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Upgrading from a 5870?

Ksanti

Ksanti

Ksanti

Soldato
Joined
10 Feb 2010
Posts
3,248
I've been out of the game for a little while now as it were, and I'm looking to upgrade my GPU setup. The 5870 has served me well and I'm still fairly happy with the performance, but considering things like Oculus Rift and a few new games coming out I'm looking to beef up my system just a little bit.

I'm not quite clued up on everything that's going on - when are we due the next gen graphics cards etc.? I'm looking to spend around £200-£250 ideally but I'm happy enough with my 5870 performance to wait a few months if there's something I should be waiting for? I've got a 1100W PSU that's not nearly being used to its full potential so trying to find a couple of second hand 5870s is also an option as I remember 5870s scaled fairly well?

Games I'm playing at the moment:
Racing:
F1 2012, Assetto Corsa, Project CARS
Shooters;
CS GO, BF3 (if I can get origin to work again -_-), Far Cry 3

I'm probably going to want a setup that can handle a mildly modded GTAV maxed out or thereabouts when it comes out if that's any help?
 
Okay is there any news on whether the Oculus Rift will be Nvidia only or if it will support AMD as well? It's looking like that will probably be my path into 3d rather than buying a new monitor setup but I'm definitely interested in moving to 3d at some point.

As for the rest of my setup:
i7 920 @ 4Ghz
6Gb ram
1Tb Raid 0 2x500Gb primary hard drive
1Tb single HDD data
CM 1100W PSU
Single 1080p screen

So would you guys say get a 7950 now, or do you expect the price will come substantially down/something new will come out over the next few months? I've got a-levels round the corner and like I said I'm happy with the 5870 for the moment so I don't mind waiting.
 
A 7950 for ~£200 is good value. I can't see them coming down much more tbh so try and get an MSI or Gigabyte for that sort of price. More realistically about £220.
 
Actually now that I look at benchmarks, the stock 7950 doesn't seem to noticeably outperform a crossfired 5870 setup in any truly meaningful way beyond the stability of a single card setup... Might it be worth doing that instead?
 
My PSU certainly has the room for it as does my Mobo and case (CM Cosmos RC1000) and they're hovering around £100 which is a sizeable drop in price for more or less the same performance?
 
Macky said:
A 7950 for ~£200 is good value. I can't see them coming down much more tbh so try and get an MSI or Gigabyte for that sort of price. More realistically about £220.
Click to expand...

Don't forget Sapphire's offerings.. My PSU makes more noise than my Crossfire 7950 setup does under load. Been very happy with them so fare.
 
Surely after 3+ years AMD have managed to sort the drivers for the 5870? Then again I've had enough headaches getting my PC to a genuinely runnable state so I'll probably not bother... One 5870 is enough for now and if and when a 7950 drops enough I'll make the swap, then by the time the Rift comes out another 7950 shouldn't be too expensive if I need to up the performance further still to get good quality and fps in 3d, depending on the consumer resolution of the Rift.
 
The 5870 is still a superb card for single screen gaming. I upgraded from that to a 7950 for my three screen sim machine, and wasn't as impressed as I'd hoped. Assetto Corsa and rF2 definitely benefit but I wouldn't have upgraded if I wasn't driving 5040x1050 on that machine.

Ps I just bought F1 2012 for not a lot and the 5870 runs it very well at high graphical settings on my 27" Hi res DGM.
 
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Yeah my 5870 comfortably runs it at 70fps maxed out which I'm very happy with, my main concern is maintaining this sort of performance at least when I move to 3d or having a relatively painless option to reach/pass this level of performance e.g. getting one 7950 then crossfiring when Rift comes out if I need the extra performance
 
New graphics card set to drop near end of this year :)

I think a Radeon 7970 would be a more worthwhile boost over the 7950
 
dacads said:
New graphics card set to drop near end of this year :)

I think a Radeon 7970 would be a more worthwhile boost over the 7950
Click to expand...

Hmmm... The 5870 /should/ be able to tide me over until then I guess. I think I heard talk of the gpu performance races slowing down in the same way CPUs have? As long as whatever my next setup is can run Rift well on the more modern engined sims (pCars/Asseto Corsa as opposed to Rfactor) that'll be me happy :)
 
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