Upgrade system to 7850? Bottleneck Issues?

[gihzmo]

My current system looks like this:

Phenom II 965 @ 3.4 w/ Scythe YASYA SCYS-1000 120mm Sleeve Cooler
8 GB DDR3 1600 Crucial memory
Asus M4A79XTD Evo MB
2x Samsung Spinpoint 500GB 7200RPM HD
Sapphire 5850 1GB
Antec EarthWatts EA750 750W
Asus 24inch 1920x1080 monitor
Antec 900 Case, 2 120mm fans in front, one 120mm Fan out back, one 200mm Fan out top.


Price range 250~
Usage Gaming, I want to be able to run most anything at max settings at 1920x1080. I can do this with most games now, but certain games perform poorly when I do ie. Witcher 2.

Timeframe: Sooner then later, if I can find a deal. If not within a month or two.



I am looking at upgrading my video card to a 7850 2GB, Specifically this one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150609). I am a little concerned that my processor may be a bottleneck for the GPU. I do not see that anything below a 7850 is worth the upgrade, in benchmarks at least it looks like most cards are not that far ahead of the 5850, until you start getting into the 7800s.

Any help is greatly appreciated. If you have a suggestion on a different card, or model that would be as good or better at the same price point, please let me know. I am not against Nvidia cards, they just tend to be more expensive and do not necessarily provide much better performance.

Also, I had horrible driver issues with the 5850 when it first came out, are there similar issues with the 7850, or have those all been smoothed over by now?

Thank you!

 

[vrumor]

The 7850 is a good card for you, no it will not bottleneck your CPU.

 

[esrever]

I would say it wouldn't be a problem. There were a few driver bugs specifically with the 7850 when it launched but they should have been sorted out by now.

The upgrade from a 5850 to a 7850 is decent but I wouldn't really say its worth it right now. depends on what you want tho. The 7870 would be a bigger jump but a lot more expensive. Maybe wait for prices to fall.

 

[gihzmo]

I would say it wouldn't be a problem. There were a few driver bugs specifically with the 7850 when it launched but they should have been sorted out by now.

The upgrade from a 5850 to a 7850 is decent but I wouldn't really say its worth it right now. depends on what you want tho. The 7870 would be a bigger jump but a lot more expensive. Maybe wait for prices to fall.

That is one of the reasons I am still a little hesitant. Although moving forward, do you think the motherboard/CPU will be a limiting factor since the mobo is PCIe 2.0?

I originally bought the system to add a 2nd 5850 to. However by the time I could have used one, they have all but disappeared and are as expensive as better cards. If not more expensive.

 

[esrever]

The pcie 2.0 is perfectly fine. There is no difference since there is still plenty of bandwidth in 2.0 that would never get used by even the most powerful cards today. PCIe 3.0 is pretty much a gimmick as of now because its not needed for any card out today. There would be no performance difference between 2.0 and 3.0.

 

[gihzmo]

Best answer selected by gihzmo.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey