Graphics Card For New Build

[Rusty0611]

Hello there. I've been an Overclockers customer for a few years now and I've finally registered on the forums to pick your collective brains about graphics cards.

I've just replaced my old PC:

E8500 C2D @ 4.0Ghz OC;
Gigabyte X48-DS4;
4GB 800 Mhz Geil RAM;
Radeon HD 6850

With the following:

i5 2500K;
ASUS P8Z68-V LX;
Crucial M4 128GB SSD;
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB 1600Mhz RAM

It was a little bit of a mix and match upgrade. I kept my 6850 graphics card, case, PSU and mechanical hard drive and thankfully it all came together nicely!

I was going to buy a 6950 when I bought the rest of the parts but I did a little digging and heard about the 7950's coming shortly so I refrained.

My cash limit on a new graphics card is around £300. I can't really justify stretching much more than this although there is a small amount of room there.

I play games at 1920*1200 although I will probably buy a better monitor and downsize to 1080p in a few months time. I play BF3, SWTOR, Skyrim amongst others.

What advice would you have for a graphics card?

6950, 6970? Or wait for the 7950/7970 to come down in price with a version with less VRAM? I would prefer an AMD card but I can be swayed.

p.s. I'm loving the overclock potential with the i5 2500k - just need a new graphics card to remove the bottleneck

 

[cmndr_andi]

Hi there and welcome to the forums

Personally I would stick with the HD 6850 for another month and see what the new cards do to the market. Nvidia are expected to release their new 28nm Kepler cards at the end of this month - so AMD will no longer be uncontested with their HD 7900 cards. Also, expect some cards like the HD 7850 to arrive soon in the price range you are looking in.

May I ask what make and model number PSU you are using?

 

[Rusty0611]

Thanks for your reply. I'm in no rush to buy one as my HD 6850 is just about handling everything on High settings but with AA on it obviously does start to struggle so that seems a sensible thing to do.

I looked at my order history and it is:

Corsair TX 750W ATX SLI Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-750TXUK)

Originally purchased for my 4850 Crossfire build a short while back in 2008!

 

[cmndr_andi]

Good PSU you got there, should handle pretty much any single graphics card you can throw at it.