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if i was to upgrade my GPU, what would you do ?

ShiWarrior said:
sent of an email to him and he says gaming mostly, and some overclocking
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Will he let you pay with Paypal? You only need his email address to do so and it will be for your protection if you are not able to go and see it working ok.

If the card is fine he should have no problem with Paypal.

When i sold mine the guy collected so i could let him see it working fine before he took it. It's up to you but i wouldn't want to see someone ripped off.
 
40Four said:
Will he let you pay with Paypal? You only need his email address to do so and it will be for your protection if you are not able to go and see it working ok.

If the card is fine he should have no problem with Paypal.

When i sold mine the guy collected so i could let him see it working fine before he took it. It's up to you but i wouldn't want to see someone ripped off.
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I was going to pay buy paypal as it was the famous auction site..

the GPU went for around £190 + postage in the end !!!

seem them on here for £150, so I will try and get one for that


so the sapphire R9 290x is the card to go for ?
 
I wouldn't touch a secondhand 290/290x, too much risk and uncertainty. The options may not be as fast but if it was me I'd go with one of these

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-291-MS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=3059

It's only a tenner over the 150 max. It is a 2 gb model though so another 20 gets you the 4gb and personally I'd wait a week or two and save the extra for the 180 quid 4gb version, If you're happy with 2 gb's then the 160 quid 380 is a winner or wait and check out the 950 details first (I'd wait for that to release first anyway).

By the way the 380 is not a 7970 it is in fact the newest chip model apart from Fiji so it is newer than Hawaii etc and definitely newer than the others.
 
ShiWarrior said:
I know my system is bottle necked, so tinkering with the idea of upgrading, but im happy to wait a few months if need be


current specs -

Skylake i5-6600K
MSI Gaming Pro motherboard
8 Gb RAM (dual channel)
AMD Radeon 7850 HD


I suppose a direct X 12 graphics card is best bet, , and I guess going 2nd hand would be my best option, best bang for buck..

lets say £100 budget, stretch to £150 if needed no more!

what would you do/get ?

thanks
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I've got an 8 month old (like new condition boxed) MSI 290x gaming which as soon as I hit 1000 posts I'm putting it on the members market for about 120/130 quid,

The thing is the card gets hot unless you use an aggressive fan profile, If I run the regular auto profile it runs at 90 odd degrees under load, It is a common issue with Asus DCUII and MSI Twin Frozer IV gaming cards. They did not put a big enough heatsink on them, The best Hawaii models are from Sapphire.

I do not overclock so the cards never been abused and as I said a one for one fan profile will keep it in the mid eighties at it's hottest. (for example Dying light is hard on a gpu and gets it hotter than most games so that will hit mid eights where as for Borderlands it will stay under 70)

The card itself runs great but as I said the temps on them are not great unless you use an aggressive fan profile which means it'll get noisier when gaming (It's not a noisy card though). I'll list it in a day or two, Personally I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole but that's just me.
 
ShiWarrior said:
I was going to pay buy paypal as it was the famous auction site..

the GPU went for around £190 + postage in the end !!!

seem them on here for £150, so I will try and get one for that


so the sapphire R9 290x is the card to go for ?
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If you can gt a 290x for your budget then yes otherwise just non X. Sapphire is the brand i would choose and the Tri-X cooler is not just restricted to the 290x, most of there range has a version with it.
 
ShiWarrior said:
any difference in performance ?

im assuming the tri-x is not the 290x version..
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The only differences between the Vapour X and Tri-X coolers are the colour + the Vapour X has a backplate, oh and the Vapour X boards come with slightly higher overclocks from the factoy but nothing that you won't be able to beat with either version.
 
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40Four said:
Just make sure it hasn't been used for Bitcoin mining or something in the past if possible.
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I've seen this warning posted a few times and it's always made me wonder just how could / would you verify it hasn't sat 24/7 mining away?
I would guess many such sellers are unlikely to advertise as "ran endlessly mining until it's clapped out" or is there some means of discovering the cards past use?

Just curious, ultimately I've always viewed most electronic components as things that either work or don't, and I can think of plenty of ancient components I still own that still work just fine today - my two Voodoo 2's for example! - I struggle to see what difference running something 24/7 for a year or so makes compared to a few hours per day for years & years so long as it still works properly.

I've always understood the most harmful thing to do to an electronic component is to turn it on, by that logic I'd assume something ran constantly would actually be a better second hand buy than an item that's had hundreds of power cycles over its life....

Can somebody enlighten me please?
 
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Afaik it's not just the fact that it's running 24/7 but the actual heat that's produced at a constant load that can possibly damage the card.
 
Scania said:
I've seen this warning posted a few times and it's always made me wonder just how could / would you verify it hasn't sat 24/7 mining away?
I would guess many such sellers are unlikely to advertise as "ran endlessly mining until it's clapped out" or is there some means of discovering the cards past use?

Just curious, ultimately I've always viewed most electronic components as things that either work or don't, and I can think of plenty of ancient components I still own that still work just fine today - my two Voodoo 2's for example! - I struggle to see what difference running something 24/7 for a year or so makes compared to a few hours per day for years & years so long as it still works properly.

I've always understood the most harmful thing to do to an electronic component is to turn it on, by that logic I'd assume something ran constantly would actually be a better second hand buy than an item that's had hundreds of power cycles over its life....

Can somebody enlighten me please?
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There probably is no real way of knowing, however cards that have been hammered for too long can start to show up oddities like artifacting, instabilty at clocks that used to be fine, maybe you get blackscreens or some other sign.

I seem to rember the forum member Humbug had problems with his 290 after using CryEngine heavily over a long period.

This i why i recommended either a demonstration that there are no visible issues or PayPal for the OP's protection.

As per the post 33 above it's not about how long it's running but the workload it is being put through, for instance i barely switch my PC off but i don't leave it under full load while i am away from it as you would if you were mining or making Games, Movies etc.
 
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interesting point about mining / full load etc.
I've bought second hand cards in the past and haven't had any problems, except 1 that I bought, paid £300 I think and it was showing artefacts, so I sent it back and he never refund me, I managed to get half of it back through paypal claims, but I couldn't get the rest as there were no funds to get !!

my current card I bought through the members market on here, and it runs perfectly
 
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