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What Graphics Card To Upgrade To?

BeadyRoller

BeadyRoller

BeadyRoller

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21 Apr 2013
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1,536
Hi! I currently have a 7970 GPU and although it's a good little card I feel it's time for something a bit more powerful! I will be playing at 1080p on a 144hz monitor, what do we suggest I go for?

I have heard the GTX 970 is the best value for money and it has great reviews, would a 980ti or 980 be over kill at 1080p or is it worth the extra money?

Really unsure on what to do? I don't really want to spend 500 plus on a graphics card but if it's going to be a great deal better than a 970 I may have to save up for one.

Cheers.
 
For 144hz, a 980Ti will let you use a lot more of those.

However I think getting 100-110hz will feel very similar, and that can be achieved on a 970 in many games with the settings turned down a little.

If you want the settings higher for nearly 150 frames a second, that's what you need a £500 GPU for!
 
Mixed comments again :D

It's a tough one because all the reviews of the 970 seems fantastic and say it's the best bang for buck but I feel ill always have that niggling feeling at the back of my mind saying I should have gone for the 980ti. As I'm only playing at 1080p though I think a 970 would be able to max out all games pretty comfortabley wouldn't it?
 
Honestly best value now is the 390; faster usually than 970; runs cool and quiet; that includes OC.....

that's the card to look at.......specially MSI gaming version
 
Never really looked in to getting a 390, haven't heard them be talked about much! I've got it in my head I want to switch to NVidia this time though.

Would I say a great deal improvement jumping to a 970 or 390 from a 7970? Tempted to just wait until I haved saved up the money to get a top of the range card.
 
Go for the r9 390

8gb memory , a little bit more performance then gtx 970 normal and oc,

would go for the msi or sapphire version they both have very good coolers that keep the card cool and silent
 
BeadyRoller said:
Hi! I currently have a 7970 GPU and although it's a good little card I feel it's time for something a bit more powerful! I will be playing at 1080p on a 144hz monitor, what do we suggest I go for?

I have heard the GTX 970 is the best value for money and it has great reviews, would a 980ti or 980 be over kill at 1080p or is it worth the extra money?

Really unsure on what to do? I don't really want to spend 500 plus on a graphics card but if it's going to be a great deal better than a 970 I may have to save up for one.

Cheers.
Click to expand...

For me, the 970 leaves a sour taste in my mouth with the crippled bandwidth/memory fiasco. I considered the 980, even the 980 ti, but the price puts me off.

I'm hedging my bets on the next gen (have been saying this for several gens now :( :() Pascal could/should bring serious improvement to the mid-range, and AMD's next gen will see new cards across the range, not rebrands, according to rumours.

The 980 and 980 ti are not overkill, but only you can say if they're worth the cost or not. For me, the answer is no.
 
I am going trough the same thing .. I did think I was going to go back to Nvidia after my 7970's ( no reason really as they have been just fine ) but I came across this spec list of the R9 390X v HD7970 :-


Much more memory 8,192 MB vs 3,072 MB Around 2.8x more memory

Higher clock speed 1,050 MHz vs 925 MHz Around 15% higher clock speed

Better floating-point performance 5,914 GFLOPS vs 3,789 GFLOPS More than 55% better floating-point performance

Significantly higher pixel rate 67.2 GPixel/s vs 29.6 GPixel/s More than 2.2x higher pixel rate

Significantly more render output processors 64 vs 32 Twice as many render output processors

Higher effective memory clock speed 6,000 MHz vs 5,500 MHz Around 10% higher effective memory clock speed

More shading units 2,816 vs 2,048 768 more shading units

More texture mapping units 176 vs 128 48 more texture mapping units

More compute units 44 vs 32 12 more compute units

Higher memory clock speed 1,500 MHz vs 1,375 MHz Around 10% higher memory clock speed

Slightly wider memory bus 512 bit vs 384 bit

I am looking at the MSI R9 390X.

I am just waiting to see what OCUK are going to do with the price as they are going to have a price drop ( sale ) very soon I believe .........
 
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