Brook Johnston :
Hello, I have an HP computer with an AMD Phenom(tm) ii x6 1045t 2.70 ghz processor and currently using a ATI Radeon 5570 1024mb graphics card PCI Express. I want to know the best graphics card I can upgrade to without spending to much and not even getting the full effect of the card out of my computer specs by "bottleneck". I am guessing another above the 6000 series will probably be a waste or is it? Can I purchase a Radeon 7750 2g GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 and get the full use out of the card? I see them online for around 90$ which is affordable for me. But I do not want to purchase such card if I should be staying in the 5000 or 6000 series graphics cards. What should I buy? Any comments or help would be appreciated. Thank in advance.
Your preconception of how graphics card series work is a little off. The 5000, 6000, 7000, and now Rx 200 series graphics card are just the new line of GPUs that come out each year. Within each line there are different tiers of GPUs. Within the 5000 series there are super high end GPUs and within the 7000 and Rx 200 series there are low end GPUs.
So for example, the Radeon HD 7750 is a low end card in the 7000 series. In the 6000 series, a high end card is the Radeon HD 6950. Guess which one is more powerful? It's the HD 6950. In the 5000 series a high end card is the HD 5950. It's more powerful than the HD 7750 as well. The first digits of the AMD GPU naming system merely specify the series. It doesn't specify performance individual card performance relative to any other series. Most of the time, a new series means that it'll perform better than its equivalent in the previous series. So for example, an HD 7750 will outperform an HD 6750, but it won't necessarily outperform an HD 6850, and it certainly won't outperform an HD 6950. You'll have to go a bit farther back (around the HD 4000 series and earlier) before low end cards of a recent series start to outperform higher end cards of an older series.
So there's little call to spend money on a previous series when you can just get a low end card of a newer series, unless of course you're in the middle of a transition between 2 series (which we are for AMD). Typically, aside from performance enhancements, cards of a newer series also have other benefits such as support for a newer version of DirectX or better power efficiency or better suited for newer drivers with certain games. So really it's always good just to buy within the latest series. Right now, the latest desktop series in the Radeon HD line (and also the last) is the 7000 series. But in fact, tomorrow (which is in T-minus 17 minutes where I am) the newest series comes out and it completely does away with the Radeon HD line. Instead tomorrow we'll begin to have the Radeon Rx 200 line. The naming scheme is different, but as it turns out, these cards are the same as the Radeon HD 7000 line just rebranded and tweaked a bit. They'll offer slightly better performance, but nothing too much in the way of new features I suppose. Though I do need to read up more on them.
So for now, it's safe for you to buy from the low end or mid-range spectrum of the Radeon HD 7000 series. The Radeon HD 7700 portion is entry level, the 7800 is mid-range, and the 7900 is high end. With a Phenom II X6 1045t CPU, which is an outdated but still good processor, you can definitely handle something mid range, i.e. 7800, or even something high end, i.e. 7900, assuming your power supply is efficient. A Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition ($150 - $200) is a good buy for you, or you could try for the R9 270X ($200). You won't receive any bottlenecking with either with that CPU. However, you're on a budget, so I'll list some low end cards. The Radeon HD 7750 ($80 - $90) is a tad weak though, but you could totally go for an HD 7770 (~$100) or an HD 7790 (~$120) or an R7 260X ($140). Those are all low end, and the last 2 sort of, kind of blur the lines between low end and mid range. But if you can afford the latter R7 260X, then I recommend you just spend another $10 and go for a $150 Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition. And again, you don't have to worry about bottlenecking.