Upgrading Gigabyte 6870 OC 1GB (or some help fixing it)

[Qnyx]

Hello,

I'm looking for an upgrade of my current video card (Gigabyte 6870OC 1GB), due to a rather annoying problems I'm having quite often for the last basically 18 months: when playing different games the screen would go black and after a few seconds (sometimes up to a minute) then game would resume - this happens from a few times per hour, to once every 2-3 hours. The only way to fix that problem is to underclock the card to 890/1000MHz for the GPU and memory respectively. If they are on the default 915/1050 it keeps crashing after a few minutes of gameplay. In the event viewer it says the driver has crashed (that is even with a clean install of the OS, clean install of drivers, I have tried basically everything) and has restarted a few seconds later. Mostly this happens when playing anything (even though is has happened in WoW as well sometimes) but WoW.

If anyone has a solution to that, I'd greatly appreciate it I realize it's a rather old card, but it's still not too bad

Either way, I'm looking for an upgrade soon for it, unless I can stabilize it enough before the next generation of cards and I'm debating between the following:

EVGA 760 2GB or Sapphire Toxic R9 270x 2GB (open to suggestions as well)

My current system apart from the 6870:

i5 2500k, slightly OC-ed
ASROCK P67 Fatal1ty professional
Aurum 700W Gold power supply
12GB RAM
Monitor is a Samsung with 1920x1080 resolution, forgot the exact model

Budget: approximately 200-220 EUR

I'll be mostly playing: World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo and the occasional session of another random game - mostly racing or another MMORPG (Wildstar) or SimCity, at 1080p, preferably at highest possible settings.

 

[Agera One]

Among those two, GTX 760 is much better than the R9 270x.. But for that budget, get a HD 7950 (merely same as GTX 760 in performance) or even check the price for HD 7970.. 7970 is a very good performer..

 

[coozie7]

Have you checked the idle and load temperatures of the CPU and graphics card?
If so, what are they?
The core system is pretty solid, plenty capable of running even quite high end cards with no problems, and it's nice to see a decent PSU in the build.
Prices vary madly in the EU so what you can purchase with 200 Euro will also vary a lot.

 

[Qnyx]

The temperatures appeared normal, although the GPU was running a bit on the hot side - idle temperatures (off the top of my head, since I'm not at home atm) were around 45C and under load around 65-ish. I had the card checked by the seller I purchased it from, but their answer was "it might have been overheating", they cleaned the little dust there was and that was it. A day later the problem started appearing again. I will probably contact Gigabyte, although I believe the warranty is already gone.

The Toxic R9270x is 220 EUR (VAT included), the EVGA is 240, there is a Sapphire R9 280 3GB at 230, and a few other R9 270X-s at below 200, but I'm willing to pay a bit more for Toxic's overclock and cooling, since I read quite a few reviews that it's really good and quiet.

 

[Agera One]

Get the toxic version of R9 280 3 GB if it's under you budget.. If no, get the Super clocked version of GTX 760..

 

[coozie7]

Both the R9 280 and GTX760 are minor updates of earlier cards: The R9 280 is an update of the HD7950 and the GTX760 a slightly cut down version of the GTX680 (which is actually a little faster than both), I say this in case you find one of the older cards available at a low price, perhaps online or on sale at a local computer store.
We're seeing games that really want 3Gb of video memory now so I think the R9 280 (or HD7950) with its larger memory would be a better long term option.

 

[Qnyx]

I can't find any 79x0 in my country at all, nor the R9 280 toxic The GTX680 is approximately 340 EUR (which does sound a bit strange, but oh well).

I'm leaning towards the EVGA GTX 760 superclocked at the moment, granted I find it in stock

 

[Agera One]

I can't find any 79x0 in my country at all, nor the R9 280 toxic The GTX680 is approximately 340 EUR (which does sound a bit strange, but oh well).

I'm leaning towards the EVGA GTX 760 superclocked at the moment, granted I find it in stock

That's what I said in my last answer..