I've had my 7870 for a couple years now and with the holidays coming up I was thinking about upgrading a few things on my PC. Is there a good upgrade for that price now or should I keep waiting for cards coming down the pipeline?
First thing I have to ask: What resolution are you running at? Second: What kind of games are you playing?
I'm running at 1080p and i play a large variety of shooters, rts, and Rpg's
Absolutely an R9-290
It's about $250 bucks right now. And you get 3 free games of your choice and it's miles better in performance compared to a 7870.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150697&cm_re=r9290-_-14-150-697-_-Product
Sell the 7870 for say $80 (you could probably get more), then plus $250 cash = $330 ~ GTX970 (US prices). You wont have any psu concerns (if there are any as you dont state the rest of your specs) with a 970.
I have a 600 watt corsair psu, 8gbs of G Skill Rip Jaws RAM, and I5-3570k at stock clock speed. I wouldn't think that i would have any problems but I dont know much about that subject.
AMD's "pirate island" series of GPUs are slated to come out early next year. They use a 20nm manufacturing process and could be quite powerful. This release would of course reduce the cost of the other GPUs on the market so I would wait until then. However you could very easily get hold of a r9 290 for $250 during a holiday sale. If you really want to upgrade now.
Well, the 7870 is not exactly lagging behind in performance yet. I have one , so I know. So I say, rock it 'till it dies! Hopefully, you can get another year or two out of it. By the time, higher resolutions may be mainstream and you could even have more money to drop on a card. So it's a total win if you decide to do that.
Thanks guys for giving feedback! It's allot to consider. I think I may keep it for a little while longer and see how prices for gpus change in the holiday season. Thanks again for everybody who gave their thoughts. You guys rock!
I'm assuming you don't use craigslist or ebay or more precisely buy used. 280x is right on the borderline of 250 before shipping 'new' on amazon. About a month or two ago most 290x were sold for under 210 on ebay you just have to wait a few weeks and snipe some good deals instead of catching the 'resellers'.
example links: http://www.ebay.com/itm/MSI-AMD-RADEON-R9-290X-awesome-card-/321576316166?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item4adf712d06
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00FT2S4BG/ref=sr_1_1_olp?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1415908464&sr=1-1&keywords=r9+280x&condition=new
i would go with a R9-290, they have come down in price allot lately, i saw some models going for arround $250,-
I currently have an R9 270 but do you think my system would handle a 290? I have the PSU LINK 37A on the +12V. My system has around 250 to 275, stock and overclocked respectively at 100% Load CPU/GPU.
Sorry if I am hijacking the topic.
Yep, your silverstone psu will be more than fine for a 290.
of you want to go amd i have a r9 290x with a 8350 that runs on 550watt psu