Upgrade to R9 285 worth it?

[SonicZap]

Hello,

I currently have the following system:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 (OC at 3.6 GHz)
8 GB 1600 MHz RAM
Asus M5A97
Asus Radeon HD 7850 DirectCU II
256 GB Samsung SSD 840 EVO
40 GB Intel 320 Series SSD
Some old 160 GB 7200 RPM WD HDD from 2008
Antec HCG-520 High Current Gamer 520W

Now, seeing that The Witcher 3 has a minimum requirement of a GTX 660 or a HD 7870, I've been eyeing a GPU upgrade. However, I'm shocked at the slow progress of GPUs. I bought this HD 7850 in December 2013 for 150€ and the rebrand of the same card, the R7 265, still costs exactly the same 150€. I wouldn't want to spend a lot of money on a new graphics card, and don't care that much about maxing out games as long as I can play them smoothly. Nice-looking graphics are of course a bonus, but the HD 7850 is able to max out all games I currently play with the exception of Arma 3, and even Arma 3 runs nicely at medium-high settings which I consider good enough.

If I upgrade, I'll naturally want to get a significant performance boost, and it seems that I'd need at least a GTX 960 or a R9 285 for that. With the prices around here, the cheapest GTX 960s seem to go for around 230€ while with the recent price drop, R9 285s are going for exactly 200€. R9 290s go for over 300€ and GTX 970s come close to 400€, so those are far out of my price range. The few remaining 280Xs are about 250€.

Being 30€ cheaper, the R9 285 seems like a better deal than the GTX 960, but I'm worried if my PSU can handle the power draw. Some people are also saying that the HD 7850 is over-clockable to 7870 performance levels - if that's doable, then I'd gladly save my money since I got this GPU only 1½ years ago, and with the exception of The Witcher 3, it looks like this HD 7850 still has some life in it. While I realize that the Phenom II could bottleneck the R9 285, I'm not looking for a CPU upgrade yet - it has handled all the more interesting games so far, and in non-gaming tasks it doesn't slow me down at all (with the exception of heavy image editing, but I do that rarely).

What do you think I should do? Get the R9 285 (as long as my PSU can handle it), get the GTX 960 to avoid a PSU upgrade, or try to overclock the HD 7850 so that it'd run TW3 acceptably?

Another concern with the R9 285 is that if I get it, what happens if AMD goes bankrupt? I tend to keep my hardware for a while, and with AMD's financial state I'm worried about losing driver support. I do generally prefer AMD, but if Nvidia is the better choice I don't hesitate to switch.

 

[Devon68]

I would wait and see if the Witcher 3 can be played at the level I want on the HD7850 and if it turns out you cant you can upgrade.

 

[Jeffredo]

Overclocking an HD 7850 is dead easy. I maxed the OC settings in the Catalyst Control Center (1050 Mhz on the GPU and 1400 Mhz on the memory) on mine and it gave quite a nice bump in performance. A Phenom II X4 @ 3.6 Ghz can't really support much more GPU than that anyway.

 

[newtekie1]

I'd overclock the 7850 and see how it handles The Witcher 3 then make a decision on upgrading. Plus by that time nVidia might have responded to the 285 price cut with a cut of their own.

 

[arbiter]

I'd overclock the 7850 and see how it handles The Witcher 3 then make a decision on upgrading. Plus by that time nVidia might have responded to the 285 price cut with a cut of their own.

AMD cut price of 285 to be near what gtx960 is priced it. No reason to drop price of 960 as they cards are near same performance. Difference is the gtx960 is full DX12 card and uses half the power. So IMO 960 gets the node being the better choice, as its more efficient and future proof. Might spend the extra $ and get 4gb version to be safe.

 

[alwayssts]

First of all, AMD is not going to go bankrupt...so don't worry about that.

Personally, I would ride it out and see if AMD/nvidia launch cards to replace essentially 280x/770...which iirc is the recommend spec for 1080p in Witcher 3 (and many other games). There is a big, gaping hole between 960 and 970 on nvidia's side, which amd still fills with 280x...but that is an incredibly old chip and shouldn't be long for store shelves. 770 is essentially discontinued in favor of 970, which is a much faster card (but those prices in your area...ouch).

While 285 has gotten a price cut which looks to suit your situation well if you really don't care about settings (psu should be fine), something is probably coming to replace it's former perch (from either nvidia and/or amd) which could allow you to make the best of your situation. It could be a better version of the same chip from amd at a similar tdp, and/or a very cheap version of the gm204 chip from nvidia which may draw slightly less power.

The area you are looking at is ripe for a new sku, and is a pretty contentious battleground. I would be willing to bet whatever comes from AMD's ~June refresh (and nvidia's response sku) will probably put their best value/performance foot forward in that area.

If you really can't wait, I would buy the 285. If you can overclock your 7850 to a level that will get you through roughly the next couple months, and are willing to spend a small amount more, I think you will end up being rewarded for that.

 

[NC37]

Wait till 300 series launch. Probably will be even more deals on the 200s once 300 hits as excess inventory will need to be cleared. Both makers are claiming DX12 for many of their models but honestly I'd say most of them are just advertising gimmicks. They are of course DX12 compliant but with the amount of press DX12 is getting, they are for sure using that wordage to sell more GPUs. Unless a GPU comes out which says it can do all the DX12 tricks and designed for DX12, then you've got a bunch of near DX12 GPUs that may work for most of the features but end up not working for just a handful of features. As far as I know AMD is claiming 390 will have full compliance. Don't know if that will carry down to the others. They are allegedly rehashing the 200s so we'll see.

Also I wouldn't buy a 128bit board so ignore 960s. Even if performance is similar on the 285, I've had too many times in the past where the 128s show their age exceptionally quick compared to 256 and up.

 

[SonicZap]

Thanks for the replies. Right now it's looking like overclocking the HD 7850 and waiting for the next generation is the way to go.

I just tried upping the power limit in CCC and raising the core and memory clocks until I had the sliders maxed out (step by step, of course), and the graphics card is stable and doesn't cross 65 celcius at 1050 MHz core (stock is 860 MHz) and 1450 MHz memory (stock being 1200 MHz). The performance impact was noticeable in Arma 3. I've read about some people going even higher though - I guess they use another tool for it.

Regarding DX12, I've read that every current GPU (HD 7000 and newer and Fermi and newer) support it for the most part, so I don't think full DX12 compliance really matters. For me - as a Phenom II user (who likely won't upgrade it until there is a game that it doesn't run - or programming with it becomes too slow, which doesn't seem to be happening for a while) - the most important part of DX12 is lower CPU overhead and for that the feature levels don't seem to matter that much. Likewise, I don't really mind the 128-bit memory bus of the 960 - real world performance is what matters.

I'm really surprised by the lack of progress in the GPU space. I've upgraded from a mid-range GPU to another (sometimes used) mid-range GPU every 2-3 years, and now no price-to-performance improvements seem to have taken place under the GTX 970's price point for 1½ years. Seems that PC gaming might be becoming more expensive if this trend continues - TW2 had advanced graphics at its time, but I could run it with a HD 4850 from 2008, and now games are putting current 200€ GPUs for their minimum requirements.

 

[alwayssts]

The 28nm process funk is largely to blame, as are how underwhelming the new consoles really are.

While what I am about to post is likely fake, it's worth noting everyone and their cat seems to agree such a chip is incoming (9** at towards the bottom). If you equalize them to many benchmarking sites, including TPU's, you essentially end up with a 1080p60 card (285 is a little too slow, others may be slightly too expensive but easily cross that barrier) in most games, 1080p30 in others more demanding. At worst, with just a little overclocking I think this (or an AMD equivalent) will be the way to go for you to have some longevity with happiness at 1080p:

 

[arbiter]

While what I am about to post is likely fake, it's worth noting everyone and their cat seems to agree such a chip is incoming (9** at towards the bottom). If you equalize them to many benchmarking sites, including TPU's

Yea those "benchmarks" are pretty suspect. 19 games all lumped in to 1 graph is def something to not believe since they don't tell you what games or settings used. Wonder if some of settings used benifit 1 card or other. As for power draw, i doubt AMD will get that kinda core increase on a chip and not use any more power. An increase of 50% of # cores over 290x, 2x jump over tonga, and power draw is the same. Yea Nvidia might be able to do it as they have $ and R&D, AMD not likely.

 

[OneMoar]

you need a whole new system keep the SSD's and chuck everything else
a phenom II is woefully outdated and AM3+ is a dead socket

 

[SonicZap]

As for power draw, i doubt AMD will get that kinda core increase on a chip and not use any more power. An increase of 50% of # cores over 290x, 2x jump over tonga, and power draw is the same. Yea Nvidia might be able to do it as they have $ and R&D, AMD not likely.

They've done similar things before (HD 4xxx, HD 5xxx), and while AMD's R&D budget is smaller than it has been in the past 10 years, it still isn't exactly small (it's comparable to 2011 R&D budget of Nvidia IIRC). Plus, they haven't released a new GPU for 1½ years (except Tonga, which seems like a small update), meaning most of that R&D has probably gone to new architechtures. I'll be very surprised if Fiji isn't significantly more power efficient than Hawaii. AMD knows that they'll die if they don't make their products more efficient, they've already seen what has happened with Sandy Bridge and Maxwell when their own products have eaten much more power to do the same job.

That being said, that slide is fake for sure. They can't have access to 3 unreleased GPUs (Fiji, a cut Titan X, and what looks like a GTX 960 Ti). But I get the point; the GTX 960 Ti (or an AMD equivalent) looks like the perfect card for me when it's released, if my current HD 7850 can't handle upcoming games anymore at 1080p.

you need a whole new system keep the SSD's and chuck everything else
a phenom II is woefully outdated and AM3+ is a dead socket

The Phenom II still does its job. My system is snappy in general use, it compiles my programs quickly and it still meets the minimum requirements of the latest games. So if I upgrade something soon, I'll upgrade the GPU and then later on keep that GPU when replacing the rest of the system, most likely in 2016 or 2017. While having the latest i5 would be nice, it still isn't needed for gaming.

 

[OneMoar]

They've done similar things before (HD 4xxx, HD 5xxx), and while AMD's R&D budget is smaller than it has been in the past 10 years, it still isn't exactly small (it's comparable to 2011 R&D budget of Nvidia IIRC). Plus, they haven't released a new GPU for 1½ years (except Tonga, which seems like a small update), meaning most of that R&D has probably gone to new architechtures.

That being said, that slide is fake for sure. They can't have access to 3 unreleased GPUs (Fiji, a cut Titan X, and what looks like a GTX 960 Ti). But I get the point; the GTX 960 Ti (or an AMD equivalent) looks like the perfect card for me when it's released.


The Phenom II still does its job. My system is snappy in general use, it compiles my programs quickly and it still meets the minimum requirements of the latest games. So if I upgrade something soon, I'll upgrade the GPU and then later on keep that GPU when replacing the rest of the system, most likely in 2016 or 2017.

there would be no point to that at all not if you are interested in gaming
1. there will be no new cpu's for the AM3+ socket -the fx chips suck anyway
2. a 285 is decidedly lower-mid range a 7970 is faster then the 285 and my 7970 struggles with some titles at 1080p
3. if you have illusions about running a the witcher 3 on a phenom II and 285 at anything other then minimal detail and ~30fps well thats what they are ... illusions

 

[SonicZap]

Witcher 3 isn't an FPS where 60 FPS (no pun intended) is absolutely necessary for aiming and fast moves. In RPGs I'm fine with 30 FPS

 

[OneMoar]

Witcher 3 isn't an FPS where 60 FPS (no pun intended) is absolutely necessary for aiming and fast moves. In RPGs I'm fine with 30 FPS

60FPS is always necessary

 

[Valannor]

60FPS is always necessary

For me 40+ is good.

Also for the OP, I just bought gtx960 to replace my Powercolor HD7850 1GB. The main reason is the new games and well, the Witcher 3. But consider that the my 7850 is probably crappier than yours. But I love the Witcher series (hence the avatar...), and I wanted to be able to enjoy it as well as I can.

But I agree that 7850 still has some life in it, even my 1GB one can still handle most games on 1080p 50+fps and with medium to very high settings.

As for conclusion, I bit the bullet and bought gtx960, considering I built the pc 2 years ago, I found it reasonable to upgrade a bit. And I believe gtx960 can bear with me for 2-3years.

 

[Toothless]

you need a whole new system keep the SSD's and chuck everything else
a phenom II is woefully outdated and AM3+ is a dead socket

I will drop the evil kitty into the lake. I've seen Athlon X4s still pull their weight in current games and thats an AM3 socket.

OP will be fine with that 7850.

 

[OneMoar]

I will drop the evil kitty into the lake. I've seen Athlon X4s still pull their weight in current games and thats an AM3 socket.

OP will be fine with that 7850.

kitty will claw your face off and then use your AM3+ rig as a litterbox

 

[Frick]

kitty will claw your face off and then use your AM3+ rig as a litterbox

After it's finished shitting in your face and realizing nothing changed because you do that just fine on your own.

 

[arbiter]

you need a whole new system keep the SSD's and chuck everything else
a phenom II is woefully outdated and AM3+ is a dead socket

AM3+ is a dead socket but AMD has been keeping it on life support for last year or 2, as without it well they got nothing to really compete with i5/i7's for gaming.

 

[Toothless]

AM3+ socket is still good socket for budget gamers. Y'all need to stahp with the hate.

 

[Jeffredo]

"stahp"

That's a new one. Why use two letters when a single "o" will do? Anyway, the AM3+ socket is adequate for budget gamers. I don't think it could be considered good anymore. I sold an FX-6300 system (oc'd to 4.5 Ghz) late last summer and replaced it with an i5-4690k. There's no comparison, even with the Intel at stock. A solid Intel CPU/Mobo like that is about $100-$125 more than an AMD combo. If you can't come up with that much more when building a new computer you shouldn't bother.

 

[SonicZap]

I wouldn't buy a new AM3+ based system anymore, but it was a good and fresh socket back in summer 2011 when I initially built this system. I came from a Core 2 Duo E6600, so the upgrade to an inexpensive Phenom II seemed very nice, and there were promises that the upcoming next-generation high-performance Bulldozer CPUs would fit the socket, so I thought that the platform had a long life ahead. In the end, I felt stupid after Bulldozer's release and seeing that it's slower than the Phenom II in single-threaded tasks While Piledriver was better, it's not enough of an upgrade for me. I was expecting to see Steamroller on AM3+ but that never happened. Had I known the fate of AM3+ back when I built this system, I would've saved a bit more and bought a Core i5-2500K. Now my next upgrade will likely be Skylake, its successor or Zen.

At least my motherboard has USB 3 and SATA 3, so I'm not really missing out on any bigger platform updates (considering PCI-E 3 has no benefits for single-GPU configs yet).

Also for the OP, I just bought gtx960 to replace my Powercolor HD7850 1GB. The main reason is the new games and well, the Witcher 3. But consider that the my 7850 is probably crappier than yours. But I love the Witcher series (hence the avatar...), and I wanted to be able to enjoy it as well as I can.

Yeah, my 7850 seems to have a fairly good cooler and it has 2 GB of VRAM. With overclocking I should be able to reach at least GTX 660 performance, so I think I'll be able to enjoy TW3 just fine with this GPU. While the GTX 960 and R9 285 aren't that expensive, I'm used to getting a ~2x performance bump each time I upgrade my GPU, so upgrading for a ~50% increase in performance for 200€ doesn't seem like a good deal for me. Previously I've went from GeForce MX 200 -> Radeon X1650 Pro -> X1950 XT (used) -> HD 4850 (used) -> HD 7850, and all of those upgrades have given a large performance upgrade for under 150€.

 

[Valannor]

Yeah, my 7850 seems to have a fairly good cooler and it has 2 GB of VRAM. With overclocking I should be able to reach at least GTX 660 performance, so I think I'll be able to enjoy TW3 just fine with this GPU. While the GTX 960 and R9 285 aren't that expensive, I'm used to getting a ~2x performance bump each time I upgrade my GPU, so upgrading for a ~50% increase in performance for 200€ doesn't seem like a good deal for me. Previously I've went from GeForce MX 200 -> Radeon X1650 Pro -> X1950 XT (used) -> HD 4850 (used) -> HD 7850, and all of those upgrades have given a large performance upgrade for under 150€.

Yeah your 7850 seems good really, also with 2GB VRAM. And I know that feeling btw. I upgraded from an unknown card (my dad bought that PC, god knows what GPU it had...) to HD4650 and to HD7850 from that. It was a huge jump.

Also I agree with your first post about GPU prices being more expensive. I was so surprised when I saw that my 7850 was still the same price. I hope they get cheaper. Maybe with R9 300s coming out, but I'm no expert about GPU prices

 

[Cvrk]

This is a good post. I LONG wanted to create a similar one.

My specs are in my profile,you can click on them. Don't judge, i just got back from work....
Question: Can i put this video card http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/R9270DC2OC2GD5/ without bottlenecking or destroying my PC. I know for sure my PSU can handle the card without even feeling it and my ram is also good enough. But i am worried about the CPU.
I could get a HD 6970 with 10$ MORE or a HD 6950 second hand with less then 30$ what i pay for this brand new one. So i say get the new one. But i'm so scared it will bottleneck my cpu hard. If i get 10 more fps on GTA 5,and i'll play Witcher 40-60fps with lowest ress and lowest settings (that will be a sad day).