That time of the year for a new videocard!

[chucker46032]

Hey everyone, it's Christmas and we (or at least I am) overwhelmed with great deals on GPU's. Currently I am running an

MSI Twin Frozr III 2gb link ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127663 ) So far this card has treated me extremely well maxing out any game ( exception battlefield 4 which I run on high at 1080p ) with an

i3 3220 CPU and

8 GB's DDR3

Power supply ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817371044 ) great budget comp in my opinion! :awe:

Thinking about switching over to Nvidia for PHSX - a card around the price of the gtx 760 or an alternative nvidia card/ati card. Biggest worry is bottlenecking my CPU. However I'd be willing to go with another ATI card, or is a GPU not needed in terms of performance and instead i should upgrade my CPU?

 

[blackened23]

1) What metrics matter to you (ie does GPU being noisy matter? Software such as physx?)
2) What type of games do you play
3) Budget
4) What type of game genres do you play?

 

[lehtv]

In Battlefield 4 you will be CPU bottlenecked with any GPU upgrade, if you aren't already.

I would suggest upgrading to a Xeon E3-1230 V2 first. It's basically a 4C/8T i7 that's locked and has no IGP. Your gaming experience in BF4 should benefit from that noticeably even if you don't upgrade the GPU.

You should be able to sell the i3-3220 for something sub $100, the 7850 also for $100 ish, then you can use that $200 towards a new video card. That alone won't quite get a significant upgrade over the 7850 though; I'd suggest either getting a GTX 770 2GB or waiting until the 280X are back in stock and at $300.

 

[tweakboy]

Guys he needs a SSD as well. ?

 

[blackened23]

^I can agree with that. The OP didn't really specify what types of games he plays aside form BF4, but certain genres of games can be more CPU bound (MMO, RTS, etc) while AAA games are more GPU bound. Since he plays BF4 we can assume he's into AAA titles I suppose so a GPU would make the most sense there - I think either a 770 (2GB is fine for 1080p) or 280X would be fine. While 280X cards are hard to find now, bitcoins are lowering in value at the moment so there may be a ton of used cards on the market in a few weeks (possibly, just speculating). OR you could try to find a new 280X, but I wouldn't pay more than 310$ for it.

This is assuming that the OP can stretch his GPU budget a bit past the 250$ mark. Keep in mind that both the 280X and GTX 770 are quite a bit faster than the GTX 760, so if you can afford it - they are well worth the 50$-70$ additional. The 280X is just a lot harder to find at the moment, so the 770 may be the easier choice given availability. It also has three free games which you can sell to offset the cost a bit. Basically you can't go wrong with either the 770 or the 280X, both will perform very well at 1080p. And i'd also note (again) that they're well worth the price premium over the GTX 760.