Upgrading from a Radeon 6850

I am also looking to upgrade my HD 6850. The difference in most games seems to be about a full 10 fps, but above 60fps, you'll hardly notice a difference. Also the HD 7950 has a whole GB more memory than the 7870 and a greater memory bandwidth both of which will help overall processing power. I cannot decide fully for you, but if you don't need to spend anything on the rest of your system (which it looks like you don't) then I'd go for the more powerful HD 7950
Some links to help you decide:
Here are some gaming benchmarks:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/548?vs=550
Here is a theoretical comparison, based on raw specs, so may not be 100% accurate:
http://www.hwcompare.com/12191/radeon-hd-7870-vs-radeon...

Regards,
Dan.

7950, 7850, gtx660 or 660ti are all pretty good and do well at 1080p. its up to you how much you will spend, just depends on the price you can get them at the time. you will be very satisfied with any of them as an upgrade from your 6850. there is a bit of a saga going on with the new amd cards and poor frame latency tests http://techreport.com/blog/24247/as-the-second-turns-fu... read some articles from that link to find out more. It has put me off of buying AMD this round, I also recently upgraded from a 6850. I actually went 2x 6850 crossfire for a month, got sick of xfire issues and went to a single gtx660 which I couldn't be happier with. It outperforms 2 x 6850's and gives a much smoother playing experience.

if you cant decide between a 7870 or a 7950, why not go in the middle and pick 7870 LE


also @above, by the time OP gets a gpu, the latencies will generally be gone with 13.2 as AMD noted that its release will be in like around a week on OCN. Alternatively, the 13.2 beta leak exists, but AMD reps recommend waiting.

I think nvidias cards are still a viable option, the beta patch helps the latencies but they are still not as smooth as NVidia in some games, at least not on a graph, it might not be perceivable by the eye though. and NVidia cards do perform better on some games, the radeon's better on others. but yeah, that new 7870le and it's price would have been tempting if it were available when I got my 660. But like I said, form a 6850, any of those cards would be a major improvement.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... This is one of the best 7950's out on the market. If you overclock it, it will surpass the 7970 GHz Edition.

I mean yeah, all the cards stated basically unlocks ultra in all games for OP, depending on how stable of a fps he wants it at is the real question.

By stable, are you referring to the frame rate latency issue? Great convo and links, all. Leaning to 7950... But a 7870 might just have a better price point. Trying to find the 7870 le right now... Any suggestions?

by stable, i mean like is there a minimum fps limit you would prefer. some people prefer to have the average fps higher than others, even though both are playable, its to what extent can the user define "playable"

I went ahead with a 7950. Pretty stoked about it.

Thanks for fielding my questions!