I'm planning on building a budget gaming PC and I want keep it as cheap as possible while maintaining maximum preformence and I can't decide between the Asus Radeon HD 7770 or 7850. The 7850 costs about $50 more but has mutch better preformence than the 7770 and has better preformence for the price. I also plan on getting the Amd Phenom II X4 965 for my processor and I'm not sure if that will bottlneck the 7850 in some games or not.
The phenom shouldn't bottleneck it, if it does it'll be the difference between like 2 frames. The 7850 offers almost double the performance of the 7770 and has more RAM. Definitely worth the extra money.
the 7790 is the best choice at that price
That Phenom may bottleneck you if you're playing games that are CPU intensive like the multiplayer for Battlefield 3. I can speak from experience as I have that exact CPU except I'm using a GTX 660 and when I play on 64 man servers with graphics set to high my frames will drop down to 35-40fps. My friend is using a 560 Ti and an i5-2500K (no OC) and he can play at the same settings and get over 60fps on any map. So if you're doing CPU heavy games like BF3, the Phenom can bottleneck you. However, if you're doing mainly single-player games, the Phenom will work just fine.
That Phenom whont bottleneck ive run a 7850 and a 7950 on one you may lose 5-7 fps over a i5.
The Phenom is still on par with the FX6100 if not better,possibly the best chips amd ever made where the Phenom ii x 4 and x6
What about the jump from the 7850 to the 7870? Is that worth the extra $30 or would it be bottle necked by the 965?
gosh no i have a 7850 get $20 more and you can get a 7870 much better