An Upgrade from the HD7870OC

Hardware Hub GPU
1

Hi,
I've been using my Gigabyte HD 7870 OC for about 3 years now and well, 2GB of RAM just ain't cutting it anymore. Can anyone suggest a good cost effective upgrade?

System specs are:
CPU- AMD 8350
MoBo- Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3
RAM- 16GB Kingston HyperX
Graphics- Gigabyte HD7870 OC <= looking to upgrade
OCZ Vertex SSD

Not got the biggest budget and I can't trust bench-marking sites after seeing Tek' test the Fury against an OC'd GTX 980 as benchmarks sempt to show it being beaten by a stock GTX 980...

2

What's the actual budget you have? a 980 or 980Ti would be nice, but a 970 would cut it too. If you are into AMD cards, I say go for the Fury, it's an amazing card and will get better as the drivers mature and even better when DX12 is released (as stated by Logan, and I believe it's true, look at the smashing Mantle benchmarks did).

For the record, this is the benchmarking site I tend to trust. http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/ They seem to be completely objective.

3

Atm my budget is about £300. In a few weeks I might be able to make it about £350. I'd love a FuryX but £500 is just a little too much. :P
I'm not overly fussed which side I take in terms of AMD / Nvidia as long as for my money it's the best I can affordable get.
I also probably won't be able to get the card for about 3 weeks. If DX12 would make a break the barrier between the cards that'd be awesome but I still couldn't get a FuryX on my budget. :(

4

I'd get an R9 290/(X). They can be had for really cheap right now and are good for 1440p gaming.

5

If you wind up in the 970 price range the 380 and 390 look very good. Even Jay has had to come out and say its a much better bang for the buck

1 Like
6

I had heard that the 390x was looking to contend with the 980s with tests using both DX12 and Mantle.
How far off the 390 is the 380 or 290?
Or would it be better waiting a little bit longer for the 390 purely due to the fact that it "shouldn't" go out of date as soon as the 290? Investing so to speak. or is the performance increase not worth the extra cost?

7

I actually went from an MSi HD7870 Hawk to an R9 290 and it was a big jump up. so going to the R9 390 or 390X would be huge again.

8

At your budget of 300 to 350 go Sapphire 390 if you wanna stick with AMD or go EVGA 970 SC/SSC on the Nvidia side. If it were me I would go with the Sapphire 390 since it has 8gb vram vs. the 970 only having 3.5gb vram. The 8gb will deffinatly help down the road as games get bigger and 1440p/4k monitors become more main stream. If your not a fan of Sapphire the MSI 390 Gaming 8g is a great card as well.

9

Sell the 7870 and buy a 290 (If you can find one) or a 390, maybe even a gtx970..
How's the OCZ drive going? I would be looking at replacing that too.

10

Honestly the SSD seems fine but I have been using a second drive for most of my games. Think that's helped prolong it's life. [edit] slightly more awake I see it's the read write speed that's better on M.2 SSD so yeh...

Also I think I may end up waiting and grabbing the 390. After seeing several mates using 4k monitors, preparing with the extra VRam is probably better.
Is Sapphire the current go to for AMD cards? When I got my current one the Gigabyte version was the best purely due to the out of the box OC. Before this card I was a bit of an Nvidia fan boy so I don't know a massive amount when it comes to build quility of AMD cards in regards to each company variation.