What Graphics card should I buy? (£350 budget for now)

tsukino

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EDIT (15/08/16): Thank you for those who answered! I've now settled for a GTX 970 and it works fine! Thank you for your help! :) (

Sorry if I've posted this in the wrong place. I'm new here, so please excuse me if I do something wrong.

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Hello! :wahoo:

I'm looking for a new video card to replace my current AMD Radeon 7950 but I'm unsure which one to choose. I'm afraid I'm not very knowledgeable in this area so I was wondering if I could get help on here.

I'm looking for a card that will easily suit my needs within a budget of maybe £250-£350 for now (though lowest for the spec would be preferable). I frequently use programs like Blender and MikuMikuDance for 3D rendering, as well as some others and even though the 7950 was sufficient for me most of the time, I feel upgrading could benefit me more. I mostly render images at high resolutions, and rendering times have never really been that bad, but they could probably be better.

I'm not that much of a heavy gamer, but I would like to have a graphics card that would allow me to play the majority of games on the highest settings so I could possibly play some more. I've never really played games like shooters - just mostly things like The Sims 3 / 4, Minecraft or Portal 2, etc. I may play more taxing games like Tomb Raider / shooters if I knew I had the power to do so, though.

I've done a bit of research and discovered a few cards that may suit me, but like I said, I'm unsure. I think I mainly liked the AMD R9 390 or the Nvidia GTX 970, but I'm not sure which one would suit me best (or whether I should get the MSI, EVGA, Gigabyte ones, etc.)

I liked the performance of the 7950, but it sometimes got really hot (around 68C+, which is uncomfortable for me) and lagged from time to time. I've heard that Nvidia cards run cooler, and so I'd be willing to give it a shot this time round as long as the card suits me overall.

So, what do you think would be best for me; the R9 390, GTX 970, or another card?

I obviously need to take both the spec and size of each cards into account beforehand. I'm not completely sure if the two cards I mentioned first would actually fit comfortably in my case. There are a few wires (I think the PCI-E ones) that seem to stick out really close to the side of the case, and I don't want to squash them or anything. It's probably just me over-thinking it, but I'll post a few pictures of the inside and back of the case below just in case.

(Sorry for the bad quality)

http://tinypic.com/r/25gs7k3/9
25gs7k3.jpg


http://tinypic.com/r/vwuxjq/9
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http://tinypic.com/r/2dqojls/9
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http://tinypic.com/r/14bp6qh/9
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http://tinypic.com/r/idvfq0/9
idvfq0.jpg


http://tinypic.com/r/2nrlx6r/9
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I'll also list my current specs just in case:

Case: InWIN G7 BRUSHED EFFECT DARK GREY CASE
CPU: AMD FX-8350 Eight Core CPU (4.00GHz/8MB CACHE/AM3+)
Motherboard: ASUS® SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0 (DDR3, USB3.0, 6Gb/s, CrossFireX/Sli)
RAM: 16GB KINGSTON DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (2 x 8GB)
Current Graphics Card: 3GB AMD RADEON™ HD7950 - DVI,HDMI,2 mDP (PowerColor)
1st Hard Disk: 2TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 64MB CACHE (Toshiba)
2nd Hard Disk: 2TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 64MB CACHE (Toshiba)
PSU: CORSAIR 650W VS SERIES™ VS-650 POWER SUPPLY
CPU Cooler: Corsair H40 Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
Case fan(s): 1 x 12CM Black Case Fan (configured to extract from rear/roof)
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium (64-Bit)

Latest NovaBench Benchmark score: 1529

Also, what are some good UK sites to order these from?

Thank you very much in advance!
 
Solution

Roti-Kebab

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I personally have had very good experience with MSI and hence will recommend their products, but EVGA and GIGABYTE are not bad options either. As for the price you're paying it's goin to be either the 390 vs the 970. In all honesty, the 390 will run noticeably hotter than the 970 and will consume more power (275vs140). You can further overclock the 970, it overclocks like a beast. So for me, by a slight margin, it has to be the 970. The length of both cards is 277mm (+- 3). So i'd measure how long your gpu is to have an idea of the size a 970 would take up. If all's good. I'd recommend you buy from these trusted sites, if not, you always have amazon. http://www.yoyotech.co.uk/hardware http://www.ebuyer.com/
 
Solution
Got to be a 970 mate , you're quite space limited there in all fairness.

You do have a front intake fan in that case ?? (It should have had one prefitted).


In all fairness that single fan 7950 is doing a good job only hitting 68c IMO.

I'd look at a 970 & probably a blower, the same design .

 
Just to ease your worries, sub 70C for a HD7950 is very, very good, especially loaded and with a single fan cooler. ;)

You'll need to swap out the power supply to run a R9 390, they require 1x6 pin and 1x8 pin PCI-E leads to operate and it's not a good idea to run a card that draws as much juice as the R9 390 off any kind of converter or adaptor.

Good news is that the GTX970 is a stellar performer for the money and most (but not all) will run off 'just' dual 6 pin PCI-E leads. Even better news is that there is several 'reference' or blower cards out there that'll not only run quite cool but exhaust their heat out of the case.
like this: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/gigabyte-geforce-gtx-970-twin-turbo-oc-4096mb-gddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-gv-n970ttoc-4gd-gx-178-gi.html
And this: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/gainward-geforce-gtx-970-4096mb-gddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-198-gw.html

As always, check your software documentation before making a purchase, if your software uses CUDA then an Nvidia card is your weapon of choice if it uses Direct Compute you'll get the largest improvements in render times with an AMD card. AFAIK Open CL performance is similar on both cards. If the software uses no GPU acceleration then upgrading the card will, obviously yield no benefits for render times, just gaming.

Edit: A few Good Names: Overclockers, Scan, CCL, Aria, Novatech and Dabs.
 

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