Upgrade or not?

[Lobovski]

Ok so i have the chance of a 2nd hand Sapphire R9 290 for £225 and currently own a 7870xt (the tahiti) ...but i have a coolermaster gold series 600w and a 2500k @ 4.3ghz , will this be enough? . I'm currently gaming at 1080 but hope to go 1440 in the next 2 months. So in this position would you fire or wait?

 

[cmndr_andi]

£225 is a pretty good price for a 290, but is it a stock cooler version or one with a custom cooler (eg the sapphire Tri-X cooler)?

If its the custom cooler version and the seller is willing to help you with any possible RMA then its a bit of a bargain and I'd be tempted to say go for it - as it is a great card.

However, if its a reference cooler version or the seller will not help with RMA then I would say hold off. The 7870 XT should be great for playing all games at 1080p and when you go for 1440p in 2 months there will likely be even better deals available.

The 600W PSU and 2500K CPU will work great with the 290 (or any single GPU graphics card).

 

[Lobovski]

It's a stock http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/product_index.aspx?pid=2044&lid=1

wait then ?

 

[cmndr_andi]

Yea, I would say so.

The stock cards are pretty poor, since they seem to run at a pretty constant 90+ degrees under load and run very loud on the stock cooler. In contrast the custom coolers like the Sapphire Tri-X run them in 70-80 degree range under load and are much quieter.

Also, if you are buying a R9 290 second-hand then there is a good chance that it was a mining card. So in that case the card has been likely running at 100% load, 95 degrees for months - which is not exactly what you want when buying £225 of graphics card.