Graphics Is a 7870 worth the extra ~£20 over a 7850?

Hey,

Pretty simple question would you guys say a 7870 is worth the extra money over a 7850 to play GW2/WoW/CSGO and odd bit of BF3 at 1080p? I also fraps my WoW and GW2 play so would ideally like to be able to keep high fps on high settings.

Ones I'm looking at are;
MSI 7870
7850

Thanks

 

I have no experience with fraps. But my 7850 overclocked as far as itll go with standard catalyst control center runs all of the above at 1080p with plenty of room to spare. So by the definition that the 7850 will almost definitely do everything you want it to do, then the 7870 would not be worth it. If you get lucky and get a nice chip on the 7850 too, then you should be able to use the msi afterburner software to bring that card well above the performance of a stock 7870.
Sorry for not necessarily answering your question, but hope i helped regardless.

 

7870 has 25% more cores, see link below

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/549?vs=548

 

Sadly that does not mean, 25% more performance.

 

I'm in a similar position as a casual gamer playing at 1080p 7850 2gb seems to be around £170 and ive seen 7950 3gb less than £220 with the 7870 somewhere in between. Job to know what you need and what is overkill sometimes but the price brackets are very narrow with three cards within a £50 range.

 

Pick yourself a financial limit and get the best you can for that amount. The better you can get, the longer before you will need to upgrade.

 

The 7870 will give you probably similiar power to a well overclocked 7850 - 5-10% more performance and also going by Bittech's review of the 7870 it is also more power efficient.

Unless you are extremely short on money and are just scratching together money for a 7850 I think the extra £16.83 is worth it. That card out classes the GTX 570 in just about every scenario. I'm using the GTX 570 currently and I am running all my games 1080p max aside from DayZ which I think is more CPU limited.

 

Well I wanted to spend £170 since I need a sound card aswell but with the 7870 at £178 I thought i may stretch if it was worth it.

Is that a no?

 

£8 for more... I'd do it. Don't be silly. It's £8.

If you were buying car tyres and the ones that will grip extra in the wet and stop you sliding into the nearest tree at 70mph were £8 more, it would be a situation commonly referred to as a "no brainer".

 

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/549?vs=548

The graph shows the 7870 to be 10% to 30% quicker in most games that they tested

 

hi all,

Are XFX card's any good?

Am looking at getting the 7950 over the GTX660TI

Thanks

 

I fully agree with going for the best you can afford. I have a GTX670 (with the potential to overclock well past 680 speeds) in my machine even though I only game at 1920 x 1080, simply because in the next few years new games will start to test the card at said resolution. I would hope the card will last me a good 3 or 4 years, after all I made the GTX280 last from launch until earlier this year.

Spend the additional beer money now and you'll reap the rewards in the future. Such is life for the PC gamer.

 

are Nvidia cards worth getting or should i get an AMD card instead?
Still pondering between the GTX660TI and the HD7950

 

My 7870 is giving me just under 7950 once I over clocked it. Mines is the Twin Frozr version. Im happy with it.

Stays very cool and gives me the results in ARMA. Its giving me around 60 frames most of the time on the highest graphics. Sometimes i dont get that on chernaus, but i do playing takistan.

 

Is there voltage tweakery on these cards yet?

I saw with the 7850 you couldn't add more... which was a shame as I'd imagine you could push it really hard if you could.

 

I believe in setting a target price, then shopping around to get the best possible deal. For example, the EVGA GTX670 F.T.W. I bought on the marketplace last week would have cost me at least £320 new from a reputable dealer, but I got it for £260 delivered, so a £60 saving. Considering it has 33 months transferable warranty remaining (it's only 3 months old) I think it was a bargain, especially considering at stock it trades blows with a vanilla 680.

I actually bought a new 660Ti for myself and the 670 was for a friend, but have agreed to swap them over as I game at a slightly higher resolution and they were just about the same price.

As for Nvidia vs AMD, neither is really better, as you will find some deals on both sides that push favour in either direction. For guidance, the Tom's Hardware hierarchy is usually a pretty good indicator of where things currently stand.

 

but lets say i have the budget for either the HD7950 or the GTX660TI and the 7950 is almost 50dollars cheaper.

 

Get the 7950 imho. Nearly as good for much less dollar.

Only things to look out for are the cooling solution and warranty, a loud, hot 7950 might not be as pleasant to live with as a quiet, cool 660Ti*. Let us know which cards you're looking at and we'll give you the true geek's opinions

*That's not to say the reference cards are much different in terms of heat/noise, just that different brands and coolers can swing things...

 

well for the time being im looking at the one frm XFX for the one from MSI cost as much as the GTX660TI frm MSI...

 

Which XFX model specifically? There are four different XFX 7950s. Links would be good, but model numbers would help too.