Let me just start this thread by saying that i've done my own research and can't come to a conclusion - i'm not someone who simply goes on the 'net, finds a forum and lets them do the work while he's out drinking. No.
I have a budget of around €300 (max) and i'm looking for a graphics card upgrade. My 6950 DiRT 3 edition just doesn't seem to cut it anymore. Back when i bought this pc, 2 years ago today (hoorah!)
i flipped a coin to decide whether on getting a 2600K with a 6950, or a 2500K with a 6970. Now, seeing as how the next consoles will come with 8-core AMD CPUs, i think i made the right call in terms of future-proofing this PC. The 8 logical threads really are going to help me overcome cheap ports, while the graphics card is easier to upgrade and was bound to fall into the same pit of age anyway. Those 128 extra stream processors weren't going to help much.
Well, that was a bit of the background story. Hope you enjoyed it
Now, the games i'm looking to play are Witcher 2/3, Battlefield 4 (high emphasis on battlefield 4!) and whatever else i come across that's good, really. i also don't want to invest in 'old' technology.
Now, i believe that's the pickle here. Both AMD and NVIDIA's "new" generation of graphics cards are nothing more than a rebranding of their old graphics cards, with a higher clock speed. This is not true for the Titan, the GTX 780 or the R9-290X; however, these are all out of my price range. As i see it, my choices are the following:
Radeon 7950 with 3 GB VRAM;
Geforce GTX 670 with 2 GB of VRAM (4G version is outrageously expensive)
GF GTX 760 with 2 GB of VRAM
Radeon 7970 GHz edition (pushing the budget)
Radeon R9-290X, which is a simple 7970 GHz edition rebatch...
Now, the 'net seems to go around in circles. Some say that the 7950 outperforms the 760 but not the 670, others say the exact opposite. i am kind of leaning towards the 7950 because of the 3 free games and extra video memory. i've read on the system requirements page of Battlefield 4 that they recommend a 7870 with 3GB of VRAM. But what exactly is 'recommended'? BF3 recommends a 6950 with 2GB, just like mine. i play this game on medium and it still drops below 60 frames per second sometimes...and that's on a graphics driver that was released 2 years after battlefield 3...
So what would you guys do? Any of the four graphics cards are going to be a substantial increase in performance over my 6950...but i still want the best bang for the buck. A 7950 costs around 200 euros here, a 7970 GHz edition costs 300. These cards come with 3 games. The GTX 670 and 760 both sit at 260 euros and come with no games, but are supposedly faster than both the 7970 (non-GHz) and 7950, while having less video memory than recommended for Battlefield 4. Okay...i think i have enough characters now >.< thanks in advance!
First edit after 4 seconds: i forgot to mention that i'm gaming on 1920*1080.
I have a budget of around €300 (max) and i'm looking for a graphics card upgrade. My 6950 DiRT 3 edition just doesn't seem to cut it anymore. Back when i bought this pc, 2 years ago today (hoorah!)
i flipped a coin to decide whether on getting a 2600K with a 6950, or a 2500K with a 6970. Now, seeing as how the next consoles will come with 8-core AMD CPUs, i think i made the right call in terms of future-proofing this PC. The 8 logical threads really are going to help me overcome cheap ports, while the graphics card is easier to upgrade and was bound to fall into the same pit of age anyway. Those 128 extra stream processors weren't going to help much. Well, that was a bit of the background story. Hope you enjoyed it
Now, the games i'm looking to play are Witcher 2/3, Battlefield 4 (high emphasis on battlefield 4!) and whatever else i come across that's good, really. i also don't want to invest in 'old' technology.
Now, i believe that's the pickle here. Both AMD and NVIDIA's "new" generation of graphics cards are nothing more than a rebranding of their old graphics cards, with a higher clock speed. This is not true for the Titan, the GTX 780 or the R9-290X; however, these are all out of my price range. As i see it, my choices are the following:
Radeon 7950 with 3 GB VRAM;
Geforce GTX 670 with 2 GB of VRAM (4G version is outrageously expensive)
GF GTX 760 with 2 GB of VRAM
Radeon 7970 GHz edition (pushing the budget)
Radeon R9-290X, which is a simple 7970 GHz edition rebatch...
Now, the 'net seems to go around in circles. Some say that the 7950 outperforms the 760 but not the 670, others say the exact opposite. i am kind of leaning towards the 7950 because of the 3 free games and extra video memory. i've read on the system requirements page of Battlefield 4 that they recommend a 7870 with 3GB of VRAM. But what exactly is 'recommended'? BF3 recommends a 6950 with 2GB, just like mine. i play this game on medium and it still drops below 60 frames per second sometimes...and that's on a graphics driver that was released 2 years after battlefield 3...
So what would you guys do? Any of the four graphics cards are going to be a substantial increase in performance over my 6950...but i still want the best bang for the buck. A 7950 costs around 200 euros here, a 7970 GHz edition costs 300. These cards come with 3 games. The GTX 670 and 760 both sit at 260 euros and come with no games, but are supposedly faster than both the 7970 (non-GHz) and 7950, while having less video memory than recommended for Battlefield 4. Okay...i think i have enough characters now >.< thanks in advance!
First edit after 4 seconds: i forgot to mention that i'm gaming on 1920*1080.
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