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Should I get a 7970?

If you want to keep things under £100 it's your only real choice :) The Gigabyte 990FX UD3 board is very good, as long as it's rev 4, but I think it's about £115.

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4672

I was helping someone out recently who went for an 8320, the 970 EVO board and the Hyper 212 cooler, and can get 4.7GHz stable (though he didn't like the temps and dropped to 4.5GHz). The only real disadvantage is the basic Crossfire support.
 
The graphics card is going to hit me with 190, minus 25 from the games, and minus 80~ for my 6950 1GB (how much do you reckon I could get for it). So 190-105 = £85 for a 7950.
I just started looking at this benchmark: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/msi_radeon_hd_7950_twin_frozer_iii_review,22.html. I own the 6950 that has dual bios to 6970 ( so a 6970 virtually) and in the benchmark on 1920x1080 there is ONLY SIX FPS difference, I thought a 7950 was the same as 2 6950s!?

I could maybe just afford £115 for the motherboard, very slim chance but it would mean holding back on the gpu a little bit longer. How long are the sales on for, 31st Aug?

I'd rather keep within my budget and stick with the Evo, so could you explain on basic crossfire setup? Would a better x16 setup mean obvious faster transfer speeds, and in turn more FPS.. or is the FPS increase unnoticeable? If I do decide to crossfire eventually what performance impact should it be on the cards, a few FPS or something in their 20s?

Also on another matter, regarding shipping the old 6950 to a seller without original packaging.... I have a large (small parcel size) jiffy padded envelope, and could purchase an ESD bag (what is the graphic card size for it) and leave some extra padding and crap in the jiffy parcel.. will that be enough, or will i need specialized pink bubblewrap?
 
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If you don't run in Crossfire the 970 EVO will run your card at 16x. But the other slot only runs at 4x. Most people recommend you don't run Crossfire this way (I don't really know what the loss would be). If you expect you're never going to run Crossfire on the board, it makes no difference though. Not sure about the GPU prices, I don't think they're going to go up much because AMD's launching a new range in October.

Ignore old 7950 reviews. They're on very old drivers (which perform far worse), and before the boost clocks. e.g. BF3 6950 2GB vs 7950 stock on recent drivers:

Battlefield 3 - ultra settings
1920 x 1080 [No AA/16xAF] 51,5fps 73,7fps (+43,2%)

Just recycle old bubble wrap for sending stuff, it's what I've always done and have never had a problem.
 
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Thanks for the info, that's really helpful to know they were done on crap drivers. Could you tell me what the bench mark is roughly at on BF3, ultra (w & w/out AA) on 1920 x1080 with the proper drivers (and a slight OC if you have one).

I plan to recycle old bubble wrap from all my ebay and amazon junk... however I've heard some horror stories on bubble wrap being not graphic card friendly and all of this other bad things, could you shed some light on this matter? I'll probably fork an extra measly two pounds in re-assurance and get a big ESD bag, don't want my seller claiming that he received a faulty GPU now! :)

Do you know anything about these cards & dust? My current 6950's fans are full of it! I can't tell if I should buy an air can to clean them or not.. it's not bad, it spins fine, it just looks bad.
 
This is what you'd be looking at with a 7950 stock and 7950 overclocked at approx. 1100MHz (which pretty much all 7950s do):

1920 x 1080 [No AA/16xAF] 73,7 90,3 (+22,6%)
1920 x 1080 [4xAA/16xAF] 55,0 67,3 (+22,4%)

Use a bag if you're worried. If you've got any old packaging around you might already have one. An air can should clear most of the dust. And get a case with dust filters :)
 
Thanks,

Yeah It's probably best I don't CF because of bottlenecking.

My case has a PSU dust filter and a front fan dust filter, how can I get a rear fan dust filter any links please? I've also got two fans topside that I'd like to get filtered.
While I'm on the topic of dustyness and fans... I'm going to want 3 or 4 fans to replace my rear, 2 top, and maybe the side fan... I want them to be silent and within a budget, I'd like to spend under £30.
 
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you don't need to have filters on the exhaust fans as they are blowing air outside your case,just on the intake fans so not to suck dust into the case
 
Filtering top mounted exhaust fans is a good idea as the dust will just fall back into the PC when the power is switched off otherwise.
 
Ok,

Well I'm going to need a 140mm exhaust rear fan, and 2 120mm intakes. Would it be any use having a side fan or is it a waste of dBa? My computer is basically in a cupboard, but with the front being completely open and the sides being covered, and the rear being slightly covered on the top.

So if my gpu runs at 30-40dBa which I've heard is really quiet, that'll probably be the loudest part of my system... and I'm going to want 3 fans that go under that amount and shift a lot of air.

If I got 3 of these, would these be adequete?: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CM-021-AK
or save a few pounds and get this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dustproof-1...qid=1377252834&sr=8-2&keywords=dust+filter+pc

would the dust proofing be the same?

and this for rear? http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FG-025-NB&tool=3
 
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Hmm,

If I'm upgrading might as well upgrade the lot together, I like the look of the Cosair 330R, it looks really nice.

These are the maximum measurements of my case area: 21-22cm in width. 50 and under cm in legth, and 42cm in height (for my rear fan to not get blocked OR 77cm in height.
 
Sorry just realized I didn't ask a question

well would upgrading my case to a 330r be substantial in noise reduction or should I just get better fans? if so which fans, for out take and two topside fans.

also, do you believe it would be best to wait for release of new 9000 AMD cards so the HD 7950's get cheaper? I'm going to need to wait a month before purchasing the GPU anyway, CPU and Mobo come first then GPU... when do you think 9xxxx will release? End of 2013 or Q1 2014
 
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You're asking about cases in the GPU forum :p

There's no guarantee that the 7950s will come down much more than they are - they were £250 a couple of weeks ago, so £175-£190 is brilliant. 9990 is out in October.
 
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