What GPU should I get?

[Gimli]

Hello guys,

Originally I had purchased a 7870 LE but after a month and a half of mucking around with the store and two cards later, I just got a refund.

What I'm thinking of doing is buying a GPU now and then upgrading again at the end of the year (probably to next gen?). But I'm not sure what card to go for. I think my main options right now are the 7870 LE and the 7950 range.

The 7950 is more of a future proof card from what I know as although it is pretty much on par with the 7870 LE with most current games, it will probably run future games better? But as I am considering upgrading again at the end of the year, I'm not sure if it's worth the extra.
I will most likely be selling the card when the time comes to upgrade to help cover costs on any new card.

Some of the games I'm looking to play:

• Batman Arkham Asylum
• Batman Arkham City
• BioShock Infinite
• Tomb Raider
• BF3
• BF4 (On release)
• Crysis 3
• Far Cry 3

That should hopefully give a good idea what I want to play. As for the upgrade near New Year, I'm thinking of going Nvidia due to Mirror's Edge 2 but I'll think more about that nearer the time.

Thanks for any help, if I've made a mistake regarding the performance of the cards, do not hesitate to tell me.

Drew

Edit: Added 'Some of the' to 'Games I'm looking to play'.

 

[Gimli]

For the sake of £50 i'd get the 7950 and enjoy games more now.

Thing is from the benchmarks I've seen I don't think there's too much performance increase? I think the main difference is the vram and memory interface. I may be wrong though.

But I also don't want to buy a 7870 LE and have the price drop big time when I go to sell it (I presume second hand would be about £130 now), I presume the 7950 will remain at pretty much the same price?

 

[Gimli]

The 7950 is the best bang per buck card but the top 2 games you have pointed out are PhysX titles (nothing special there) and could be suited better to Nvidia.

Nvidia are releasing a new card on the 25th supposedly called the 760 and this is supposed to be a 670 under the hood but cheaper. If you can hold out for 11 days, it could pay to wait.

http://videocardz.com/42960/nvidia-geforce-gtx-760-to-be-released-on-june-25th

If you can't wait, get a 7950 and don't look back

11 days more isn't much of a problem for me, as I mention in the OP, I had been trying to get a working 7870 for almost 2 months!

Is the 670 the Nvidia card that matches the 7950? I almost bought one last year but a friend persuaded me to go for AMD due to the costs/performance.

I shall wait and see what comes of the 760 and if it isn't as expected I'll probably go for a 7950. Is there any particular 7950 you'd recommend? I've heard good things about this. I try to make the rig look nice but right now I'll focus on performance, can always make upgrades and changes later. If possible though I'd prefer black and white, though I can incorporate blue due to the heat syncs on my motherboard.

Can only be picky if you've got the money to be sadly.

 

[Gimli]

Well thanks for the help guys! Will definitely wait and see what the 760 makes of itself, but out of curiosity if you had the choice between the HIS HD 7950 IceQ BOOST and the HIS HD 7950 IceQ X² BOOST which would you opt for? I'm presuming the X² has a better cooler?