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Most suitable upgrade for around £250

fire-blade

fire-blade

fire-blade

Associate
Joined
19 Jan 2007
Posts
12
Hi guys,

I'm a bit torn as to which card to upgrade to and looking for a few suggestions.

My current spec:
Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming-7
i5 4670k (stock clocks)
8GB Kingston DDR3
HIS Radeon 6870 1GB
Superflower Golden Green HX 650 (80 plus gold)
Samsung 128GB SSD
Seagate 320GB SATA HDD
Phanteks Enthoo Pro
AOC 144Hz 1080p LCD

I'm hoping to be able to play around Ultra settings @1080p in various games (Battlefield 4, Watchdogs, Farcry 4, etc) - GTA V would also be good.

I just tried a second hand Sapphire R9 280x Toxic, but had terrible problems with artifacts and big flashing black triangles, then after a VBIOS update from Sapphire the problems got worse, with system restarts and the signal to my monitor was being dropped - it was soo unstable, so i got a refund and i'm now looking for a new card.

I can't decide whether to go the R9 280x route, go for the slightly newer but less powerful 285 with less RAM, or just spend a little more on a 290/290x or GTX 970 which should hopefully last me for a while, as i have no current plans to upgrade above 1080p (but it would be nice to have the option to, if my monitor packed up and needed replacing).

Would my PSU handle a 290/290x/GTX 970? - I'm not really interested in overclocking at the moment.

Should i just hang on and see what happens with the new AMD cards?

Any suggestions greatly appreciated :)
 
Thanks for the suggestion and confirmation that my PSU should be fine with a 290x.

I've always had AMD GPU's in the past (purely as they have always suited my budget), but reading through the forum, i see quite a few threads with people having problems with AMD cards (black screens, artifacts, blue screen crashes, etc), is the problem really that bad with them?
 
fire-blade said:
Thanks for the suggestion and confirmation that my PSU should be fine with a 290x.

I've always had AMD GPU's in the past (purely as they have always suited my budget), but reading through the forum, i see quite a few threads with people having problems with AMD cards (black screens, artifacts, blue screen crashes, etc), is the problem really that bad with them?
Click to expand...

Not at all, single cards are fine. It is crossfire that can be a bit of a pain.
 
fire-blade said:
Thanks for the suggestion and confirmation that my PSU should be fine with a 290x.

I've always had AMD GPU's in the past (purely as they have always suited my budget), but reading through the forum, i see quite a few threads with people having problems with AMD cards (black screens, artifacts, blue screen crashes, etc), is the problem really that bad with them?
Click to expand...

Black Screens usually come from overclocking the Memory too hard.
 
Thanks for the help guys - it looks like it will be a 290x....i was leaning that way, but needed a push, lol :D

Just hope there is something at the right price in a few days time when i get paid.
 
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