Need Advice on HD 7790 2GB vs. GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB

ave200

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I'm currently considering these 3 cards:
Gigabyte GV-R779OC-2GD
SAPPHIRE HD 7790 2GB GDDR5 OC
Palit GeForce® GTX 650 Ti BOOST OC(2048MB GDDR5)

I'm guessing all of these will be around $180 where I live so all that matters is which of these are the best bang for the buck. I'm also considering a Sapphire 2GB HD 7850 OC but only if I do plan to upgrade my monitor size and resolution. I remember being nauseous from playing a game with a 24" monitor that my friend owned.

My specs:
AMD A10-5800K (OC at 4.3 GHZ)
Corsair 2nd gen. H60 Cooler
4GB 1333mhz Team Group Memory
Gigabyte F2A85X Motherboard
HIS HD 6570 + Integrated GPU 7660D
600W PSU
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

I'm currently using a 1366x768 16:9 monitor and I don't know if I'll ever upgrade from that. So far my current setup can handle the games I'm currently playing like War Thunder, Dead Space 3, Tomb Raider 2013. I get mostly around 40fps(higher on DS3) with most of the graphics settings set just above High minus AA and Post processing if they are too much for my current setup. I tried the ArmA 3 Alpha Lite and I can play that with the settings at medium and I get around 25-30fps or maybe even lower. I don't think Tom's Hardware made a comparison between the 2GB HD 7790 with a 2GB GTX 650 Ti Boost yet.

So what're your thoughts/opinions about these 3 cards? Thanks in advance.
 
Solution

DiaSin

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If you plan to upgrade, get the 650ti BOOST. Its way more powerful than the 7790. As for VRAM, if you get the BOOST you WILL need the 2gb for some games, benchmarks have shown this, and I really do not think that CPU is low end enough to bottleneck entry level gaming cards like these like the last guy claimed.
 

Duke Nucome

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It's entry level brand new architecture which makes it powerful like a GTX 570/580 in some cases. I have CPU bottle necking with Radeon HD 7850 and an OCed Phenom II x4.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2012/11/05/msi-radeon-hd-7850-1gb-review/10
In Battlefield 3 at 1,920 x 1,080, the MSI HD 7850 1GB was actually able to outperform the 2GB version thanks to its factory overclock, albeit by a single frame per second on the minimum frame rate. This suggests that the 2GB's extra 1GB of GDDR5 is all but useless at this resolution.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/2048/13/
When it comes to gaming performance the XFX Radeon HD 7850 1GB Core Edition did better than expected with a screen resolution of 1920x1080! We were able to easily play all the current game titles at 1080p with the image quality settings cranked up! There were a few game titles like Skyrim where we felt a minor hiccup here or there when the frame buffer would fill up, but they were few and far between.

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/pc-components/graphics-cards/msi-hd-7850-1gb-1129390/review
"After all, the 2GB frame buffer of the stock HD 7850 must be partly responsible for its impressive showing at hi-res, right? And that's putting post-processing such as anti-aliasing in the mix.
How wrong we were. It seems that the bottleneck to the Pitcairn Pro's performance is not the memory at all - the GPU itself bottlenecks performance well before the memory gets anywhere near making things crawl."
 

DiaSin

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Thats a 7850. Its way more powerful than a 650ti boost. Also, those reviews are wrong. I watched videos of the 650ti boost from LinusTechTips where they tested it against some higher end previous generation 1gb cards and it beat them because they were running out of memory. With a 1gb card at the powerlevel of a 650ti BOOST your minimum framerate will be abysmally low due to lack of VRAM. And Minimum Framerate is what really makes you feel lag if its too low.
 

ave200

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Hmm, seems like I might choose the 650 Ti Boost though still not sure if the 2GB or 1GB variant and if it's going to be a Palit manufactured. I might try browsing around for the different OEM variants of it.

Also, how do you determine if the CPU bottlenecks the GPU and what are the consequences? I mean, I think mine is good enough for a Budget CPU(I think it's budget) and I can probably OC even further if I want to as long as the temps are safe.
 

ave200

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How does one determine if the CPU is bottlenecking the GPU? Mine is a Quad core with a base clock of 3.8ghz and 4.2ghz during turbo mode. I disabled that though and overclocked it to 4.3ghz for now.
 

Duke Nucome

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It's not really about clock speed it's about the architecture. anything less than an AMD FX 6300 will leave you with a bottelneck.
 

Duke Nucome

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DiaSin

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Duke Nucome

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david cassar

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The hd 7850 isn't way more powerful than the boost. In fact it is 5% slower.