7950 vs 7870 vs 7850

What is your total available budget? List some of the games that you plan on playing.

I just finished putting together my tower yesterday with an MSi Twin Frzr III 7850 OC. So far so good. I'm just crossing my fingers right now and hoping I won't have to RMA anything. I plan on gaming at 1920*1080, and this should do fine at those resolutions for at least 3 years. For me, at least.

The thing is most will argue the R7950 price point if your going to spend that on a R7950 you might as well get a GTX 670 for $30 more this is what most will argue.

Around 900?, maybe a little more. And I'd play more or less at the same resolution. But you wouldn't get the 7870 or 7950 instead of the 7850 just to be sure in the future? I didn't think the 7850 could play all current games on ultra 1920x1080 (or 1200) right now, let alone future games. thoughts?

Exactly. There is always a small $ incremental increase in graphics cards. Whether its moving up by getting a better card, or running two $140 cards in SLI, you can always move up to better performance for only a couple more bucks.

So like bigcyco1 said, If you're going to get the HD 7950, you may as well get the GTX 670.

I was under the impression that the radeons were much more power efficient. While the nvidia higher ends could use up to 300W under load... I wanted to keep my psu around 600W or so (mainly because of price). I have no problem changing that though :]

The thing is, I would be stretching in order to get the 7950. lol, my original plan was a 7850, then I saw the 7870, and thought cool 90$ more , then I saw the 7950 for 40$ more and it kinda just went from there... That seems to happen alot with parts   I'm like a kid in a candy shop

which part of the world are you in? Newegg has a 7950 for $305 in the US... which would be your ideal choice

If you want something that will last several years go with the 7950. The extra ram compared to the 7870/7850 will help in years to come. The card also over clocks well and can easily be overclocked to beat a stock 670 or 7970.

Actually the nvidia are pretty power efficient as well. nVidia itself recommend 500Watt for a single GTX670. Add 170Watt for SLI an recommended is 670Watt.
http://www.nvidia.in/object/geforce-gtx-670-in.html#pdp...


For testing conducted for x2 GTX670 in SLI , the resulting system consumption for SLI is 433Watt of which 293Watt are attributed to the GPU cards.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-670-2-and-3wa...



That's pretty dam power efficient if you ask me.   .

A 7950 for $305 on newegg??? Which one, at that price I'd love to pick up a second and crossfire.

I'm in the US, and can you link that card ? The cheapest 7950 I can find on Newegg is 360.

Yeah it's not really $305 lol i got all excited the other day in another member post when i heard that but it's $305 if you do mail in rebate and those take weeks sometime months to get back even if you get it back at all so not worth it for me but if you find that acceptable i say go for it.

Dude, don't listen to NVIDIA's fanboys! Get whatever you want.

If $30 isn't an issue for you, check also if the top range card is performing well, if it gets too hot or wastes too much electricity.

Sometimes for a machine to get those few HP more than the mainstream machines it requires exponential amount of energy.

I'll try to give an example. The Bugatti Veyron can do about 407km/h and has 1000hp. It requires 300hp to run at about 300-350km/h but it you want to drive it at a max speed, then you flip a switch to get those extra 700hp to let you drive just a few more km/h faster.

I see what your saying, so the big question right now is how much MORE to go above the 7850.  

@Zingam_Duo who is NVIDIA's fanboys?

I just kinda ignore remarks like that and go through until I find the actual useful information.. no flame wars hereeee  

Go with this 7870 for $300. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

I think it has the best value out of all of them. The 7950's are still kind of expensive, as are the 7970's.

damn, it's gone now. the XFX DD 7950 was on sale over the weekend for $335 plus 10% off with promo code... they repriced it at $390 >.<

That's the mature thing to do however ignoring it doesn't solve the problem that's why i think it's best to confront the person and set them straight if their wrong about something or acting childish.

About a month ago I decided to upgrade to 7970 to give my old system a better gaming card (currently still using the nVidia 8800 GTS 512). I had all sorts of problems with the upgrade including display flicker and corruption in the few games I play. After about 3 days of troubleshooting and attempting to replace my power supply I gave up and returned the card. Maybe I had a dud card but it once again affirmed my suspicion that AMD is way behind on their driver development. In some regards the AMD cards are actually better than nVidia especially when open CL is in the picture... but driver support still lacks big time.

I'm not an nVidia fanboy by any means, just my personal experience since the days of the ATI 9700 pro have been negative with ati/amd cards. If you're really considering the 7950 you might want to take a serious look at the 670.

Thats a good point. I've read that the ati drivers are severely lacking. I've used nvidia my entire life (8600m gt, 9500 gt, 335m gt) and I've never had any problems. I've just been looking at ati recently because of power consumptoin plus the performance. How is the 670?

Also, the 670 is around 400, while I could get the 7950 for like 350/360. ....

How soon do you need this upgrade? I would personally wait (I am waiting) for GTX 660/Ti. -- If you ABSOLUTELY need it now I would recommend the GTX 670 @ the prices they are now:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B007Z33SYA/ref=s...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B007ZTLCZG/ref=s...

Those are well regarded cards...


Also I recommend using this amazing tool for your build:

http://pcpartpicker.com

It will give you a rundown of the costs etc. of parts and you can input your zip code to give a possible deal that may not be able to be seen by the general public - such as microcenter etc.

 

Hope this helps!

Alright Awesome! Thanks. btw, how long do you plan on waiting? Bc I prob have around a month and a half

Best answer selected by trflach.

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey