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R9 270x overkill for my needs?

Grimezy

Grimezy

Grimezy

Associate
Joined
13 Mar 2013
Posts
81
I've been spec'ing a build for my girlfriend as she's been PC-less for about 18 months now and she enjoys playing on my desktop PC when she comes over, particularly Guild Wars 2.

The build started out as a dirt cheap £400 attempt with below-par components and has gradually crept up. I waited for Kaveri to see if the iGPU would be sufficient but after reading some reviews I'm not really that excited about it especially as it doesn't come out particularly cheap. I've now decided I'd rather stay on the intel route and between a haswell i3 or an i5, I'd much prefer to go the extra mile for the i5.

So basically I'm looking at something like an i5-4430/4440 with 8gb ram in an Aerocool Dead Silence.

The GPU is what I'm struggling with though. I don't have a set budget but I'd rather have something half-decent for a bit more, than something really poor just because it's 'cheap'. I appreciate GW2 isn't exactly a GPU-killer but she also wants to play games like Tomb Raider so I need to anticipate some AAA titles thrown into the mix.

I seem to keep coming round to the R9 270x, particularly the Gigabyte or Powercolour Devil editions as I think the 3-fan style will look awesome in the window (mainly because I saw a thread on here a few days ago of the same case which looked fantastic). These cards are priced at £160-£170 at the moment which is a lot more than I originally wanted to spend...

My question is, is the R9 270x overkill for something that will mainly be used for GW2 with the occasional decent game thrown in? Are there any alternatives that would work out cheaper but still sufficient? I've been looking at 7770's, 7790's, 7850's, 650ti's and 660's and I'm still no wiser. The R9 270x seems to be the newest and most powerful out of the bunch for not much more cost.

Any help would be much appreciated :)
 
Looking at your circumstances, I would say you'd best to try to see if you can get hold of a 2nd hand 7850 for around £70+.

I use to play on GW2 with just my 5850 along with my current overclocked i5, as graphic wise the 5850 wasn't really struggle for 1920 res, I could turn everything up to max, as long as I'm using NativeSampling instead of UberSampling.

Do note that the games is not really that demanding if you were just running around doing quests either solo or with a couple of others, but in dynamic events, world bosses and world vs world (pvp), even my "lowly" 5850 would get bottenecking by my overclocked i5 as it is extremely intensive on the CPU with like 30-40+ players in the same area with skills and attacks all over the place, and that's not counting the number of mobs for the bosses' minions as well.

The 7850 would be around 40% faster than my old 5850 if were overclocked...it should be plenty for your GF's gaming.
 
i had it running fine on an i7 4770k clocked to 4.3 .. itll play fine just doesnt look pretty on the lower settings but defiantly playable

but any graphic card more powerful than onboard i rec would play GW2 fine and would look especially nicer on the R270x :)
 
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