Upgrade from GTX460: 7850 1gb or 7870 ??

[WhichCard]

Hello all,

In my country usually the prices are higher than US.

But now there's nice deal for Asus 7850 1gb: 160 $
Powercolor 7870 is 205$ and asus 7870 is 220$

I wanna buy 7850, it's cheap and has a nice cooler, it can even be overclocked. But since I'm buying the card for the next 3 years or so, getting a 1gb card worries me. Because it can get outdated pretty fast as the games start to recommend 2gb memory for 1920*1080 resolution. Though on the other hand even my GTX 460 can run most of the games today almost comfortably, so why should a 1gb 7850 have problems?

So as you can see I'm a bit split between the two sides.

My CPU: i3550
Ram: 8gb

Which one should I get and why?

Thanks

 

[cookybiscuit]

You definitely don't want a 1GB card, 2GB is absolutely necessary for a 7850. If you got the 1GB version you'd run up the frame buffer before the card can do any real work. Go for the 7870, or if its too pricey a 2GB 7850.

 

[WhichCard]

Could you or somebody else please elaborate on that? I don't understand when you say "you'd run up the frame buffer before the card can do any real work."
because today even my 1gb 460gtx can run Tomb Raider or Arkham City without too much frame rate dropping too much.

btw the 2gb 7850 is at not good since it's at 188$ so I think I'd rather get the 7870, if I'll go for 2gb

 

[cookybiscuit]

How much VRAM you need is relative to how much GPU power you have. A 460 is around half as fast as a 7850, so it isn't able to run games at high settings or at high resolutions. This means that VRAM usage remains low as the game isn't being run at presets that require more than 1GB of VRAM, any higher and you'd get an unplayable framerate, so a VRAM wall isn't an issue.

This isn't true of a 7850, which is more than fast enough to run games that demand more than 1GB. You are right though if a 2GB model 7850 is that price, just get the 7870.

 

[WhichCard]

thanks. do you think another 15 bucks is worth to get the Asus since it's cooling is better. the Powercolor is an OC edition this one, an older OC edition with 1030-1200 mhz: http://www.powercolor.com/Global/products_features.asp?id=466