Upgrade Video Card

[taogamer_50]

I have a friend with a Asus Radeon 6770 HD. He wants to upgrade and play this game Blade and Soul when it comes out. He is considering radeon 6990, 7970, or 680. He plans to max out every game with his 1920 X 1080 resolution. Budget will be $500.

 

[bigshootr8]

What processor, ram, and power supply is your friend currently using. Also based on the system requirements I would say that any of those cards would work just fine. However I would get a current gen card and not a 6990.

 

[taogamer_50]

cpu = 1045t
ram = 8gb
psu= 750W

 

[bigshootr8]

okay an which company/model makes his power supply. Also, can you get the model number of his motherboard.

 

[taogamer_50]

Thermaltake W0116RU and his motherboard model is Gigabyte GA-970A-D3

 

[BeastLeeX]

7970

 

[taogamer_50]

From this benchmarks http://www.coolenjoy.net/bbs/boardc.php?id=review&no=8946&p=6
. The 6990 beats the rest(except for 690). Can someone explain to me how?

 

[iam2thecrowe]

1045t is going to be a severe bottleneck. if the motherboard is capable of it he would need to upgrade to an 8350 to even comprehend playing any game maxxed out smoothly. that together with a 680 or 7970 would max any game at 1080p with good fps.

 

[bigshootr8]

The 6990 is a dual GPU card. It means that there are 2 gpu's on the pcb. Honestly though given your friends processor going for something like a 7970 is not going to come without bottle-necking. I would aim towards the 7870LE or GTX660Ti. Now by doing so you end up with 300 extra. Now if you wanted to get right up to 500 what you could do is get a 8350 which would give you room to upgrade to a more power GPU as the time came for example if your friend ever wanted to add a 2nd 660Ti he could and not suffer bottlenecking.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz 8-Core Processor ($189.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB Video Card ($273.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $463.97
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-02-21 20:42 EST-0500)

 

[BeastLeeX]

From this benchmarks http://www.coolenjoy.net/bbs/boardc.php?id=review&no=8946&p=6
. The 6990 beats the rest(except for 690). Can someone explain to me how?

The 6990 are 2 6970 on one large chip.

 

[bigshootr8]

Also as crowe stated based on the motherboard you could get a piledriver CPU. And it looks like you can before buying though if your friend does get one he would need to make sure he has update f11

Bios download link
http://www.gigabyte.lv/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3908#bios
cpu support list
http://www.gigabyte.lv/support-downloads/cpu-support-popup.aspx?pid=3908

 

[ikes9711]

The 6990 is a dual GPU card. It means that there are 2 gpu's on the pcb. Honestly though given your friends processor going for something like a 7970 is not going to come without bottle-necking. I would aim towards the 7870LE or GTX660Ti. Now by doing so you end up with 300 extra. Now if you wanted to get right up to 500 what you could do is get a 8350 which would give you room to upgrade to a more power GPU as the time came for example if your friend ever wanted to add a 2nd 660Ti he could and not suffer bottlenecking.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz 8-Core Processor ($189.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB Video Card ($273.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $463.97
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-02-21 20:42 EST-0500)

I would go with the 7870 XT over the 660. The 7870 XT is going to be $50 cheaper and will perform the same if not better.

 

[bigshootr8]

I was only really favoring the nvidia option because it looked like the game he is interested in favors it a little bit. But yes the 7870XT is a pretty good value.