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What graphics card next?

WazMeister

WazMeister

WazMeister

Associate
Joined
13 Dec 2007
Posts
85
Hi,

I currently have a Phenom 2 x4 955 @ 3.7ghz

I have crossfire (2x) ATI 4890's

I am feeling their a bottleneck to my system now, what would be the next graphics card I step up to to get a noticable improvement in performance?

Obivsouly not going Cross fire though.. can afford another 2x graphic cards.


Go ATI? or Nividia?

Cheers

Waz
 
Twin frozr III 6950 2Gb can be had for £213 if you look around.

Failing that the Twin frozr III 6970 2Gb for £264 here.

The 7970 won't get you £200 better performance over the 69**'s @1080p as you will get some kind of bottleneck in some titles with your cpu(the cost far, far outweighs the gains), the 7970 even more so.

I'm not saying go out and change your cpu/mb, just that you should remember that the gpu reviews are usually using the highest end cpu's for a reason, so that there is the least amount of cpu bottlenecking to show the true performance of a gpu.
 
Sorry, late reply.

Is this one any good compared to my 2x crossfire 4890s

MSI HD 6970 OC 2048MB Twin Frozr II GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card w/ Nexuiz & Dirt Showdown PC Games
 
6970 V 7850

As you can see from that bench, the 6970 wins BUT the 7850 has great OC potential and will surpass the 6970 BUT don't forget you can also OC the 6970. It is your budget, so you decide what is best for you.

Personally if I was buying a new GPU I would be going for the 7850 as it requires less power and generates less heat.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7850 OC Windforce 2X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card w/ Nexuiz & Dirt Showdown PC Games £185.99
Total : £196.79 (includes shipping : £9.00).



This is on special till Wednesday and a great price.
 
I had 2x 4890s fairly recently and the crossfire/drivers was very picky about what games it works well with. What games are you playing? They were more than powerful enough to max JC2 and Crysis 2 (dx10, high texture pack, 100 fps) at 1080p, but loads of games didnt scale well at all...
 
Dreadhead said:
I disagree.. an upgrade to a 6 or 7 series ATI card would bring out more in his games. That CPU is clocked nicely.

Save a platform upgrade for the next cycle.
Click to expand...
Sadly mistaken. His CPU would already be bottlebecking his CF4890 in games (if he games online)...upgrading to something like a 7850 might show some minor improvement of smoothness in games, it is still not an upgrade that would make a noticable difference with the CPU holding it back.
 
The OP can see if he has a bottleneck by running a game that is GPU heavy (Skyrim/BF3/Crysis 2) and run afterburner to see what usage his GPU's are getting.
 
his CPU is fine for anything up to and including a 7850

sure, dig out a 5 year old single threaded game and show that it's bottlenecked at low resolution because it gets 120FPS instead of 200FPS, but in modern games at normal resolutions it will be fine with a 7850
 
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