Hey everyone, I am currently looking to upgrade my increasingly older PC.
My current specs are: CPU - AMD 8350 GPU - Superclock GTX 660 TI MOBO - ASUS Sabertooth AM3+ RAM - 16 GB
My question is the one a lot of people have when wanting to buy new tech since newer tech is coming out faster and faster each year. Should I upgrade to the 970 from my 660 TI or wait till the new Nvidia line of GPU's? Also if I should wait, how far off are those cards from being released if anyone has any information?
They seem to just stop selling older cards when the new ones come out now or the prices don't seem to change much, Maybe my brain memory has poop in it's eye?
I had an FX-8150 with an EVGA superclocked 660ti. I upgraded to the EVGA 970 superclocked in December and it was totally worth it. I was able to upgrade all the games in the Nvidea settings software to max. That feels very good.
I am gaming on 1080p, and at that resolution there really is no worry about CPU bottle-necking. I think this is a great upgrade. I did it.
One other point: In general I think that this price point is the best value. It is better to drop $330-ish every two years in my mind than to spend twice as much every three or four and eventually have a very under-powered card. When the 660ti came out it was a great card. The same is true with the 970 now.
You won't find lower prices from nvidia or intel for the previous gen after a launch, ever. Maybe some stores do stock liquidation if you're lucky.
It really depends on the store. And there's always the second-hand market, which I would seriously be interested in if I had the budget because:
price
people don't realize that newer cards actually last longer than before. It's true some old tech is tried and true, I still have a working radeon 9550, a freaking ATi rage3d 4mb too, but wasn't used much. Cards like the nvidia G80/G86/G92 were crap and guaranteed to die in 3 years. I have a thread somewhere in this forum of a oven-revived 8800GT.
So don't you go thinking just because a card's been used it won't last as much. I never had any problems buying second hand so far but I also did my research beforehand. I only got ripped off once when I got a thinkpad with a defective G86M chip.
I don't really see 'newer tech coming out faster and faster each year'. They've kept the standard every-6-month-release and so far there have been no big improvements since Kepler, and HD 6000 series respectively (amd sure has a messed up nomenclature, I preferred the old ATi suffixes)
please dear god don't buy nvida. just stop supporting a company that uses very bad business practices. game works is a major middle finger to AMD and there own customers. as it stands a 780 is getting nearly the same performance as a r9 280x when a 780 should be keeping up with a r9 290 and the 780ti should be edging out the r9 290x. as it stands newer drivers and newer titles that have nvida code are crippling performance of there own products. so why buy something that if you follow history is going to be gimped by the manufacturer way before its time.
i would advice to wait till AMD has launched the new 300 series, and then make a final choice.
keep in mind that the FX8350 cpu, is realy starting to show its age, and it will bottleneck a highend gpu especialy in cpu demending games at 1080p. So keep that in mind, wenn buying a new gpu.
I would wait till the new AMD 300 series cards come out this June. The 970 is a great card but its soon to be competetitor (380x) could be better at a lower price. The other thing is if you follow tech new and your aware of the shady things Nvidia are doing lately you may not want to support them this time around.
Far as your fx8350 showing its age, I wouldn't worry about it for a while. The fx8350 is still a workhorse and Windows 10 with dx12 will get better use of its 8 cores. If your running on Windows 7 now it really doesn't get the most out it. As newer gamer come out that support more than 4 cores the fx8350 will get to flex its 8 core muscles one more time. I have a fx8320 @ 4.6ghz and it has no issues keeping up with my 290x and 1440p monitor. I also have a remote desktop and a virtual machine running most times while gaming.
I say hold off for a few more weeks and see what AMD brings to the table. If their new cards arnt impressive then grab a 970.