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Good replacement for Radeon HD 7970?
- Thread starter Zarax
- Start date
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Really depends on what resolution she is playing at. If 1080p you can just go off the recommended specs below. If playing at 4K 60hz it ran OK on a RTX 3070 for me, to get over 60fps at 4K you need a 3080Ti to get around 90 fps.
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB) or AMD Radeon RX 580 (8GB)
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB) or AMD Radeon RX 580 (8GB)
Thank you.
Her PC is more or less the same age as the card, meaning that anything RTX would be overkill.
Given that the cards you mentioned right now costs as much or more than current gen lower end, I'm considering to get an RX 6600 (IF I can get it at anything close to the MSRP) or keep playing the AMD website lottery until I get a chance to buy anything.
I'm also wondering if the upcoming RX 6500 series could work, although I'm afraid they would be underpowered.
Her PC is more or less the same age as the card, meaning that anything RTX would be overkill.
Given that the cards you mentioned right now costs as much or more than current gen lower end, I'm considering to get an RX 6600 (IF I can get it at anything close to the MSRP) or keep playing the AMD website lottery until I get a chance to buy anything.
I'm also wondering if the upcoming RX 6500 series could work, although I'm afraid they would be underpowered.
In terms of a brand new card, you're going to have to take whatever you can get at a reasonable price. There's no time for choice in the current market, as anything decently-priced just sells out instantly. You could wait until next year and see what AMD and Intel's lower end stuff is like (or Nvidia's RTX 2060 relaunch), but we're talking at least a few months of waiting, without any certainty that you'll even be able to purchase one when they do launch. The used market isn't looking much better either really. The 980 Ti was a solid option until recently, but even those have made their way up towards the £300 mark now. The 1070 and 1080 have gone up way north of £300, when again they were under £300 a couple of months ago. Seems like Christmas is making things even more insane.
One of the least-overpriced cards going is the GTX 970, which can be had for ~£150 (or £170 with a two-year warranty from a certain pawn shop). Even that's £50 more than what you'd have paid at the start of the year, but in the grand scheme it's not so bad. Throw an overclock on one and it can still handle almost anything at 1080p and medium/high settings. It's a decent stopgap card until things calm down a bit and still a good 50-60% faster than a 7970.
One of the least-overpriced cards going is the GTX 970, which can be had for ~£150 (or £170 with a two-year warranty from a certain pawn shop). Even that's £50 more than what you'd have paid at the start of the year, but in the grand scheme it's not so bad. Throw an overclock on one and it can still handle almost anything at 1080p and medium/high settings. It's a decent stopgap card until things calm down a bit and still a good 50-60% faster than a 7970.
Another option if the system is pretty old is to invest in a new mobo, RAM and get one of the new AMD APUs like the 5600G or 5700G. The system would cost more in the short term but in the long run would have more longevity. Plus the iGPU in the 5600G is surprisingly good and probably on par with the 7970. certainly buys you time to wait out the GPU craziness
Ryzen 5 5600g apu stock settings playing Horizon Zero Dawn - YouTube
Ryzen 5 5600g apu stock settings playing Horizon Zero Dawn - YouTube
That's the emergency option, even 5700G is far below HD7970 though, that card was a beast and is close to RX 470 performance...
AMD no longer sell cards direct to the UK due to the B word
I'm not in UK so not affected by that luckily... On the other side, any current gen card right now is north of 600€, which means chances of getting them close to a decent price are rather slim.
In that case best sign up for part alert
I religiously check in amd shop every thursday, several queues but no luck so far
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- 2 Jul 2019
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I'd wait till early 2022 if you can and see what happens, stock looks dismal atm. Intel, Nvidia and AMD will all have something to offer then, whether that's GPUs or news of new release is another question.
Anything that has more than 2GB of vram atm is just ludicrous in price, even the low end 2GB cards have gone back up in price.
If desperate a £450 6600xt is your best bet, a good card, just over costed.
(Just saw youre not UK, so hard to say other than AMD founders card direct for best value)
Anything that has more than 2GB of vram atm is just ludicrous in price, even the low end 2GB cards have gone back up in price.
If desperate a £450 6600xt is your best bet, a good card, just over costed.
(Just saw youre not UK, so hard to say other than AMD founders card direct for best value)
Yes, the issue for me is not waiting, problem is that my wife's card is crashing more and more often, so basically one day I will just have to fork the cash no matter what... Cheapest RX6000 card is at 656€, basically 2X MRSP.
Ironically, the 6900XT is a relative bargain, at "just" +40% over MSRP...
As your going to have to replace anyway, is it worth pulling off the cooler and giving the memory some new heat pads and thermal paste on the GPU, may well give you some breathing space, what happens if you drop the clocks by 100Mhz or increase the voltage slightly, could be ASIC degradation as well?
I'm too afraid to ruin the card. Lowering clocks with afterburner is something to consider tough.
No idea on software for the 7970 but I think you can use wattman in radeon software to sort this, try 50mhz off the memory and 50Mhz off the clocks see where it ends up, I once had a 7850 which was a refurbished open box, crashed all the time, I set the bios to be 50Mhz less and never had a single issue with it afterwards for 5 years, in fact its still going strong running sims for my friends daughter.