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£150 - £170 for a Graphics Card - Which one?

stoofa

stoofa

stoofa

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Siple question really :)
We are currently building some new machines for the IT people here - me and two others.
I need to get a graphics card in for each of them. We do play some games during lunch or after work, SWTOR and EVE are two we play a lot.
So although primarily a work machine, we will do some basic gaming.

So, £150 - £170inc VAT for a graphics card, which one should we get?

Thanks.
 
 
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OK, so with a bit of budget "jigging" I can go for:

Sapphire HD 7850 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card

Instead.
 
Gaming wise, the 7850 is the top card in that price range.

but if you wanted to do some professional stuff using the GPU, I think your better off with an Nvidia alternative.
 
£190/£200 for a 7850 is a joke, I can't believe people are buying cards at the moment, so annoyed at AMD and Nvidia for screwing the market currently.

I picked up a 5850 for about £85 brand new from OCUK when Sapphire re-released this card a while back, had the disappointment of the 6850's which performs worse than my card and then the 7850 which isn't fast enough over a 5850 to warrant the ridiculous prices, when the hell are we going to get a decent mid-range card?
 
KraniX said:
£190/£200 for a 7850 is a joke, I can't believe people are buying cards at the moment, so annoyed at AMD and Nvidia for screwing the market currently.

I picked up a 5850 for about £85 brand new from OCUK when Sapphire re-released this card a while back, had the disappointment of the 6850's which performs worse than my card and then the 7850 which isn't fast enough over a 5850 to warrant the ridiculous prices, when the hell are we going to get a decent mid-range card?
Click to expand...


+1, My 5850 is still going strong from release date. Over 2 and a half years on and the same money buys me a measly few percent in a benchmark. People are dreaming if they think they are getting good deals with these cards.

I have been wanting to build a new rig for my other half, the only thing stopping me is the feeling that I would be ****ing away 200 notes on a card only just faster than my 5850, where is the progression. Does Moores law only apply to CPUs???
 
KraniX said:
£190/£200 for a 7850 is a joke, I can't believe people are buying cards at the moment, so annoyed at AMD and Nvidia for screwing the market currently.

I picked up a 5850 for about £85 brand new from OCUK when Sapphire re-released this card a while back, had the disappointment of the 6850's which performs worse than my card and then the 7850 which isn't fast enough over a 5850 to warrant the ridiculous prices, when the hell are we going to get a decent mid-range card?
Click to expand...

Correct. such is life though, people will pay over the odds. Especially when it comes to gfx cards it seems.
 
it depends what you want really as i recently upgraded from a 5850 to a 6970 and i was delighted with the improvement ie the card is about 30% faster and has 2gb ram and has better tessellation than the 5850 which looks better to my eyes, i did consider a 7850 but it is a bit slower at stock and i don't have a lot of luck and patience with over clocking
 
bells said:
it depends what you want really as i recently upgraded from a 5850 to a 6970 and i was delighted with the improvement ie the card is about 30% faster and has 2gb ram and has better tessellation than the 5850 which looks better to my eyes, i did consider a 7850 but it is a bit slower at stock and i don't have a lot of luck and patience with over clocking
Click to expand...

The 6970 is a good card and offers a fair bit of a performance increase like you say but the cheapest I've seen for a not-rubbish branded one is £200.

I can't comment on the tessellation and maybe you picked one up for a better price but I can't justify that much on a card, AMD and Nvidia seem to have an unwritten agreement going on to keep the price of cards unnecessarily high in my opinion.
 
KelDG said:
+1, My 5850 is still going strong from release date. Over 2 and a half years on and the same money buys me a measly few percent in a benchmark. People are dreaming if they think they are getting good deals with these cards.
Click to expand...
£150-£170 for 7850, £200-£240 for 7950 and £300-£340 for 7970 is where the pricings should be.

We don't need a crappy 7770 that's slower than 6850 and cost £35-£45 more pushing up the price of 7850, or a pointless 7870 for pushing up the price of 7950 and 7970.

This gen is a serious rip-off...the performance of cards that we suppose to be getting got pushed back by 12 months basically, with first AMD stacking the 7970 price on top of Nvidia's previous gen's king card already premium price, then Nvidia rebranding their mid-range card to top-end because AMD offered too little for what they are charging.
 
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KraniX said:
£190/£200 for a 7850 is a joke, I can't believe people are buying cards at the moment, so annoyed at AMD and Nvidia for screwing the market currently.

I picked up a 5850 for about £85 brand new from OCUK when Sapphire re-released this card a while back, had the disappointment of the 6850's which performs worse than my card and then the 7850 which isn't fast enough over a 5850 to warrant the ridiculous prices, when the hell are we going to get a decent mid-range card?
Click to expand...

I got my 7850 for £160, paid for by the sale of my 5850s. Overclocked, it performs surprisingly well compared to my crossfire set up (especially when tessalation is involved) and it means that I can add another down the line when they drop in price any I need more oomph.

If I waited until that time with my 5850s, I would get much less for them second-hand. It's all about riding the second-hand sale wave.
 
krooton said:
I got my 7850 for £160, paid for by the sale of my 5850s. Overclocked, it performs surprisingly well compared to my crossfire set up (especially when tessalation is involved) and it means that I can add another down the line when they drop in price any I need more oomph.

If I waited until that time with my 5850s, I would get much less for them second-hand. It's all about riding the second-hand sale wave.
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But let's say the 5850 can be sold for £80...paying 100% more money for may be 40%~ increase in performance is still a bit disappointing...

And also, the £160 7850 are usually with a cut-down cooler like the VTX, and the more decent branded 7850 are all £180~£200 on average.

The biggest problem with 7850 is its price point. Decent brand with good custom cooler for £150~£170 is reasonable, but for £180~£200 that are just cards that don't offer worthwhile performance increase over the 5850, despite after 2 whole gens. The amount of performance of 7850 increase over a 5850 looks more like 1 gen rather than 2.
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
But let's say the 5850 can be sold for £80...paying 100% more money for may be 40%~ increase in performance is still a bit disappointing...

And also, the £160 7850 are usually with a cut-down cooler like the VTX, and the more decent branded 7850 are all £180~£200 on average.

The biggest problem with 7850 is its price point. Decent brand with good custom cooler for £150~£170 is reasonable, but for £180~£200 that are just cards that don't offer worthwhile performance increase over the 5850, despite after 2 whole gens. The amount of performance of 7850 increase over a 5850 looks more like 1 gen rather than 2.
Click to expand...

I paid £190 for one of my 5850s, so had no problem paying £160 for a 7850. It runs cooler, clocks further, and uses less wattage than my 5850 ever did.

Look at this way:

Sell 5850s for £80 each, buy 7850 at £160, wait til 7850s drop to £100 before buying another = £100 outlay for crossfired 7850s.

Hold on to the 5850s until the 7850s drop to £100, and the second-hand prices of the 5850s would have dropped more, some already go for £65, so could drop to £40-£50 by the time the 7850 hits £100. So the outlay could then be £100-£120 depending.

I'm playing it safe by swapping out earlier whilst I could get a decent return on my 5850s, rather thank risking the hope that they don't devalue faster than the 7850 prices drop.
 
krooton said:
I paid £190 for one of my 5850s, so had no problem paying £160 for a 7850. It runs cooler, clocks further, and uses less wattage than my 5850 ever did.

Look at this way:

Sell 5850s for £80 each, buy 7850 at £160, wait til 7850s drop to £100 before buying another = £100 outlay for crossfired 7850s.

Hold on to the 5850s until the 7850s drop to £100, and the second-hand prices of the 5850s would have dropped more, some already go for £65, so could drop to £40-£50 by the time the 7850 hits £100. So the outlay could then be £100-£120 depending.
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Well, the thing there's not really much more for 5850 to price drop, with 2nd hand value already at £80. Further price drop of £10 to £15 is nothing comparing to paying extra 100% extra money for 40% extra performance, and only to have it devalue by £80 a year later, when 5850 would only devalue by another £10 or so. It's not gonna drop to £40-£50 just yet, with cards like 5770 still setting there at that price on 2nd hand market. So I really don't see the logic in "getting 7850 because of fearing 5850 devalue further".

But for people that are no upgrading and in need of a new card, then there's really no other choice except for the 7850.
 
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KraniX said:
£190/£200 for a 7850 is a joke, I can't believe people are buying cards at the moment, so annoyed at AMD and Nvidia for screwing the market currently.

I picked up a 5850 for about £85 brand new from OCUK when Sapphire re-released this card a while back, had the disappointment of the 6850's which performs worse than my card and then the 7850 which isn't fast enough over a 5850 to warrant the ridiculous prices, when the hell are we going to get a decent mid-range card?
Click to expand...

+1 for the 7850

The cheapest Ive seen hd7850 is at £165 and hd7950 was at £249 (both stock vtx). AMD isn't entirely to blame here as nvidia have yet to release the gtx660. When you see that most of nvidia gpu`s are based on the gk104 (gtx690/80/70/ even the gtx660 is said to be a cut down gk104 & so is the gtx680m) you begin to see how its not viable for them to sell gtx660 under £300/350, the gtx680m is going roughly for £400+ (AMD`s equivalent HD7970m is @ £225/250). The mobile gtx680m is being released & that will put more pressure on the gtx660 being left out until better yields etc.

So they can`t sell a £360-£450 card for £160-£240 (cutting the PCB in half won`t cut it) but props to nvidia for pulling off what they did so far.

BTW am still waiting on a 7870/50 or nvidia equivalent price drop to build my htpc.

/End rant ;)
 
is that a typo or are you suggesting the gtx660 will be £300+ ???

so I guess it's not a low-end card anymore? I was thinking it was this year's gtx460, but my 460 cost £150...
 
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