Should I upgrade from my Gigabyte HD 7950?

Hi All!

I would like some opinions on what my best course of action would be if I would decide to upgrade from my current graphics card, the Gigabyte HD 7950. 

This is the second year I have had this card and it has treated me fairly well, albeit some driver issues with AMD, but I expected that going in. Around Christmas I managed to rack up some Amazon gift cards and they seem to be burning a hole in my pocket. 

I usually game at 1080p, at times I will bring out a third monitor and setup an eyefinity setup just for the hell of it or just show someone what a PC can do. 

My budget is about $350, so options would include the GTX 970 or the AMD 290 if I would to guess. I am not really interested in crossfire mainly because I had Crossfired 6870s in the past and it was more of a headache than what is was worth. 

Not sure if I just have an upgrade bug from drooling at benchmarks or if I really need to upgrade right now. I have been arguing with myself about whether or not if I should bite the bullet and upgrade or keep what I have and keep browsing around for another option to spend my gift cards on xD

Thank you! 

I would of pushed for the GTX 970 but, considering there is a possibility that, Nviida might pull back cards to fix them, if the issue is truly massive enough i recommend the MSI Lighting R9-290x , it's the best 290x and it's around $320 bucks right now, plus you get 3 free games, which is pretty nice. and Free-Sync is becoming a thing now which is pretty good in the long run if you get a Free-Sync Based monitor down the road.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127787&cm_re=290x-_-14-127-787-_-Product

Yeah I was poking around this forum and I saw that a couple of users were talking about some issues the 970s were having which is disheartening for sure. I have been using AMD gpus for about 4 years now and I really haven't been let down so far but there are some features (Shadowplay, Supersampling, Shield streaming) that Nvidia has that have been making me think about going Green. It's not like it is imperative that this upgrade has to happen. Just have some extra funds at the moment. 

Sapphire HD 7950 user here.  I'm waiting for AMD's 300 series to see if I should upgrade, but tbh I don't need more than a 7950 for the games I'm playing at the moment.

AMD's Game DVR in Raptr works pretty well for recording.

Aye, I think I am with you there. Might see what is up next for the future, plus maybe prices will drop even more. My 7950 handles the stuff I want to play @ 60fps with generally high settings on the things that I want, albeit no filters. Arma 3 gives me issues, but hell, that thing is some sort of beast when it comes to taxing hardware.