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Budget upgrade for Radeon 7950?

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  • Components
  • Radeon
Last response: in Components
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August 20, 2014 9:57:59 AM

Hi guys, was just wondering if anyone had some advice on a cheapish upgrade for a 7950HD 3gb? My current card decided that a week after warranty ended it should decide to start playing up. Getting texture spikes and it's over heating a bit. Think it's time for a change. I've got about £150 to spend if needed, but cheaper is always better.

The new card doesn't need to be a real upgrade, just something similar. I don't really have any preference between radeon or nvidia.

Any advice would be appreciated :D 

For reference, this is a link to my current card.


http://uk.msi.com/product/vga/R7950_Twin_Frozr_3GD5OC.h...

More about : budget upgrade radeon 7950

August 20, 2014 10:09:28 AM

Also, I've just looked at that Tom's article and the tables are severly neglected. I suggest you lok over at Anandtech, they seem to keep their tables more up-to-date. The AMD Radeon HD 7950 seems to equate roughly to the AMD R9 280X.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7828/amd-announces-radeon...
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August 20, 2014 10:11:22 AM

Thanks for the reply :D  I've been looking at price performance charts and things for a while and from my cursory research I was struggling to find anything better or the same as what I have for a reasonable cost. I'm not overly well versed in GPU details :s
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August 20, 2014 10:16:39 AM

Karsten75 said:
Also, I've just looked at that Tom's article and the tables are severly neglected. I suggest you lok over at Anandtech, they seem to keep their tables more up-to-date. The AMD Radeon HD 7950 seems to equate roughly to the AMD R9 280X.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7828/amd-announces-radeon...


Thanks a lot. Would love that card but it seems the price of that is a good whack more than I can afford at the moment. Talking around £350 for an R9 280X over here in the uk. Components are insanely expensive over here compared the the US :( 

oops, was looking at the 290x. Derp.
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August 20, 2014 10:20:27 AM

I just linked you (above) to a good deal from Scan on the Radeon R9 280 which is about a straight match for your current card at "only" UKP 151.
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August 20, 2014 10:20:50 AM

The AMD R9 280x is much much faster than the AMD HD 7950. The R9 280x is a rebranded AMD Radeon HD 7970 Ghz Edition, while the R9 280 without the "x" is a rebranded AMD Radeon HD 7950. So it is quite a bit more expensive, but the R9 280 might also be out of your budget there.

If it is, unfortunately it doesn't matter what graphics card you buy it will be a step down performance wise. You might try doing some stuff to fix your old card instead.
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August 20, 2014 10:24:04 AM

IInuyasha74 said:
The AMD R9 280x is much much faster than the AMD HD 7950. The R9 280x is a rebranded AMD Radeon HD 7970 Ghz Edition, while the R9 280 without the "x" is a rebranded AMD Radeon HD 7950. So it is quite a bit more expensive, but the R9 280 might also be out of your budget there.

If it is, unfortunately it doesn't matter what graphics card you buy it will be a step down performance wise. You might try doing some stuff to fix your old card instead.


Yea, thats roughly the conclusion I was reaching too, hence why I dropped the idea of getting a real upgrade without dropping a lot of money. I'm fairly sure my current card is very very close to death. A few of my more technically minded friends have had a look to see if they could do anything and they couldn't. Shame. I think ~I might just go for the 280. It's painful to pay that much for the same as I currently have, but oh well. Can't always win. Thanks for the suggestions guys. Much appreciated.

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Best solution

August 20, 2014 10:26:44 AM

Using the UK Partpicker Karsten75 posted (Big thanks btw, I can never find stuff in other countries to help people), found these two cards.

EIther the R9 270x
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/sapphire-video-card-112...

Or the R9 280
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-video-card-r9280atd...

The R9 270x is a fairly big step down performance wise. You lose about 300 stream processors, and I think over 20 TMUs and several ROPs. Its the cheapest R9 270x though so you at least save a little.

The R9 280 like I said is as fast as your old card so no gain, but no lose either.
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August 20, 2014 10:31:45 AM

IInuyasha74 said:
Using the UK Partpicker Karsten75 posted (Big thanks btw, I can never find stuff in other countries to help people), found these two cards.

EIther the R9 270x
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/sapphire-video-card-112...

Or the R9 280
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-video-card-r9280atd...

The R9 270x is a fairly big step down performance wise. You lose about 300 stream processors, and I think over 20 TMUs and several ROPs. Its the cheapest R9 270x though so you at least save a little.

The R9 280 like I said is as fast as your old card so no gain, but no lose either.



Thanks a lot for the advice. I think I'll go for the 280. Roughly in my price range and I was fairly sure I wouldn't get an upgrade for the price. Fairly heartbreaking, but I guess it means I made a good decision on my previous card which is always a good thing.
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August 20, 2014 10:32:40 AM

zeazin said:
IInuyasha74 said:
The AMD R9 280x is much much faster than the AMD HD 7950. The R9 280x is a rebranded AMD Radeon HD 7970 Ghz Edition, while the R9 280 without the "x" is a rebranded AMD Radeon HD 7950. So it is quite a bit more expensive, but the R9 280 might also be out of your budget there.

If it is, unfortunately it doesn't matter what graphics card you buy it will be a step down performance wise. You might try doing some stuff to fix your old card instead.


Yea, thats roughly the conclusion I was reaching too, hence why I dropped the idea of getting a real upgrade without dropping a lot of money. I'm fairly sure my current card is very very close to death. A few of my more technically minded friends have had a look to see if they could do anything and they couldn't. Shame. I think ~I might just go for the 280. It's painful to pay that much for the same as I currently have, but oh well. Can't always win. Thanks for the suggestions guys. Much appreciated.



Not sure what they tried, but encase they didn't try this, you could and it might make it a little longer. If you clean it extremely well, take off the cooler on the back of the card, and clean off the thermal paste then put new really good thermal paste on that will help cool it.
After that, boot the system and go into Catalyst Control Center. Go to "Performance" and "AMD Overdrive".
Accept the warning thing. Your card is already dying so whats the worst it can do? lol

Anyways the idea is to underclock your graphics card at this point. This will lower your performance, but if you drop it down by maybe 100Mhz, lower the power a little bit the heat will be greatly reduced and the card isn't working nearly as hard anymore. Since its common graphics cards that are aging just can't handle as high of a clock speed anymore when they act as you have described, its a fair chance that this might fix the problem and keep it running.

Performance will go down, but you won't be out a big chunk of cash.
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August 20, 2014 10:47:37 AM

IInuyasha74 said:
zeazin said:
IInuyasha74 said:
The AMD R9 280x is much much faster than the AMD HD 7950. The R9 280x is a rebranded AMD Radeon HD 7970 Ghz Edition, while the R9 280 without the "x" is a rebranded AMD Radeon HD 7950. So it is quite a bit more expensive, but the R9 280 might also be out of your budget there.

If it is, unfortunately it doesn't matter what graphics card you buy it will be a step down performance wise. You might try doing some stuff to fix your old card instead.


Yea, thats roughly the conclusion I was reaching too, hence why I dropped the idea of getting a real upgrade without dropping a lot of money. I'm fairly sure my current card is very very close to death. A few of my more technically minded friends have had a look to see if they could do anything and they couldn't. Shame. I think ~I might just go for the 280. It's painful to pay that much for the same as I currently have, but oh well. Can't always win. Thanks for the suggestions guys. Much appreciated.



Not sure what they tried, but encase they didn't try this, you could and it might make it a little longer. If you clean it extremely well, take off the cooler on the back of the card, and clean off the thermal paste then put new really good thermal paste on that will help cool it.
After that, boot the system and go into Catalyst Control Center. Go to "Performance" and "AMD Overdrive".
Accept the warning thing. Your card is already dying so whats the worst it can do? lol

Anyways the idea is to underclock your graphics card at this point. This will lower your performance, but if you drop it down by maybe 100Mhz, lower the power a little bit the heat will be greatly reduced and the card isn't working nearly as hard anymore. Since its common graphics cards that are aging just can't handle as high of a clock speed anymore when they act as you have described, its a fair chance that this might fix the problem and keep it running.

Performance will go down, but you won't be out a big chunk of cash.


Thanks, one of my friends already tried pretty much everything excluding fiddling with solder on it. It's just dying a slow painful death I'm afraid. Been hitting it fairly hard for the past year or so so it's hardly surprising. I've bought myself a 280 now which should be with me on Friday. On the plus side, I get 3 'free' games with it, so I gain something I guess hah. Thanks for the advice.
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August 20, 2014 10:49:48 AM

Well those games are pretty good lol well enjoy the card.
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