So I'm thinking about finally upgrading my graphics card. Normally I update pc's every 3 years but money is tight at the min. thinking I might just swap out the 5850 for a 760gtx. Budget of around £200 but if it's worth going say 250 I'll think about it. Anyone any views on this? Game at 1080p at present which isn't going to change for a while. Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2
Either GTX 760 or 7950 are great cards, if you're going 760 I'd recommend an EVGA 760 ACX Superclocked, they have a great cooler, good warranty and even seem to be binned.
Worse... It's really a poor buy for the £160 price tag, and a 7950 is also beaten by the 760 unlike most say, as proven by the graph.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/07/02/msi_n760_tf_2gd5oc_gtx_760_overclocking_review/3 the 760 is the better buy atm for most people atm, but 7950 boosts have been going on sale occasionally cheaper than the 760 lately, and it overclocks better also 3gb vram on the 7950 vs 2gb on the 760 can make a difference depending on your use
I think the 7950 only really comes into its own when heavily overclocked. At stock the 7950 was about as fast as a GTX 580 IIRC. It was only overclocking that saw it soar ahead. The thing is far fewer people overclock than is assumed. I for one don't, which is why I got my 670 instead of a 7950 as the 670 ruins the 7950 out of the box (mine is overclocked too).
Ha. One single benchmark review to generalise the entire performance of a card? That's meaningless. The 7950 can easily beat the 760 in many games. Example: Bioshock Infinite (favours AMD) 760 - 41fps 7950 - 50fps Metro Last Night (favours nvidia) 760 - 50fps 7950 - 48fps Skyrim (favours neither) 760 - 80fps 7950 - 82fps Stock clocks, 1080p, latest drivers.
At launch perhaps but anyone buying a HD7950 now will end up with a card that is noticably faster than a GTX580. As for the original query; Op - are you finding your current card can't game with the settings / FPS you want? If it isn't then a GTX760/HD7950 is a good choice. If money is tight then perhaps the HD7870 Xt (Thahiti LE) could be a good shout at £160ish. If you are finding the 5850 performs fine, I wouldn't bother upgrading it for the sake of it.
You should only upgrade if you think you need to because your current card isn't performing well enough, No point upgrading just because it's that time of year, or you just feel you should. If your current card is doing ok, what's the point of upgrading? Wait until it can't cope with the games you want to play, then spend that much money, you'll get a better card for the same money than you would now
I guess it depends on what games you are playing & also what chip you have. I still have my old Q6600 so I just popped another 5850 in my rig as most of the games I play support x-fire, they are also pretty cheap right now.
I have been an nVidia fan for some time, however AMD cards have certainly become more attractive recently. I would also expect that more of the "next generation" games are likely to run better on AMD cards as compared to previous generations - largely due to both of the soon to be released consoles being based on AMD tech. AMD cards have long been better value for money, especially if the card you purchase is to come bundled with game(s) you're interested in purchasing. I would hold off until AMD's next graphics card offerings, even if it is to pick up a heavily discounted current gen card. If you can still play games reasonably comfortably with your current setup then the longer you hold off the better the deal you will get.
I can vouch for the fact that a well overclocked 7950 eats 7970 GHz cards for breakfast, which is why as an underdog card it's still very popular. It's not necessarily the best card out there, but like the 670 it'll stand the test of time pretty well. It's just a shame that Nvidia held the price of the 670 high for so long. I was able to sell my second hand 670 and buy an almost new 7950 at the start of the year, net result was £90 in my pocket and no tangible difference to my rig.
The 670 and 7950 are equivalents - which outperforms the other depends entirely on the game in question. The extra memory and bandwidth on the 7950 is useful at high resolutions/multi-monitors, but that's more for crossfire than single GPU performance.
Really the 5850 can't play games at ultra setting these days and I'm a little fussy. Also he helpful for fsx! Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2
Get a 7950 instead. A cheap 580 will yield a good result. But then you might start to regret it once VRAM usage increases. By the way, most charts are amusingly a bit off now owing to the recently massive performance increases with AMD's newer drivers. We can complain, but an extra 20%+ across the board is pretty damn awesome. I regret getting my GTX 670 tbh.
