Upgrade to my Radeon 4870 to run Splinter Cell Conviction at 1080p

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R0ckman

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Hello, guys! Please help me out. I have not upgraded my GPU since 2008. The 4870 is my 1st and only gpu that I have owned.

This are my current specs:
Monitor: Asus 27inch 1920x1080p 2ms with a 60hz refresh rate
CPU:I7 2600k at 3.4 (going to upgrade to 4770k or devils canyon when release)
Asus P8Z68-V mother board (going to upgrade to Maximus Hero VII Z97) as my motherboard died
16gb of G-skill ram at 1600 speed (need it for video editing)
Corsair 1050 power supply

I have a Visiontek Radeon 4870 512mbs from back in 2008 or so. The card has been good for my needs, but it has started to give me artifacts, and I have to keep the fan in manual at 50% otherwise it overheats. If I leave on auto and I get Blue screens. I changed the thermal paste of the card,clean it at that helped a lot because it was at a constant 70 degrees. Now the card is at 50 degrees ,but the occasional artifacts are still there when I am gaming or I watch youtube.

I was going to buy a Gigabyte 780 ghz edition or a 780ti ghz edition. I don't really have a budget limit, but I don't want to spend more on a gpu then what I actually need at the moment.It makes no sense to me buying a high end card, if it's going to be overkill for the only game that I need to play.

I need a card to run Splinter Cell: Conviction Max Settings at a 1080p resolution. I am okay with only having 2x or 4x MSAA .I'm going to be recording the game for my YouTube channel with an El Gato recording card. Ideally, I would love to have the frame rates above 55 or 60, but between constant 40-50 is great. This game was optimize poorly for the pc here is a link of a benchmark for it from Techspot

http://www.techspot.com/article/277-splinter-cell-conviction-performance/page4.html

From legionhardware
http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/inno3d_geforce_gtx_580_oc,9.html

This is the settings to max Splinter Cell: Conviction from the game options if I remember correctly.

Resolution:1920 x 1080 ( This can go higher if the monitor supports it)
Refresh rate: 60hz
Advance options:
Soft Shadows: Very High
Environment Detail: High
Anisotropic Filtering: 16x
Anti-Aliasing: 8x MSAA or 16x CSAA
(on/off)HDR Rendering[strike][/strike]
(on/off)Dynamic Ambient Occlusion
(on/off)Realtime Reflection

My settings with the Visiontek 4870 512 for Conviction were

Resolution:1920 x 1080
Refresh rate: 60hz
Advance options:
Soft Shadows: High
Environment Detail: High
Anisotropic Filtering: 16x
Anti-Aliasing: 2x MSSA
(off)HDR Rendering
(off)Dynamic Ambient Occlusion
(off)Realtime Reflection

I was getting around 28-30 fps with (Soft shadows on High and 2x MSSA).
With (MSSA off an Soft Shadows: Medium i got around 40 fps.

I have been looking at this cards: According to Anantech the 4870 performs like a 7750 video card of today.



Thanks very much for the help.

Rockman







 
Solution
ShadyHamster
As you said a GTX780/Ti is pretty much over kill if that is all you will be playing.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202099
This card is pretty hard to beat at the moment in terms of price to performance.
$200 after to use of the promo code (promo ends on the 19th).
It's a re-badged HD7950.
To put things into perspective a R9 280 should perform around the same as a HD5970, if not better due better driver optimizations now.
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ShadyHamster

ShadyHamster

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As you said a GTX780/Ti is pretty much over kill if that is all you will be playing.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202099
This card is pretty hard to beat at the moment in terms of price to performance.
$200 after to use of the promo code (promo ends on the 19th).
It's a re-badged HD7950.
To put things into perspective a R9 280 should perform around the same as a HD5970, if not better due better driver optimizations now.
 
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Solution
R

R0ckman

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Thanks for the reply ShadyHamster

Do I loose a lot of performance with going with a R9 270X like the MSI hawks or Sapphire Dual X & Toxic editions. I also see there is a lot of 280X used on Ebay for around 220-250. Mostly Gigabyte,MSI and Shapphire toxic cards models.

Thanks
 
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R0ckman

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I don't know much about coin mining. I just know that it skyrocket the prices on the amd cards. So buying one of those cards might have a really high chance of dying on me? Do the cards get abuse?

Thanks

 
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ShadyHamster

ShadyHamster

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While coin mining the card are run at 100% putting a lot more stress on the card decreasing the life span at the same time.
You could still get 3 years out of a mining card or you could only get 1, its the risk you take buying second hand stuff.
I personally wouldn't buy a card that has been used for mining for any period.
It would be hard to tell if the card has been used for mining or not even if the seller says it never has been.
 
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R0ckman

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Hi, My apologies for the late reply.

Besides Conviction, I would also like to play Splinter Cell Blacklist same frames around 45-50 on Ultra at 1080p, with maybe 2xMSAA or FXAA or no Anti Aliasing. I forgot to mention that My Asus monitor has only 60hz refresh rate.

You recommend me the Sapphire Dual X
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202099

I am not sure if this card is better, then the card you recommend me. What do you think sir?

This MSI 280 just came on sale (after promo code and MIR of $30 bucks. I am looking at $200 bucks for the card. That is a really, really good price for the performance.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127789

Splinter Cell Blacklist is a little more demanding, but do you think that I would need a R9 280X to keep the frames about 45.
I could be wrong but looking at the benchmarks. The 280x vs the 280 is around a 15% increase in performance at the cost of 100-160 dollars depending on the models.

I don't know if the difference would be that much for paying 100-160 dollars extra. The Asus card seems attractive however is 100 bucks more. Do you think it's worth it? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Asus 280x for $300 bucks
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121803
XFX 280x for 279+ MIR for $20 bucks=$259.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8592351&csid=_61&rrpl=item_page.content1&rrstr=ClickCP&rrindex=1



Could you check this benchmarks please.

From HT4U
http://ht4u.net/reviews/2014/sapphire_radeon_r9_280_dual-x_im_test/index34.php

From Techspot
http://www.techspot.com/review/706-splinter-cell-blacklist-benchmarks/page2.html

From Overclockersclub
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/sapphire_vapor_x_r9_280x_tri_x_oc/6.htm

Thanks for all your help.



 
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ShadyHamster

ShadyHamster

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First off, there isn't really any brand on the AMD side of graphics cards i wouldn't recommend getting, they are all pretty solid cards (there are a few exceptions of course, such as the Asus R9 290/x cards).
The MSI card has slightly higher base/boost clocks so it will have an edge over the Sapphire card, however the gains would be minimum at best, a few fps but i doubt you would notice it in the real world.

Looking at at these cards as if they were the HD7950 boost and a HD7970ghz edition, which is basically what they are, you are looking at around 10fps more from a 280x over a 280 in Splinter Cell Blacklist, is the extra $$ for the 280x card worth it? Not in my eyes especially if you are willing to overclock.

The XFX R9 280x is a nice card, it performs quite well in terms of temperature and noise levels:
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/6236/xfx-radeon-r9-280x-3gb-double-d-black-edition-oc-video-card-review/index21.html
The list of cards is quite long but the XFX card is towards the bottom of both temperature and noise charts.

I would go with the XFX R9 280x since it is only $60 more then the MSI R9 280 despite what i said earlier.
 
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R0ckman

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Hi, I looks that Tigerdirect is having a good deal on the 280X cards

This is the XFX Radeon R9 280X Double Dissipation
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8592351&Sku=JIE-102031461
It's $279 for the card + (15 dollars code if I purchase something over $100 bucks)= $264 - the $20 bucks mail in rebate makes the card= Total 244 free shipping.

This is the Sapphire Radeon R9 280X
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=8573335&sku=RLH-102014197
Which also comes at a total of $244 after the discounts,promo code and mail in rebate.

The 44 bucks seems like a good deal for the performance. Not necessarily just Splinter Cell games.

 
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