To Upgrade or Not to Upgrade

[Nisten]

My current build is as follows:

ATI 4870 512mb
Intel Q9550 @ stock 2.83 GHz
4gb DDR2 800 MHz RAM
640gb 7200rpm HDD
1680x1050 res monitor (I will either upgrade to 1920x1080 soon or invest in Eyefinity)

My goal is to play BF3 and Skyrim comfortably at max settings. So my plan was set: purchase a Noctua cooler and OC my CPU to 3.8 GHz, buy another 2gb's of RAM, and replace my aging 4870 with a ATI 6950 2gb, which I would flash to 6970 specs. I am straying away from Nvidia because my mobo doesn't support SLI but it does Crossfire, allowing me to get another card down the line (or would you rather purchase a faster, single GPU solution? Micro-stuttering has me a bit worried). I was also considering an SSD, but seeing all the problems related to them at the moment I am hesitant.

Well now I read this: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=23158

And I no longer feel comfortable pulling the trigger when the 7000 series is just around the corner. Problem is, I will miss playing these games in all their glory for a few months to come

What would you do in my situation? A friend of mine told me to buy a 5000 series card in the meantime, but I'd rather save the money and put it towards a totally new card.

 

[BrooksyX]

Save your cash for now. 7XXX should only be a few months away. May be instead of getting a new graphics card upgrade to a sandybridge build in the meantime. You could probably sell your cpu, mobo, and ram for a decent price and you could probably pick up a i5 2500k, a z68 board, and 8gb of ram for not much investment.

 

[mediasorcerer]

If this helps, i just got a 6950 sapphire [maybe one of the cheapest around] and its great with my 27"/1080 monitor, i chunk all the video specs to ultra and seems to hack it no worries on bf3 and other games. You will need pcie 3 to take advantage of 7 series anyway, so when the time comes , sell everything and reinvest.

It may be prudent to give the 7 series a few mnths to mature anyway before going that route, time for drivers and prices to drop? Its a hard one for sure.

 

[Nisten]

If this helps, i just got a 6950 sapphire [maybe one of the cheapest around] and its great with my 27"/1080 monitor, i chunk all the video specs to ultra and seems to hack it no worries on bf3 and other games. You will need pcie 3 to take advantage of 7 series anyway, so when the time comes , sell everything and reinvest.

It may be prudent to give the 7 series a few mnths to mature anyway before going that route, time for drivers and prices to drop? Its a hard one for sure.

Yup, I was exactly looking at the Sapphire 2gb card. How is it working out for you?

I just feel that if newer cards are so close, it would make sense to wait, ya know?

 

[mediasorcerer]

Well i paid 300$ au delivered, so you could maybe squeeze 250$ cash up front ,its a great card, the first thing i did though was to re apply the thermal interface myself as they always put too much on i find, it idles at 34-36c and doesnt go over 50-55c whilst gaming so i cant complain about that, it has the twin fan cooler and although i find the plastic shroud to be plug ugly, who cares,cant see it anyway,i got the 2 gb version and it will play anything i throw at it with full or almost full video settings.
Really is a very good card so far, and it will see me right into the future for at least another year, by that time, i will flog it off and by a 7 when they are cheaper and matured etc,in the mean time i got a great card and im a happy camper why not already?
If you have doubts, wait,or buy cheaper/second hand to see you over until 7 is on us,frankly, to run the 7 series and get the most out of it, you will need pcie3, so a mobo upgrade is in order unl;ess you already have a pcie3 mobo,
kind regs from me, hope you get what you want anyhow!!!

 

[xenocide]

It may be prudent to give the 7 series a few mnths to mature anyway before going that route, time for drivers and prices to drop? Its a hard one for sure.

Considering how much is changing for the 7xxx and 6xx series, I can pretty safely say you can expect them to be at least on par with current cards, and only get substantially better with driver releases, for at this point, the same cost. Why pay $300 for a card now that will be outperformed by a $200 card in about 2 months? I could understand if he didn't have even a DX10 Card, but his current setup will hold until the newer stuff is available.

 

[mediasorcerer]

I hear ya, probably right too.

 

[lkkgg72200812]

I think 6950 2gb is enough for BF3 with highest quality. if you just want to play BF3, you can buy it!

 

[timma]

To be,or not
buy 6870 OC/GTX 560 Ti are good upgrade choice.

 

[Hayder_Master]

I was replay a post of thread like you made now almost same system.
Dude i made an many tests on BF3 replace Q9650 run at 4ghz with 2500K run as normal, frames jumps 20 to sometimes double, nerver expect thouse results i was shoked.

 

[Nisten]

Considering how much is changing for the 7xxx and 6xx series, I can pretty safely say you can expect them to be at least on par with current cards, and only get substantially better with driver releases, for at this point, the same cost. Why pay $300 for a card now that will be outperformed by a $200 card in about 2 months? I could understand if he didn't have even a DX10 Card, but his current setup will hold until the newer stuff is available.

Yeah, I can already play BF3 on all High with some medium settings (textures on low, though). The smart thing to do would be to wait, thanks for the advice.