Just what is someone with ~$200 to spend and a 7850 & 500W PS supposed to buy?

[GreenOrbs]

Not sure I really need a 980 Ti or Fury X but am itching to upgrade. I'm waiting for reviews and some actual benchmarks on the 24th. If I do decide to upgrade, I've been thinking about selling my Vapor-X R9 290 for about $250. I found that the 290 handles 3 monitors well for older games (like Tomb Raider or Arkham Origins at 40-50 fps) but not really enough for the newest ones.

Edit: If it helps, I ran a 7950 on a 430W Corsair PSU for a bit before I upgraded to a 770 and a new PSU and then to the 290. You should be able to run a 7950 on yours.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Well, trigger finally pulled. Grabbed a 290 & 650W PS for $270 after $50 in rebates. Not too bad I suppose, and I can go ahead and move the 7850 into its new home and maybe do something with that old 500W PS.

 

[shady28]

Hmm, a 970 $280 AR, should I jump?
http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GeForce-Overclocked-GDDR5-GV-N970IXOC-4GD/dp/B00OQUMGM0?

Hm I see that on Amazon as $360. Quite a ways from $200.

It has a single 8-pin and draws 168W under full load.

There's a review of that half-length 970 here :

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/gigabyte_geforce_gtx_970_oc_mini_itx_review,7.html

For comparison - R9 380 :

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/asus_radeon_r9_380_strix_review,13.html

4GB GTX 960 :

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/gigabyte_geforce_gtx_960_g1_gaming_4gb_review,22.html


A 2GB - 4GB GTX 960 is really the fastest card in the $180-$220 area for < 500W PSUs, like it or not. It looks to be about 40-50% faster than the 7850.

 

[Silverforce11]

Used 7950 for $100 is unbeatable.

My old 7950 runs Witcher 3 with High settings w/ Ultra Textures 1080p at ~45 fps. Not OC either and it does 1.2ghz OC (~45%).

Should definitely tie you over til the true next-gen.

In fact, all this talk has made me less inclined to upgrade to Fury X and just wait for 14nm GPUs.

 

[Namisecond]

Sorry, I should have stated. The CPU is a i5 2500K @ 4Ghz. The power supply is generic Rosewill with something like a 16a/15a split on two 12v rails. And I'm going to be sticking with a 1920x1080 resolution.

Edit: Also, is there a reason the 960 has remained absent from the benchmark compare tool?

All the Fury-this and 980ti-that is just noise to me. This time last year I thought I'd picking up a 960ti on a coming black Friday deal. Here I am a year later feeling like I still have no good options. A base 960 looks like the best of a bunch of bad ones, is there anything else that's actually worthwhile even on the radar?

Oh wow, I was in almost the exact situation about 2 months ago you are now. I had a 2500K at 4ghz, and a 7850 GPU, gaming at 1080 and was feeling like I needed a little more power. I did have a slightly better PSU though, an EVGA 500W with a single 40A 12V rail.

I was waiting on the 960ti/965 to be released but that turned out to be vaporware. After a lot of thought and debate, I ended up with a 960. It offers about 50-60% more performance over the 7850 at 1080p and is even lighter on the power draw.

Right now, if I had to do it again, It'd be a toss-up between the 960 which can run as low as $180 (crap, sorry the sale on the evga on newegg is over, only the Zotac at $190 right now) or the R9 380 at about $200. The 380 has a bit of an advantage over the 960 in most games, and would probably scale better if you ever decide to go to 1440, but the power draw is considerably more....110W for the 960 (gaming) vs 190W for the R9 380 (gaming)

If you're confident in your PSU, and want the most bang for your dollar, I'd suggest the R9 380, if not, the 960 is not a bad card, I chose it and don't have any regrets.

If you can wait however...there's always more fun stuff down the road

PS: Whatever you do decide, please let us know.

 

[myocardia]

PS: Whatever you do decide, please let us know.

Well, trigger finally pulled. Grabbed a 290 & 650W PS for $270 after $50 in rebates.

^^

 

[Shmee]

Nice, which 290 did you get?

 

[Geforce man]

Does your mobo support crossfire? If it does, get a better PSU (You'll need one anyways!) and get a secondhand r7850 for cheap, boom, done. If you go this route, pretty sure I even have a 7850 i'd let go cheap.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

I'd considered crossfire but wasn't too keen on the potential issues and had other plans for this 7850 anyway.

This is what I ended up getting:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150701
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7750585&srkey=T925-8065

If this gets me by for two years I'll be satisfied. I'll build a new machine at that point (hopefully during a more buyer-friendly market) and move this out to the living room.

 

[TemjinGold]

Same one I got! I almost feel like going all "the Fixer" on this machine with it haha...

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

*Profanity!* So here I am looking at my new 290 which was delivered today, and my power supply still had not even shipped out as of this morning. I tried to cancel, but even that was not guaranteed, so who knows what happens now, besides me twisting in limbo and looking for another power supply (maybe). Never again TD.

 

[soccerballtux]

Used 7950 for $100 is unbeatable.

My old 7950 runs Witcher 3 with High settings w/ Ultra Textures 1080p at ~45 fps. Not OC either and it does 1.2ghz OC (~45%).

Should definitely tie you over til the true next-gen.

In fact, all this talk has made me less inclined to upgrade to Fury X and just wait for 14nm GPUs.

wow, I'm not even in the market, I could go from my 1024 shader 7850 to a 7950 with 1800 shaders for $25