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When's the right time to upgrade?

Tazzfalcon

Tazzfalcon

Tazzfalcon

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Joined
8 Mar 2011
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812
Location
London
I am considering a graphics card upgrade. I've always been AMD (I've the card in my sig. currently) but I'm thinking of moving to NVidia. Not sure. In any case my budget would be about £200. When's the right time to pull the trigger? Where are we in respective manufacturer release cycles? I'm a bit out of the loop!
 
Tazzfalcon said:
I am considering a graphics card upgrade. I've always been AMD (I've the card in my sig. currently) but I'm thinking of moving to NVidia. Not sure. In any case my budget would be about £200. When's the right time to pull the trigger? Where are we in respective manufacturer release cycles? I'm a bit out of the loop!
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I'd wait it out a bit if you can, or ideally grab a cheap 290 to tide you over.
I'm on a 970 atm but I'll definitely upgrade sometime next year as I'm running out of grunt at 1440p and there's nothing worthwile out at this point in time.

I think you'd be pretty happy with a second-hand 290 and it won't destroy your wallet.
 
Well there is a die shrink around the corner and usually with dieshrinks you see a significant performancr increasr. We've been stuck on 28nm for a long time. So either wait out till the shrink or buy now. Anything out now in top end willbea significant upgrade for you.
 
Tazzfalcon said:
I am considering a graphics card upgrade. I've always been AMD (I've the card in my sig. currently) but I'm thinking of moving to NVidia. Not sure. In any case my budget would be about £200. When's the right time to pull the trigger? Where are we in respective manufacturer release cycles? I'm a bit out of the loop!
Click to expand...
I had a huge upgrade itch recently, realised there was no games I needed the upgrade for and that I could run things as I wanted so didn't bother. Best time to upgrade is not when you get the itch but when you notice it's going to make a decent difference and there's some games you want to get the card for.

I would've like a 980ti but when I thought about it I figured I'm better off waiting. Next series of cards will undoubtedly be better (die shrink, better dx12 support, hbm2 and hopefully more vram as standard). They'll be worth the wait but the question is just whether you're able to wait or need it now in which case there's no need to worry about the future just yet. Even on 1080p you're going to struggle to max everything unless you wait for next series.

If you're setting on upgrading now then generally 980ti is best card available, if you're not looking to spend that much then 390 is a good option and anything below that is usually good to just shop around and find what is on a good deal.
 
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Insanties_birth said:
I had a huge upgrade itch recently, realised there was no games I needed the upgrade for and that I could run things as I wanted so didn't bother. Best time to upgrade is not when you get the itch but when you notice it's going to make a decent difference and there's some games you want to get the card for.

I would've like a 980ti but when I thought about it I figured I'm better off waiting. Next series of cards will undoubtedly be better (die shrink, better dx12 support, hbm2 and hopefully more vram as standard). They'll be worth the wait but the question is just whether you're able to wait or need it now in which case there's no need to worry about the future just yet. Even on 1080p you're going to struggle to max everything unless you wait for next series.
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Totally agree iam in the same boat got 7970 and waiting for the cards to come down more for when the games finally come out in working order dayz, star citizens etc etc let the other people buy the new stuff so when we get it, it will be a lot cheaper hahahahahah
 
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The best time to upgrade if your not looking at getting the latest card is around the time they launch their next card and picking up the old one as the price is normally knocked a bit to make "space" for the new one.

NVIDIA’s latest GeForce GTX 980 Ti graphics card was launched on 2nd June at the Computex 2015 event.
CES 2016 is January may give a better idea when they will launch the next generation of cards.
 
Tazzfalcon said:
I am considering a graphics card upgrade. I've always been AMD (I've the card in my sig. currently) but I'm thinking of moving to NVidia. Not sure. In any case my budget would be about £200. When's the right time to pull the trigger? Where are we in respective manufacturer release cycles? I'm a bit out of the loop!
Click to expand...

Some sensible buyers (Not me) wait until new gen cards first launch and snap up the crazy deals on the last gen cards.

That would be the best time to upgrade tbh, most for your money.
 
I always buy a new card when there is a die shrink. It's been a long time since I got one, I'm currently running a AMD 7950 so it's fairly ancient at this point.

I'm itching to get a new one but still have to wait a few months for the next shrink, it should be a massive upgrade from what is effectively 2 die shrinks, we skipped 20nm and have jumped to 16nm, and each die shrink is roughly double the transistors that are faster.
 
Amatsubu said:
I think you'd be pretty happy with a second-hand 290 and it won't destroy your wallet.
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I've got a second-hand 290 too and I'm waiting to see what's next. As a basic card it's great!

But my next upgrade will be driven by VR - probably an HTC Vive (if not that an Oculus Rift).

The 290 might be able to tide me over the launch of the consumer versions of the VR headsets, but I want to see how VR performs with GPU's over the longer term.

So, to summarise:
  • 290 for now
  • then VR Headset
  • Probably upgrade GPU after that based on experience
 
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