Should I Upgrade?

[linktoinsanity]

That is the question.

I am feeling an upgrade itch which I am trying to shake off. My current card performs fine.

It has a couple of small niggles, such as a fault which causes it to flash black very quickly from time to time, nothing overly noticeable and I can live with that. It only seems to happen in the Windows desktop anyway with nothing open, except IE. The second being small driver issues, but I doubt switching to Nvidia will fix that at the moment.

The card is an MSI Twin Frozr III AMD HD6950. I play World of Tanks a lot atm and it generally gets around 70-90 fps, depending on the map, etc... So it's fine. Battlefield 3 although rarely played gets around 50 fps when I do play it. The card is also reasonably quiet, unless it's getting hot, which in this weather is quite often, but that's not the card's fault.

However. This is where the itch comes in. I want a new graphics card. Something like a GTX670, GTX680 or GTX770. A 770 would feel better as it's 2 generations newer than my current card and it's slightly better than a GTX680 due to faster memory speeds. Is it worth it? I want a Nvidia purely because I like to hop between the two brands and both my laptop and Work PC run AMD graphics cards. Also I run dual screens and most Nvidias have 2x DVI, quite rare for the 7950 AMD cards, though my current card has got 2.

Do I save up and get one in 2 months? Do I just wait until the January sales? Or do I wait until GTX870s (or 970s if they decide to skip a generation again like the GTX3xx) and leave my card as is?

What do you guys reckon? Should I upgrade or just stick with what I have?

 

[arc@css]

My current card performs fine.

I'd keep what you have, though perhaps there is something else in your rig that is 'need' of an upgrade?

 

[maxilive]

I'm the same link! Still rocking my 5870 though but still just waiting it out until it becomes totally unusable

If everything you are playing now works fine then I would get some lotion on that itch to try and sooth it. Then wait for some "next-gen" games to hit at the end of the year like BF4 and upgrade then if there are any deals/new cards out. Summer has a drought for games for a reason! To save up and splash out in October/November on upgrades and games

 

[Uncle_Gravy]

What is your system spec out of interest?

If you feel your current card is performing well, then I'd wait till it either klonks out, or you feel its not keeping up nowadays.

Choices are AMD route, 7950/70 get some free games with it, good value, great performance, or if you want to go down the Nvidia route, you can't go wrong with the GTX770.

I upgraded from a 6850 to the 770 and I wasn't expecting the increase in performance to be that great.

 

[cainer]

I'm the same link! Still rocking my 5870 though but still just waiting it out until it becomes totally unusable

i was going to keep my 5870 but when they started selling on the bay for £150+ a few months ago i couldnt resist (only got £123 for mine though )
i now have a 7950 which cost under £200 once i sold the free games, nice cheep upgrade

 

[maxilive]

i was going to keep my 5870 but when they started selling on the bay for £150+ a few months ago i couldnt resist (only got £123 for mine though )
i now have a 7950 which cost under £200 once i sold the free games, nice cheep upgrade

Hmm that is nice, I may plan the same but I was going to wait for a BF4 AMD reloaded deal By then I'm sure the 5870 will be worth like £70.

 

[arc@css]

I upgraded from a 6850 to the 770 and I wasn't expecting the increase in performance to be that great.

I would have.

 

[PapaLazaru]

I'm the same link! Still rocking my 5870 though but still just waiting it out until it becomes totally unusable

I was rocking my 5870 until a couple of weeks ago when I bought a second hand 6970 Lightning. Upgrade itch gone and on a budget.

Reminds me I have to put it up on the MM, unless they are still going for silly money on the bay for bitcoin mining.

 

[cainer]

Hmm that is nice, I may plan the same but I was going to wait for a BF4 AMD reloaded deal By then I'm sure the 5870 will be worth like £70.

£70 is about what they are going for now, they only sold at around £150 for a couple of weeks when the price of bitcoins went through the roof.

 

[linktoinsanity]

I'd keep what you have, though perhaps there is something else in your rig that is 'need' of an upgrade?

Rest of spec is linked to in my sig, but it's an I7 3770K, 8GB RAM, Intel 510 SSD, Samsung 840 SSD, HDDs, + the 6950...

Only things I'm looking at atm are the main ssd, the ram (to 16GB) and the gfx. May overclock the CPU again, it runs at 3.9Ghz atm due to mobo autooverclock, but I know the chip can do 4.5Ghz from my previous mobo.

May just try the overclock out at some point, see if that satisfies my itch...maybe up the memory too...

@Maxi, everything works fine. I just want to do an upgrade.