Hey guys, I'm looking to upgrade to an R9 280x from my 7790 OC ed. My question is could my Corsair CX500M handle it? I've been told by someone it can but I'm a bit unsure. I'd be doing some gaming on it, (BF4 would probably the most demanding game I'll play, plus CS:Go, Civ V, etc), but there aren't any other graphics-heavy applications I'd b using. Here are my system specs:
I would try to bump the 4350 up to a 6300. Other than that, it looks perfectly fine.
Are you buying the parts in the US? The motherboard doesn't show in PCpartpicker US. So I would assume you used a list of components from the UK or elsewhere?
Also, I would probably drop the SSD and invest in your GPU. You should be able to bump the 7790 up to a 7850.
The 7790 can handle BF4 on medium settings, but the 7850 can manage BF4 on high. 7850 is a much better GPU for a very small increase in price.
I'm in Ireland, so I can't buy US parts, and I've already built the computer, so I can't drop the SSD. (Sorry should have stated that when i listed the pcpartpicker link)
The motherboard is an Asus M5A97 Evo R2.0.
SO the CX500m is good to handle the R9 280X? I saw some benchmarks that said it got to 300w under load, and it worried me a bit. I was also looking at the 7970, though I'd prefer to get the 280X.
300W is the maximum power draw for this type of component, but you won't ever see that during a gaming session.
It will only draw 300W under a synthetic benchmarking tool, which will stress the card to the limit. The usual power draw during a game would be 200-250 with overclocking.
I should have realised that this was your pre-existing system. You're asking abut the 280x, not the 7790. My fault- I just get used to the idea of dealing with proposed builds.
That's great to know, thanks. I was getting worried that i might kill the psu and it'd take some components with it, but I can breathe easily buying the 280X now.
I was thinking that, but I've researched it and there is little difference, if any, between the FX-8350 and the FX4350 in games, it's video editing and such where you see the real difference, but I won;t be doing any of that.
I'm also seriously considering taking it down a notch to the 270X, seeing as there's a €126 price difference from where I'm buying it and the gpuboss score comes in at 8.6 vs 8.1 for the 280x.
I don't think I can justify the extra money for the small performance increase.
Personally I think the r9 280x or gtx760 is the ideal point to be buying for 1080p gaming as its the cheapest point where you can get good fps on maxed out settings... this also means you'll run high settings on yet unreleased or badly optimized games. The performance difference from the r9 280x to the r9 270x is just as astronomical as the jump in price, so if your considering doing it for the money then looking at slightly older model cards like the HD7970 and HD7950 or GTX660ti and gtx670 that you can get on special is perhaps a better option.
However if you update your hardware more often then a r9 270 is still a good option, it'll get medium-high type settings still and is a bunch cheaper than the r9 270, although this has shown to disappear if your willing to increase the clock speed to match that of the r9 270. This seems to be because factory clock speed (of which neither are locked) and GPU binning seem the only big differences between the r9 270 and r9 270x from most card partners (msi, asus ect) at this stage. I do say this is a less long term move the the r9 280x though, as while you don't ever want to spend lots of money upgrading hardware to "future proof" the r9 280x is at a slightly better price to performance point (the r9 290 is about AMD's peak of the r9 cards, the r9 290x being much worse dollar for dollar) so it'll last you longer by a similar percentage to that of your increased investment, with the added bonus of better settings in the mean time. Another advantage of the r9 280x is that you waste money replacing "half bad" parts, so getting a better gpu and bad cpu or vice versa makes upgrading far easier and more economical than a balanced system, resulting in far a better system for your money come first upgrade cycle. Although this is again more applicable if you think you can upgrade sooner, because if not you may still end up upgrading all parts at once anyway and just put up this an unbalanced system for no real good reason.
The R9 280x is the best card for the price, period. The GTX 760 is good and all, I would say this would be the difference. Where the 760 could run a game on 'high' settings at 60fps, the R9 280x would run it at 80fps on ultra.
That seems much more significant than it actually is, as in almost any game, any FPS above 60 is practially pointless, and the graphics usually aren't drastically different from High to Ultra, but there is a noticable difference and it does feel so much better playing it on ultra.
Basically, the 760 is good, but the 280x is just that much better for a decent amount more. I am getting the r9280x because I want to play on Optimised settings, but if you only want to play on high, it's great for the price.
But my view is that I just don't use/value the highest graphics settings enough to splash out the extra cash. Plus if you factor into the equation that I make like €125-150 a week because I'm a student, I'm thinking that the 280X is too expensive for me and I may regret buying it.
That being said, would you recommend a GTX 760 over a 270X?
I'm also looking at this from Sapphire, which would probably give better price/performance, and if I'm lacking, it's a bit cheaper so it'd be cheaper to crossfire in the future if I had a newer PSU and needed more performance.