Upgrade Advice needed!

beejjacobs · 22 Apr 2012 at 19:08

That review I think is a clock for clock comparison, with both cards at the same settings.

If you see this one, the 7850 pulls more infront:
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/36125-amd-radeon-hd-7870-hd-7850-graphics-cards/?page=4

cmndr_andi · 22 Apr 2012 at 19:09

Joshy said:
Looking at Benchmarks over on Hexus it doesn't really look like the 7850 which from what I can gather is the best buy for the circa £200 market is really all that much more powerful than the 6850 at my res for nearly half the price?

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/36269-amd-radeon-hd-7850-vs-6850-vs-5850-clocks/?page=2

The only game where the 7850 pulls ahead is in Crysis, where in everything else it barely has a few frames on the older, cheaper card which is disappointing.

Do you guys think a 6850 now and then another £100 upgrade in a year would make more sense than the £200 on a 7850 now?

Aye, those are the tests with all those cards at 860MHz. That is the stock core clockspeed of the 7850, but a decent overclock for the HD 6850 (which is a 40nm 775MHz card). As you say, the 7850 does a bit better in the gaming tests and at stock speeds for all the cards the 7850 does pretty well (see here).

But the main selling points of the 7850 are its overclocking ability (see here), the 2GB VRAM and cool/quiet operation.

Joshy · 22 Apr 2012 at 19:27

cmndr_andi said:
Aye, those are the tests with all those cards at 860MHz. That is the stock core clockspeed of the 7850, but a decent overclock for the HD 6850 (which is a 40nm 775MHz card). As you say, the 7850 does a bit better in the gaming tests and at stock speeds for all the cards the 7850 does pretty well (see here).

But the main selling points of the 7850 are its overclocking ability (see here), the 2GB VRAM and cool/quiet operation.

My word, I didn't realize the 7850 had such massive overclocking ability!

Looks like that's where my money is going to be spent!

beejjacobs · 22 Apr 2012 at 19:39

Joshy said:
My word, I didn't realize the 7850 had such massive overclocking ability!

Looks like that's where my money is going to be spent!

Yeah it's crazy. For your resolution a 7850 is ideal, and should last a while too with that sort of overclocking ability!

Joshy · 22 Apr 2012 at 20:58

Right, that's CPU, RAM, and Graphics card pretty much all sorted then, thanks guys!

My next question is on SSDs. For the sake of £60ish new/£50 used should I take this upgrade as an opportunity to get a small 60GB SSD and installing windows and my core programs on that?

Again, I know benchmarks are impressive for SSDs, but I'm after real world results.

I'm not sure if it is due to the fact that my install of windows is 3 years old but my computer feels a bit sluggish when it comes to loading times. Is a SSD likely to make a massive difference to general window usage?

cmndr_andi · 23 Apr 2012 at 00:44

Yes, I would absolutely get a small SSD if you can afford it. A 60GB on will be plenty for the windows install, all your main applications and one or two games.

The performance jump you feel from a mechanical HDD to an SSD is very big IMHO. As SSDs have considerably faster random read/write speed and much quicker response times (on the order or 100x faster) compared to even a fast 7200rpm mechanical HDD. Therefore in tasks that do a lot of small reads and writes (the bread and butter of OS tasks as well as many applications) the apparaent performance of the system is noticably increased - since the previous storage bottleneck has been removed.

As for which SSD to go for, I would personally recommend this crucial M4. This is a drive that is known to not only be fast - but also reliable. For £67 this week it is a bit of a bargain.

There are a couple of slightly cheaper 64/60GB SSDs available for ~£60 - but for the sake of £7 I would recommend going for the Crucial M4 instead, mainly for the proven reliability.

Joshy · 23 Apr 2012 at 19:23

Thanks guys, you've been a massive help so far!

Now just to jump back to my concerns about PSUs. Is it even worth me risking running overclocked I5 2500k and 7850 on my weedy 430w Coolermaster PSU or should I stop being so tight and fork out for a new Power supply?

And the good news is that I've already bought a i5 2500k

.

beejjacobs · 24 Apr 2012 at 00:48

Joshy said:
Thanks guys, you've been a massive help so far!

Now just to jump back to my concerns about PSUs. Is it even worth me risking running overclocked I5 2500k and 7850 on my weedy 430w Coolermaster PSU or should I stop being so tight and fork out for a new Power supply?

And the good news is that I've already bought a i5 2500k .

Nice

Well, Guru3D say:

Here is Guru3D's power supply recommendation:

Radeon HD 7850 - On your average system the card requires you to have a 500 Watt power supply unit and 650 Watt if you go with two cards in Crossfire mode.

Although I'm fairly confident your system would run okay on the 430W, I think headroom might be useful - especially considering the overclocking capabilities of the both the CPU and GPU!

I'd pick this:
XFX Pro Core 450W

I know it's not much more than what you have - but from the little I can find about a 430W Cooler Master, it may not be the best! This XFX is rated for ~400W on the 12V rail [where it matters] so with the 7850 using around 100W under load, you've got a fair amount of headroom.

This OCZ 550W is another option - checking the wattage it should be more like 500W! As it's rated for ~450W on the 12V rail, so gives you a bit more headroom still.

Hope that helps