget replacement

[palkiss]

Okay.. I guess I had my HD 7850 (2gb) for a good year or two, and within that year or two, I may have been "mining" bitcoins on it 24/7 while doing other things as well (games mostly only thing noteworthy). I'm not quite sure how I noticed problems to begin with, but I suppose it dosen't matter. I realised my fans on the card were dieing, going very slowly, and my card started to suffer. One morning I woke up seeing my GPU at a constant temp of 102 (my computer was mining bitcoins at the time, so, under extreme load), and I shit my pants. I took the card out of the computer, unscrewed the fans from the heatsink, and tried to clean them and whatnot. Didn't do anything. I did this afew times, before I said screw it (at this point I was desperate, didnt care), and doused those fans with WD40. All seemed ALRIGHT, fans were going at a better speed. I figured it was only a temporary solution, so I bought a replacement fan thingy that mounts on heatsink.

I get the feeling the damage was already done, because now when I play games(usually) or put alot of stress on my computer(actually its usually only when I play games), my video card dosent "crash" in the general sense of the word, it makes my monitors go haywire, like crazy artifacts everywhere (in the same way a tv channel goes kaput and shows snow)(when this happeneds my tempature is fine, seeing as I got a new fans), and I have to reboot. I assume, no doubt, my video card is the culprit, and needs to be replaced?

If that is so, and I assume it is... I guess I'm on the market to downgrade my videocard to 1gb (budget), and im looking for some suggestions! I do indeed want to stick to AMD(ATI) because they are king of "mining" bitcoins(or other altcoins), compared to nvidia. My only requirements is that it needs to have 2 monitor plugs(one HDMI & one DVI) as I use two monitors, PCI-E, and hopefully 1gb. If I had to put a number on my total possible cost, I suppose I'll go with $150. I'm just looking for a good bang for my buck!

I was considering this one here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ag=mey8chud-20

As well as this one here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814129189 This one seems too good to be true? 1gb $45?

I'm not too knowledgeable on these things, so I'd appreciate any and all insight!


THANKS!

 

[nwo]

Both of the cards you linked are crap. 7770 @ $140 is way too overpriced! And the 5450 is not a gaming card.

A GTX 650Ti would be a good choice at the $150 price point, you don't really have a lot of options unless you are willing to buy a used card.

Here are some GTX 650Ti's to choose from on newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...=-1&isNodeId=1

if you prefer AMD, a 260X would be a good alternative:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150688
or the 2gb version:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150689

Here is a nice link comparing the relative performance of a bunch of graphics cards at 1080p resolution:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_270X/26.html

 

[palkiss]

Both of the cards you linked are crap. 7770 @ $140 is way too overpriced! And the 5450 is not a gaming card.

A GTX 650Ti would be a good choice at the $150 price point, you don't really have a lot of options unless you are willing to buy a used card.

Here are some GTX 650Ti's to choose from on newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...=-1&isNodeId=1

if you prefer AMD, a 260X would be a good alternative:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150688
or the 2gb version:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150689

Here is a nice link comparing the relative performance of a bunch of graphics cards at 1080p resolution:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_270X/26.html

Thankyou very much!

 

[nwo]

It also may be worth waiting for the Radeon 265, which is supposed to have a $149 MSRP.

Here is a nice review:
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_radeon_r7_265_review,23.html

It's supposed to be a beefed up 7850. Same GPU core, possibly faster RAM. So it would be significantly faster than any of the current $150 GPUs on the market. Unless you can find a good sale on a 7850 (2GB) and grab it for less than $150.