- Joined
- May 2, 2015
- Messages
- 144 (0.04/day)
- Location
- Finland
Processor | AMD Ryzen 7 5700X |
---|---|
Motherboard | MSI B350 Tomahawk |
Cooling | Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4 |
Memory | 32GB (2 x 16GB) Kingston FURY Beast, DDR4 3200MHz, CL16 |
Video Card(s) | ASUS Cerberus GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Advanced Edition |
Storage | Samsung 960 EVO 512 GB (M.2), Samsung 860 EVO 1 TB (SATA) |
Display(s) | 27" Ozone DSP27 Pro |
Case | Fractal Design Define S2 |
Audio Device(s) | Onkyo TX-SR444 |
Power Supply | Seasonic 620W M12II-620 Evolution |
Mouse | Logitech G502 HERO SE |
Keyboard | Razer Ornata Chroma |
Software | Windows 10 Home x64 |
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.
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.