Yet another "spec me" thread

TheLegendOfMart · 27 Mar 2014 at 08:34

My Spec:

Core i5 2400 3.1 @ 3.6GHz - Gigabyte board lets me change multiplier to highest the CPU will turbo at for all 4 cores, won't go any higher
Gigabyte Z68AP-D3
16GB DDR3 1600
Crossfire 2GB 7850 1000/1225mhz

It's my birthday next month and my family wants to buy me something and they thought about all chipping in a bit for a new graphics card but I'm not sure.

The crossfire 7850s are fine, I've not had any game I couldn't play in high detail at 1080p.

The way I see it I have two options, the 280x and the 290, assuming perfect conditions for games/drivers the crossfire is maybe 10% faster than a 280x but the 290 is at least 25% faster.

£230 for 280x is a lot of money for something that is potentially slower than the setup I have now and £330 is a lot of money for something that could either be bottlenecked by my system and/or overkill for a 1080p screen.

The budget is around £350 the cheaper the better, is it worth upgrading?

Gregster · 27 Mar 2014 at 08:43

A tough one Mart, as the 290 is pretty much the same speed as a pair of 7850's. You sure you want a new GPU?

TheLegendOfMart · 27 Mar 2014 at 08:46

Oh I thought the 290 was a good chunk faster.

Gregster · 27 Mar 2014 at 08:48

TheLegendOfMart said:
Oh I thought the 290 was a good chunk faster.

I will dig up some benches for you to see.

arc@css · 27 Mar 2014 at 08:56

If you're happy with the 7850's, I spend the money on something else such as a cpu / ssd.

Gregster · 27 Mar 2014 at 09:00

Just had a look around and very hard to find benches for CF 7850's but I did find a 3DMark11 score and the Graphics was 13K ish and a 290 should score around 14.5K at stock, so it will be faster

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-348-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1752

This week only price of £320 is fantastic

TheLegendOfMart · 27 Mar 2014 at 09:00

I'm not getting any money. I am a hard person to buy for because I have everything I need/want. I don't like taking money for my birthday but if my family want to all chip in to buy me something that's great.

Gregster said:
Just had a look around and very hard to find benches for CF 7850's but I did find a 3DMark11 score and the Graphics was 13K ish and a 290 should score around 14.5K at stock, so it will be faster

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-348-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1752

This week only price of £320 is fantastic

Yeah I struggled to find any which is why I posted here, my reasoning is that the 7850s are faster than 7970 GHZ model which is basically an R9 280x and using anandtechs gpu comparison site the 290 is a good 25%+ faster than 280x, so if the 7850s are 10% faster than 280x and 290 is 25% faster than 280x the 290 is only 15% faster than my 7850s

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1068?vs=1041

I was just wondering if 15% faster is worth £320 and wether it would bottleneck with my CPU.

triss · 27 Mar 2014 at 09:04

If your happy with what you have tbh i wouldn't upgrade your gpu

=XDC=FluphyBunny · 27 Mar 2014 at 09:11

TheLegendOfMart said:
..............

I was just wondering if 15% faster is worth £320 and wether it would bottleneck with my CPU.

To be honest you could probably sell your 7950's for around £150 each so the upgrade is going to cost you about £20

TheLegendOfMart · 27 Mar 2014 at 09:16

They are only 7850s not 7950, I tried listing them for sale at £75 each and no one was biting so I gave up.

Randomface74 · 27 Mar 2014 at 09:17

Marine-RX179 · 27 Mar 2014 at 09:18

IMO with your i5 2400, it's not worth going any further than your current CF7850 (unless you use higher than 1920 res display).

Rather than changing your graphic card, may be use the money for upgrade other things instead? i.e. A better monitor, speaker(s), soundcard, SSD etc?

TheLegendOfMart · 27 Mar 2014 at 09:20

I've already got a decent Samsung SSD and I don't want to upgrade to Haswell, I just thought I would get some opinions on my graphics.

Thanks for the insight/information everyone, much appreciated.

=XDC=FluphyBunny · 27 Mar 2014 at 09:31

TheLegendOfMart said:
They are only 7850s not 7950, I tried listing them for sale at £75 each and no one was biting so I gave up.

My reading skills failed me

Marine-RX179 · 27 Mar 2014 at 10:03

TheLegendOfMart said:
I've already got a decent Samsung SSD and I don't want to upgrade to Haswell, I just thought I would get some opinions on my graphics.

I'm not suggesting you to upgrade to Haswell neither

On the graphic side, there's simple not really anything that really worth going from your current CF7850 that's good gain for the money needed to be spent as upgrade (assuming you can sell your two 7850 and get back £140 total, you'd need to spend another £160 for a 290 that's more or less around the same performance).

TheLegendOfMart · 27 Mar 2014 at 11:10

Ok thanks, will stick with what I've got.

Marine-RX179 · 27 Mar 2014 at 12:08

TheLegendOfMart said:
Ok thanks, will stick with what I've got.

Unless you use excessive level of AA, the CF7850 should be able to hold solid 60fps in majority of the games; your i5 2400 would actually be the more likely cause of the occasion dips down to 30-50fps than the CF7850.

The reason you can't overclock your CPU further is not limitation of your board, but your CPU being a non-K version. If you don't mind 2nd hand, you could considering may be try to find a i7 2600K for £130 or less and then overclock it to 4.5-4.8GHz (5.00GHz even if you manage to get a good chip)? You would need to have a decent CPU cooler as well of course...not sure if you already have one or just using Intel's stock cooler.

TheLegendOfMart · 27 Mar 2014 at 14:12

I am going to do a full upgrade in a year or two so I don't really want to be spending on CPU, 3.6GHz isn't ideal but it's not the worst.

Thanks for the advice though.

Marine-RX179 · 27 Mar 2014 at 16:13

TheLegendOfMart said:
I am going to do a full upgrade in a year or two so I don't really want to be spending on CPU, 3.6GHz isn't ideal but it's not the worst.

Thanks for the advice though.

Then you best to just leave your system as it is.

You already got a decent SSD as well...what about monitor, speakers, soundcard etc? It might worth considering upgrading them if you only got average or below average on those

If you only using some cheap desktop speakers for example, it's definitely worth thinking about getting something better for better audio experience (soundcard as well if you not got one already).