4890 Died & Need an Upgrade $200-500 Budget

[Shadow_Riv]

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: This week

BUDGET RANGE: $200-500

USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: A mixture of things. Gaming (Crysis, Sims 3, Call of Duty, Assassins Creed, etc...), streaming movies and videos, internet usage, etc...

CURRENT GPU AND POWER SUPPLY: ATI Radeon HD 4890 and Corsair CX600 600W PSU 80+

OTHER RELEVANT SYSTEM SPECS: Windows 7 x64
CPU i5-750
Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 LGA 1156 Intel P55 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
HIS Radeon HD 4890 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16
Spinpoint F3 500GB 7200 RPM
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
Spinpoint F3 1TB 7200 RPM [This was added a year later in October of 2010]

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: Newegg.com COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: USA

PARTS PREFERENCES: Doesn't really matter.

OVERCLOCKING: Maybe | SLI OR CROSSFIRE: No

MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1920x1200

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Not an ATI fangirl by any means but because it's what I've always used I didn't even look into any Nvidia cards.

Cards I've looked at:

SAPPHIRE 11197-01-40G Radeon HD 7970 3GB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card OC Version

HIS H785F2G2M Radeon HD 7850 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

 

[Stubs101]

Personally I would just upgrade your whole system. There isn't much point in going to the 7000 series because your system cant utlilize the full power. If you wanna save go with a 6850 they are great cards for the money and then you will have some money left over. However, if you get a the 6850 and lets say the lga 1155 with the sandybridge 2600k, overclock it to like 4.0 easy and sell your old stuff on ebay. I would bet the performance upgrade would be way better then that of just putting a 7970 in your current system. You might be thinking o well I get the 7 series now and will then already have it when Im ready to upgrade CPU, but most of the time by that point youll want a new gpu aswell. I say this because way back when I went from the 3870 X2 on liquid with the extreme Quad core before the i7. I went to the i7 920 with 5770 in crossfire and the performance increase blew my mind. It was mostly my cpu though.

 

[firedice]

2600k is a total waste of money for gaming. 2500k is the absolute best deal around right now, no question (even with ivy bridge out). That said, I would still go for a 7970 right now, then save some money and upgrade the CPU to a 2500k later. The i5-750 is probably going to slightly bottleneck it, but you're still going to enjoy a solid gaming experience and the difference between the 6850 and 7970 is very noticeable and the latter will last a lot longer. Maybe get a set of 16 gbs of ram, it's not so expensive right now.

 

[Shadow_Riv]

Thanks for the responses. I can't fully upgrade the system now. I figured I would do it over the year. I've already replaced the PSU. My original intention was to replace the CPU and then the GPU but since it died I have no choice but to focus on the latter.

I'd still like some other input.

 

[vitornob]

Since you had an AMD card, if you want to keep that way you could buy:

HD7870 or the HD7950. 7950 are marginally faster, but with 50$ increased price tag. (Buying HD7950 in Newegg gives you Dirt Showdown, Deus Ex and Nexuiz through)

I would say that roughly you shall get a card 2x faster than ur old HD4890.

 

[motorneuron]

I disagree with the people claiming you should upgrade your whole system now--there is no reason. You might consider getting another 2 GB of RAM, but definitely no need for a CPU upgrade.

Now, as for video card--I tend to agree with vitornob above that you should either get a 7950. They are better performance per dollar than the 7970, and with the massive thermal/power headroom on the latest AMD/ATI cards, you're going to be able to overclock very nicely. It's not a huge price gap from the 7870, but it's in your budget and the actual hardware is much better than the 7870. (The 7950 is like an underclocked 7970; the 7870 is just a different, much lower-capability card at a higher clock speed... so an overclocked 7950 will wreck it.)

The only other thing you might consider if you are buying TODAY is getting two 6950s and crossfiring them. Newegg has a deal today: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102987&Tpk=14-102-987&nm_mc=EMC-GD043012&cm_mmc=EMC-GD043012-_-index-_-Item-_-14-102-987 And then promo code EMCYTZT1523 . If you get 2, each one is $230; with the promo code, each one is $180. So for $360 you are getting the performance ALMOST of a 6990 (if you overclock/unlock, it's superior performance). That is an incredible deal.

Edit: if you go the 2x6950 route, you will likely need a new PSU, which for a good one will add about $100. Even that is still under the price of a 7970/680, though, and for generally much better performance.

 

[deathengine]

If you overclock that cpu, the bottleneck is minimal.
I have an i5 760 overclocked to 4.0 on air and its not bottlenecking anything except poorly coded games like Skyrim. ANd even that runs smooth most of the time.

 

[Stubs101]

I disagree with the people claiming you should upgrade your whole system now--there is no reason. You might consider getting another 2 GB of RAM, but definitely no need for a CPU upgrade.

Now, as for video card--I tend to agree with vitornob above that you should either get a 7950. They are better performance per dollar than the 7970, and with the massive thermal/power headroom on the latest AMD/ATI cards, you're going to be able to overclock very nicely. It's not a huge price gap from the 7870, but it's in your budget and the actual hardware is much better than the 7870. (The 7950 is like an underclocked 7970; the 7870 is just a different, much lower-capability card at a higher clock speed... so an overclocked 7950 will wreck it.)

The only other thing you might consider if you are buying TODAY is getting two 6950s and crossfiring them. Newegg has a deal today: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102987&Tpk=14-102-987&nm_mc=EMC-GD043012&cm_mmc=EMC-GD043012-_-index-_-Item-_-14-102-987 And then promo code EMCYTZT1523 . If you get 2, each one is $230; with the promo code, each one is $180. So for $360 you are getting the performance ALMOST of a 6990 (if you overclock/unlock, it's superior performance). That is an incredible deal.

Edit: if you go the 2x6950 route, you will likely need a new PSU, which for a good one will add about $100. Even that is still under the price of a 7970/680, though, and for generally much better performance.

I have dual 6950s now with a 920 at 4.2 and 1000w ultra. Upgraded from 5770s. Tried 6850's but wanted more so I returned them. Got 6950s and was even more disappointed with the gains sometimes even performed worse then the 68s. Long story short I have had lots of problems with them and have tried alot to fix it. In fact I have a thread open and welcome any help. Basically, I would not recommend the 6950s and they use a ton of juice, but coming back to my original post the 6850 were impressive for the money. Lets say you get one 6850 that's $140 plus a new MOBO lets speculate $200 and the 2500k $211 thats puts us at $551. I would bet you could get at least $51 by selling that 760 and the ud2. So now you have a whole new system for just a little more than one 7970. The question is will that be better than your current set up with a 7970. Or will some other combo of parts be better I'm not sure. All Im saying is you should price it out. The i7 sandybridge is an awesome processor and a great budget build and the i5 760 is very unimpressive. You have two component that went how long till the CPU or motherboard die. You could get a 7970 and then your cpu dies (knock on wood) if you dont have anymore cash you now have an expensive paper weight.

 

[dudewitbow]

If I were in your situation, I wouldnt do a full on upgrade, I would wait the excruciating long time to see how the Haswell Line in the distant future comes up.