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help choosing a new gpu

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My specs now:

HD 6870 1gb (gpu clock 900/ memory clock 1050mhz)

8 gb of ddr 3 ram

Mobo: GA-990XA-UD3 from gygabyte

CPU: Amd Phenom II x4

psu: corshair, 700w with 1 6pin and 1 8 pcie conecter for the gpu


what I want( tp replace the other card i have):


EVGA GeForce GTX 650 2GB Superclocked

http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=02G-P4-265...




Im searching for more cards but I would like some advice on which card would be the best, I dont feel good about going hihger than $250 on the budget. Is this card up there a better one than what i have, also, how to CUDA cores influence performance? I want to be able to run skyrim with max settings and ENB with no problems, as well as boost performance for some other, irritating to deal with games, performance wise.

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cumi2k4 said:
check out this chart:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-car...

according to the chart, by replacing 6870 with 650, then you'd be doing a downgrade...don't do it.
For gaming, get a 7950, CUDA cores does not influence gaming performance, it's for video editing stuff...


Now im confused on what makes a video card perform better and look better, with the 650, i noticed that it had a higher memory and gpu clock speed. So will the 7950 increase performance a lot? i have a 700w psu and i want something that will be just right for that amount of power.
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Graphics card Expert

It would greatly depends on your budget. if you want to go low lets say on budget but still upgrade, best to do is go with 660. if you can go a bit higher, go with 660 ti or 7950. But with 660 ti and 7950, there is quite an argument which is better, but this is the main point of them, if youll be playing only up to 1080p and will only use 1 monitor, best choice will be 660 Ti, but if you'll go with higher resolution, go with 7950. And also, if I were you, just go which one is cheaper of the two, since you won't lose on getting either of the card. ;-)

sambana said:
Now im confused on what makes a video card perform better and look better, with the 650, i noticed that it had a higher memory and gpu clock speed. So will the 7950 increase performance a lot? i have a 700w psu and i want something that will be just right for that amount of power.


You can't compare across different companies and different architectures. More memory is only useful if the game can make full use of it, and most modern games are just beginning to get past 1 GB VRAM usage and most are below 2GB unless you play really high resolutions.
Generally from the same generation of GPUs from either Nvidia or AMD, the GPU clock also doesn't matter much as the cores are what are being clocked...and if there are much less of them (shader units), then the clocks hold no indication toward performance.
HD 7870 is clocked higher than the HD 7950, but it only has 1280 shader units (stream processors in this case) compared to the opposing's 1792 units.

+1 to pretty much everything that has been said... GTX650 is a lot less capable than what you have.

To be honest, for the money you're looking at spending, you're not gonna see a huge improvement. The setup you have is already pretty capable. I think you'd need to step right up to a GTX670 for really noticeable improvements, but then you'd be over budget. Why not hold off on the upgrade for a few months until next year's cards launch? Not only will performance increase, prices will drop. I'm holding off until the new Radeons and GeForces are out.
Graphics card Master

Don't upgrade your GPU.
Upgrade your CPU instead. Why? Because Skyrim is a CPU bound game and your CPU is now a little old.


Or wait till new Next-gen arrives and get a Next-gen card for your Rig.
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