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Snagged an XFX 7970 for £290. Should I still wait for Ivy Bridge?

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16 Nov 2011
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I snagged an open box XFX 7970 core edition in the States since I am heading back to my parents place in California from London for a small vacation. I am currently sitting on an old AMD 1055T overclocked as a 4 core to 4ghz. I know this will likely bottleneck my 7970 in several games at my 1440p resolution (not sure how much exactly), and so I almost added an i5-2500k and an Asus p8z68-v/gen3 motherboard to the mix, but I realized that Ivy Bridge should be hitting sometime in late April, albeit in limited quantities.

I guess what I'm trying to ask is should I purchase the Sandy Bridge combo or wait a few more weeks for Ivy Bridge to hit stores?
 
No, don't purchase off of Newegg for two reasons:

1. Their sales are no longer really sales anymore as they just mark up the MSRP and put the sale down to regular prices.

2. You can't make a purchase from Newegg without a US address linked to your credit card or without a US linked Paypal account.

I made this open box purchase off of Amazon which accepts UK credit cards no problem. If you are looking at just going into a store then the best prices will be found at Frys Electronics or a Microcenter if they are near wherever you are staying. Otherwise, your best bet for purchasing online without any hassle about your billing address would be amazon and ebay as they have very similar prices to all of the other retailers.

7970s go for $550-$700 depending on the model in the States right now. I got mine for $500 and used a $50 gift card from Amazon to get it for $450.

But back to the cpu. So everyone thinks the 1055t at 4ghz should be good enough for a little while longer?
 
Depends how long you can wait, also I'm sure I read the other day that Ivybridge was delayed to around June?
 
No, don't purchase off of Newegg for two reasons:

1. Their sales are no longer really sales anymore as they just mark up the MSRP and put the sale down to regular prices.

2. You can't make a purchase from Newegg without a US address linked to your credit card or without a US linked Paypal account.

I made this open box purchase off of Amazon which accepts UK credit cards no problem. If you are looking at just going into a store then the best prices will be found at Frys Electronics or a Microcenter if they are near wherever you are staying. Otherwise, your best bet for purchasing online without any hassle about your billing address would be amazon and ebay as they have very similar prices to all of the other retailers.

7970s go for $550-$700 depending on the model in the States right now. I got mine for $500 and used a $50 gift card from Amazon to get it for $450.

But back to the cpu. So everyone thinks the 1055t at 4ghz should be good enough for a little while longer?

Thanks for the advice, I think if I buy anything it'll be easier to just get it one of those stores.
 
But back to the cpu. So everyone thinks the 1055t at 4ghz should be good enough for a little while longer?

Yeah, even if you don't get the full potential of the GPU just yet, Ivybridge isn't miles away and in the mean time you'll still be able to play games perfectly fine :)
 
Alright, you guys have talked some sense into me. I will wait a bit and see what Ivy Bridge is capable of and if Kepler turns out to be a hit I should be able to sell this 7970 at a small profit in the UK at least.
 
Alright, you guys have talked some sense into me. I will wait a bit and see what Ivy Bridge is capable of and if Kepler turns out to be a hit I should be able to sell this 7970 at a small profit in the UK at least.

Was that an open box item from Newegg per chance?

I would give it a thorough testing. Most of their open box items have been user damaged and then sent back.

Case in question ; my mate bought a MSI X58 Big bang. After two months he realised that all the crashing and bsod were due to bent pins on the board and had made his contacts go shiny on his I7 950. Thankfully the CPU wasn't damaged and we straightened the pins on the board (that were all bent and blue ) and sent it back to MSI.

Then I saw another case of it with a GTX 580 Lightning that the bios switch had been snapped off of. MSI refused to RMA it and by that time Newegg refused also. Not sure of the outcome.

With any luck yours was returned by some peed off yank who found out he wasn't really getting a lifetime warranty and nothing more, because every open box item my mate has ever bought from there has been broken.
 
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