Worth Upgrading HD5850 for 1680x1050 gaming?

[SantiClaws]

The CPU is a Phenom II 920 quad. BF4 is coming up, maybe a couple of other new games I might want to play. Will I see any real FPS improvements? Selling my card and picking up a used 6950 or similar will only cost $30-40, but would it be worth the hassle? I don't really want to spend hundreds of dollars on a powerhouse that I can't take advantage of anyway.

 

[Durvelle27]

a HD 6950 won't be much faster than a HD 5850. I would spring for a HD 7850 or HD 7870

 

[SPBHM]

6950 is about the same as a 5870 in many or most games... not really a big upgrade...

 

[el etro]

BF4 will be sightly less heavy than Crysis 3.

For 1680x1050 on BF4... A GTX 760 would be good to max out everything and see most of the possible eye-candy(60-80)% better FPS than 5870.

Of course you can relax about both bottlenecking and GPU power waste because today games will use all the gpu power the 760 have, and your four 920 cores will guarantee no much great lack of CPU Power(bottlenecking will be not so big) due to recent games better use of 4 cores.

 

[raghu78]

a used HD 5850 would get you USD 80. to make a worthwhile upgrade you need to spend atleast 100 bucks to get a HD 7870. both at stock and overclocked you are looking at 50% higher performance.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/HD_7870_Devil/26.html

1920 X 1080

HD 6870 - 65
HD 7870 - 93
HD 7870(1.1 ghz) - 100

HD 7870(1.1 ghz) is 50% faster than HD 6870 which is approx equal to HD 5850(800 Mhz). also try and overclock the CPU to 3.5 ghz.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814161404

 

[Arkaign]

At that resolution I wouldn't worry about it.

However, I would DEFINITELY start looking at combos (CPU/MOBO, and DDR3 if you haven't got 8GB yet) to bring your CPU performance up.

The PhII X4 is a fine CPU, I have an X6 and like it very much (it's in a media box now, not the most efficient use, but it works well).

IIRC the 920 tops out usually in the 3.2-3.5Ghz range outside of very rare exceptions, and that's starting to show its age in some titles.

You could check if your board will take a 6300 and just go that route for the easiest solid upgrade, or :

Look for a used Mobo+2500k, get a $20 air cooler, and OC to ~4 through 4.5Ghz and you'll see massive leaps in minimum and average FPS in stressful titles. It's the exact move I made a while back, I took a PhII 955BE @ 3.8, jumped to Thuban @ 4Ghz, then after seeing minimal gaming improvements moved to a 2500K. That was a BIG leap. In fact I've upgraded a couple of times since then and gaming didn't really boost further.

 

[rancherlee]

plenty of CPU if its overclocked, a 7850/7870 would be a noticeable upgrade and I've seen 2g 7850's on the FS section for as low as 120$ MY PIIx4 @ 3.5 is only running 50-65% load on current games pushing a 40% overclocked 7850

 

[aldamon]

I would disagree that a powerhouse will not make a difference or would be a poor investment. I went from a GTX 460 1GB to a 7950 for 1600x900 and it has been a massive improvement. I max everything and forget it in every game, which is liberating. I've been pretty shocked at how much VRAM I've been using even at 1600x900. I was easily pushing 1.5-2GB+ in BioShock Infinite and Crysis 3. It's obvious that 3GB is going to be critical going forward with the new consoles coming out. Good luck with your decision.

 

[jacktesterson]

I just bought a 7850 for $120 + shipping in the For Sale section here used (2GB Model too)

Most 7850's with good coolers (Asus, MSI, Sapphire, Gigabyte) will hit 1150-1250 MHz cores at 24/7 voltage levels, making them quite a lot faster than stock (860MHz) as performance scales with core clocks extremely well on 7850s


Look used - my whole PC other than the case are Parts I've picked up from the For Sale threads