Upgrading GPU to what?

sze5003

Lifer
Aug 18, 2012
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I'm going to end up selling my 7970ghz hopefully soon. Budget is expandable but I like buying price per performance. Playing at 1080p, maybe getting a bigger monitor in August.

I'll also be upgrading to skylake so I would like to get the gpu out the way first that way I'm not spending too much at once.
 

sze5003

Lifer
Aug 18, 2012
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What card(s) you get will depend on the resolution of the new monitor
Biggest monitor I would get is 24-17 inches. I have a 22 wide screen now or it may be 23.. Let's say max 1440 but I've been used to 1080p for a while.
 
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Headfoot

Diamond Member
Feb 28, 2008
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So for 1440p, I think the situation will change when the Fury (no X) drops in a month. I anticipate aftermarket Fury cards @$550 or 560 that are as fast as the Fury X.

IMO the fight will be between aftermarket 980 Ti @$670 that is 20% faster (before additional OC) than aftermarket Fury @ $570. They would both be decent choices, I personally would probably go Fury as approaching 700 is just too much money for me and I could just barely swing $550 but you might feel differently and think the extra 2GB vram and 20% performance are worth it.

1080p I would say go with an aftermarket r9 290 to hold over until 14/16nm. It's $250 and they will likely dry up pretty soon. It's a fantastic value at $250.
 

sze5003

Lifer
Aug 18, 2012
14,304
675
126
So for 1440p, I think the situation will change when the Fury (no X) drops in a month. I anticipate aftermarket Fury cards @$550 or 560 that are as fast as the Fury X.

IMO the fight will be between aftermarket 980 Ti @$670 that is 20% faster (before additional OC) than aftermarket Fury @ $570. They would both be decent choices, I personally would probably go Fury as approaching 700 is just too much money for me and I could just barely swing $550 but you might feel differently and think the extra 2GB vram and 20% performance are worth it.

1080p I would say go with an aftermarket r9 290 to hold over until 14/16nm. It's $250 and they will likely dry up pretty soon. It's a fantastic value at $250.
Yea for 1080 which is what I'm used to, would a 290 be a good improvement over my 7970ghz ? I've gotten used to just setting resolution to 1920x1080 and settings to the highest except blur effects.
 

Headfoot

Diamond Member
Feb 28, 2008
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Yeah you'd get ~25-40% if you get a 290 @ ghz speeds too, like the Sapphire Tri-X 290. You should be able to recover about $110-130 for that 7970 Ghz on the used market too.
 

Mako88

Member
Jan 4, 2009
129
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0
So for 1440p, I think the situation will change when the Fury (no X) drops in a month. I anticipate aftermarket Fury cards @$550 or 560 that are as fast as the Fury X.

IMO the fight will be between aftermarket 980 Ti @$670 that is 20% faster (before additional OC) than aftermarket Fury @ $570. They would both be decent choices, I personally would probably go Fury as approaching 700 is just too much money for me and I could just barely swing $550 but you might feel differently and think the extra 2GB vram and 20% performance are worth it.

1080p I would say go with an aftermarket r9 290 to hold over until 14/16nm. It's $250 and they will likely dry up pretty soon. It's a fantastic value at $250.

That's a good thought actually, agree with both.

If the air Fury isn't a cut-down core it will be a great value, one that is tempting for his scenario. Come on AMD, you can save the FX s-show you've dumped on the world...don't cut down that core!
 

sze5003

Lifer
Aug 18, 2012
14,304
675
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That's a good thought actually, agree with both.

If the air Fury isn't a cut-down core it will be a great value, one that is tempting for his scenario. Come on AMD, you can save the FX s-show you've dumped on the world...don't cut down that core!
Yea since I do tend to keep my cards a while. If the fury x didn't really do better than a 980ti it pretty much matched it, I don't know how the regular fury is supposed to be.

My initial thoughts were get an aftermarket 980ti, 980, or just wait even though my card is pretty old now.
 

moonbogg

Lifer
Jan 8, 2011
10,731
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If a single card is what you're after and you will keep it at least a while, the only enthusiast option is an aftermarket 980ti overclocked. Don't kid yourself about 1080p either. New games are still hard to run maxed at 1080p and a fast 980ti will be put to good use.
 

sze5003

Lifer
Aug 18, 2012
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675
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I don't think I'd ever do dual cards. I have kept this 7970ghz about 4 years now and granted I didn't play every single PC game out there, what I did play was always maxed out 90% of the time. Now with witcher 3 it runs fine but required some tweaks, but you can tell it's starting to show age.

I dunno how good the 14 or 16nm cards will be, are they due in 12 months or so? By that time those will cost about the same as a 980ti or fury x does now.
 

NTMBK

Lifer
Nov 14, 2011
10,418
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I don't think I'd ever do dual cards. I have kept this 7970ghz about 4 years now and granted I didn't play every single PC game out there, what I did play was always maxed out 90% of the time. Now with witcher 3 it runs fine but required some tweaks, but you can tell it's starting to show age.

I dunno how good the 14 or 16nm cards will be, are they due in 12 months or so? By that time those will cost about the same as a 980ti or fury x does now.

14/16nm cards will also have HBM, but with higher memory capacities than the Fury does. A massive jump in transistor density (the first since 2011!) and a fast, power efficient new memory technology- they should be a big improvement over this generation.
 

Majcric

Golden Member
May 3, 2011
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Op, if you keep your cards for a while then you would better off with the 980ti and 6gb.
 

raghu78

Diamond Member
Aug 23, 2012
4,093
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Since you mention upgrading to a 1440p monitor I would recommend a R9 390 8 GB. Good performance at 1440p and even better at 1080p. roughly 7% slower than R9 390X. At same clocks that perf gap is less than 5%. So in terms of perf/$ its really a much better deal than R9 390X.

http://www.computerbase.de/2015-06/amd-radeon-r9-390x-390-380-r7-370-test/3/

http://www.sweclockers.com/test/20730-amd-radeon-r9-fury-x/17#content

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...682-amd-r9-fury-x-review-fiji-arrives-22.html

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphi...9-390-8GB-Review/3DMark-Power-and-Conclusions

Multiple reviews show the R9 390X on par to slightly slower against GTX 980 at 1440p. So a R9 390 at same clocks as R9 390X is pretty close to GTX 980. R9 390 also in general seems to have the performance edge over GTX 970 though the Nvidia card is much more power efficient.

http://www.purepc.pl/karty_graficzn...eforce_gtx_970_test_kart_graficznych?page=0,5

I don't think there is any card better in price perf than R9 390 except maybe the R9 290 if you get one for less than USD 270. I would say get a Sapphire R9 390 Nitro 8 GB and you are well set both at 1080p and 1440p. Roughly 40% faster than a R9 280X / HD 7970 (1 Ghz) and around 45% faster at 1440p. Not to forget the VRAM increase over HD 7970 will be very useful at 1440p.
 
Mar 10, 2006
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Yea since I do tend to keep my cards a while. If the fury x didn't really do better than a 980ti it pretty much matched it, I don't know how the regular fury is supposed to be.

My initial thoughts were get an aftermarket 980ti, 980, or just wait even though my card is pretty old now.

Aftermarket 980 Ti should serve you well for a good long while. The Gigabyte one seems to be quite nice.