Accidentaly win an auction for a 7850. In two minds whether to keep or not

[thingemajib]

So i was messing around on an auction site the other day whilst waiting to pick someone up, making a few low bids here and there not expecting anything to come of it. Naturally I was surprised to hear my phone beep and inform me that I had just won an 1GB ASUS Directcu HD7850 that was being sold as new (used for less than a week) for £95 inc. To put it into perspective the place where the original buyer got it from currently has these at £134, and OCUK has the 2gb for £155

The main reason I'm hesitant about this is the vRAM. My current 5770 is a 1gb and I was surprised to see games such as FSX and arma use it all up. Im slightly worried that 1gb aint gonna cut it for much longer. On the other hand the extra power of this card *should* negate that. If this card was the 2gb one I would be keeping this without a doubt.

To summarize: is 1gb vRAM still going to be cutting it in the next couple of years or so, or am I just wasting 95 quid?

Screen res 1600x900
phenom II x4 b55 @ 4.0
2x4gb 1866 ddr3
crosshair V
Hd5770
500W OCZ ModXtreme

 

[Gregster]

Sorry to say but you have just wasted £95. Current games are pushing 2GB with top settings and for the 1GB 7850, you will need to lower settings to an extent that your 5770 will cope just as well as a 7850.

 

[On Holiday]

At that res it should be fine for atleast a year in Medium, but with the latest graphics cards (although expensive) having 6GB the future for low VRAM cards looks bleak.

 

[medseven]

On the other hand, you could later put a 2gb version in the first slot and Crossfire, you would have got yourself a cheap twin 7850 crossfire setup.

I got a 2gb 7850 for £120 recently, and saw a 1gb version for £80 in the B-Grade section, I was so tempted to get it and have crossfired 7850's for £200.

 

[pgi947]

7850 1GB + 7850 2GB = 7850 1GB CF.

 

[mranderson]

I would say normal price for an ASUS 7850 1GB but a bit too much as you can get a 2GB one from Sapphire for £20-30 more.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Sorry to say but you have just wasted £95. Current games are pushing 2GB with top settings and for the 1GB 7850, you will need to lower settings to an extent that your 5770 will cope just as well as a 7850.

Actually I think for OP's res, it should be ok so long as he doesn't go crazy on AA, and/or ultra/max texture...

Also, it's down to what games he's playing...

 

[Gregster]

Actually I think for OP's res, it should be ok so long as he doesn't go crazy on AA, and/or ultra/max texture...

Also, it's down to what games he's playing...

Yer to be fair, at that res, the 1GB should cope a bit better and it is a lot faster than a 5770.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/538?vs=549

A shame it wasn't the 2GB but not all doom and gloom OP

 

[Marine-RX179]

Yer to be fair, at that res, the 1GB should cope a bit better and it is a lot faster than a 5770.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/538?vs=549

A shame it wasn't the 2GB but not all doom and gloom OP

Also at that res the CPU would be a bigger bottleneck than the 1GB 7850 to be honest, unless he use ridiculous graphic settings drop the fps on the graphic side to "cover up" the low to average ish frame rate

 

[thingemajib]

Thanks for the replies. I was hoping the low res would be my saving grace. Looking at a few reviews the 1gb seems to only start to become an issue at 1080p and up, but again who's to say what will happen in the next couple of years. To be fair my system is starting to show its age and i've been looking to upgrade a for a while, I was hoping to end up with a 7870 but I never have the money to. Plus don't think the phenom would have kept up.

Like I said Ii wasn't actually expecting a £90 bid to win it (i'm sure at least some of you have done this ), so I was in two minds about cutting my losses and selling it on or keeping it and clawing some of the cost back by selling the 5770 (they seem to be going for around £40 inc. in the MM).

I think ill trial it. At the end of the day if I'm happy with the performance boost then I don't really have anything to complain about do I? XD

Edit: These days i'm mostly playing arma 2+3, FSX and sim city. I was quite into bf3 but I have lost interest lately...

 

[Marine-RX179]

I think ill trial it. At the end of the day if I'm happy with the performance boost then I don't really have anything to complain about do I? XD

Yea no harm in doing that. And as I mentioned above...IF some games you play you hit the max memory usage available and you really start to suffer from it (i.e. frame rate fall flat down to 1-2fps), then try turning down the AA and texture level, and it should reduce the memory usage by decent amount.

 

[medseven]

7850 1GB + 7850 2GB = 7850 1GB CF.

Is this true, sorry to hijack a little but my plan was to crossfire later and I was under the impression that only the memory from the 1st card is used, and so therefore If i put a 2gb version in the first slot and a 1gb version in the second slot I would have crossfired 7850's with 2gb of vram!?

 

[iTek]

Is this true, sorry to hijack a little but my plan was to crossfire later and I was under the impression that only the memory from the 1st card is used, and so therefore If i put a 2gb version in the first slot and a 1gb version in the second slot I would have crossfired 7850's with 2gb of vram!?

Its true. Pgi is right

 

[thingemajib]

Is this true, sorry to hijack a little but my plan was to crossfire later and I was under the impression that only the memory from the 1st card is used, and so therefore If i put a 2gb version in the first slot and a 1gb version in the second slot I would have crossfired 7850's with 2gb of vram!?

Im a lil rusty on my knowledge, but I believe in CF/SLI the contents of the vRAM is mirrored in both cards, so each card will only use 1gb of ram