I am still gonna stay with AMD for my upgrade from 5850.

A HD6870 is more or less like an HD5850, and those Anandtech benchs leave it in the dust compared to the HD7870, not so much against the HD7850 though.

I'd say that the first choice, the HD7950 is a very nice upgrade, taking in mind newer games (since that's what we aiming at when buying hardware, remember? Tesselation, DX11, the good stuff! ).

HD7870 is a fine upgrade nevertheless, though i agree that the HD7850 isnt so nice given the performance gap in between those cards.

Power consumption of both cards is very low. I think the HD7950 is around 170w or so. HD7870 should be a little less. Nothing that a good 500W PSU cant handle, nevermind a 750W PSU.

 

7850 OC@1225/5800 is pretty even with 7950@Stock? So no matter what, 7850 OC is way more powerful than 20%. Close to 30% and some games over 35-40% faster. Ofcourse the 5870 can be OC too, but not much.

:nerd:

 

we are talking about a 5850 here iirc, not a 5870

 

To OP, if you wanna stay with AMD, go big or go home is my motto, so go with either a HD7950/HD7970. Going from a HD5850 to the HD7950/7970 would yield a significant performance boost, but you will be handicapped by the CPU, which imo, will nevertheless get the job done. If you wanna try nV, no need to get tye expensive GTX680, the GTX670 would more than suffice as it can perform as well as the GTX680 when OC'ed.

 

Disagree wholeheartedly with the argument the a 7850 is not a good enough upgrade.

I have just moved from a 5850 at 1GHz to a 7850. At the stock 860MHz it's undeniably faster....but once you start overclocking the difference is HUGE. I am running mine at 1250/1400MHz and it's faster than a 580 I played with for awhile.

Nearly all 7850s are getting between 40 and 50% overclocks....

Your CPU will hold you back in many games though....the Phenom 2 is still capable, but in many cases it's barely faster than a q6600 clock for clock.

BTW buying a 670 or 7950 for 1080p resolution is a waste of money in my opinion, especially with a Phenom 2

 

Well i still dont know should i go amd or nvidia i am not a hater of both.

And since all of u are saying my cpu is damn weak for the new cards is it really worth it for a gpu upgrade?.

I was thinking of keeping my 5850 and first upgrade my motherboard and processor.

I am planning to go Asus sabertooth Z77 mobo and intel i5 3570K processor upgrade.

But i am stuck with the decision of mobo+cpu upgrade VS gpu upgrade.

Both upgrades are gonna cost almost the same for me so i am confused.

So how much fps am i gonna lose with my phenom ii x4 965 OCed to 4.0ghz with 670/7950/7970?.

 

What resolution do you play at? anything 1080p or higher you will not notice alot of difference in processors as the demand turns on the gpu then. I would say if you playing higher then 1680x1050 then go with upgraded gpu.

 

Allow me to level with you.

I've always been a big believer in ATI ( not AMD ). The majority of my video cards have been ATI branded. The one time I got a Nvidia card for gaming ( Nvidia 6800 ) I felt I got burned with poor support and performance. That said, I didn't want to use Nvidia's products for gaming machines ever again.

Then came this generation of video cards. After AMD dissolved the ATI brand with the HD6 series, I've noticed a drop in the quality of their drivers ( BFBC2, Rage, Skyrim, Saint's Row 3 ). Also, I have noticed that AMD was dropping various AA features that I used to preach quite frequently ( most notably Narrow Tent and Wide Tent ). I had just recently purchased an Asus G53 with a GTX460M, so I was finally able to start tinkering with Nvidia's drivers again. That was when I started seriously looking into Nvidia's products.

The thing that sold me on purchasing a GTX680 was not the price/performance, but the features I could take advantage of on their drivers. More AA modes, better post process AA, driver level ambient occlusion, and the ability to force higher resolutions than what my monitor can natively support. However, the BIGGEST thing that makes me glad that I went with Nvidia is the trouble I was having with a friend when trying to get his CFX HD7950 working.

We spent a HELL of a lot of time and frustration in trying to get his cards working properly. First, there was a hellacious issue with power play. We found that when the cards were toggling between 2d and 3d clocks, it would cause the video output to freeze.
This was the result

Once we got that fixed by overclocking the cards by 1MHz to force continuous 3d clocks, we started getting BSODs that were pointing to AMD's drivers. We even went as far as testing each card individually across 4 different computers, all with the same results. We also tried nearly every WHQL and Beta driver from 12.3 to 12.5 with little success. In short, it was a nightmare.

That said, I'm glad I went Nvidia this time. My friend who owned the HD7950's had them returned and got a single GTX670, and he's been happy ever since. Not only do we not have to troubleshoot the card, but we can actually install one driver version and have all of our games working properly. Right now, I'm rocking out on playing at 3200x1800 on my 23.3" LCD. The difference in price to performance compared to what AMD is offering, let alone the difference in driver support, makes it far more worth while IMO. Even if you don't take advantage of the difference in driver enabled features ( AO support, better AA, custom resolutions ), the simple fact that Nvidia has far LESS simultaneous game breaking issues with their drivers is quite nice.

 

I play only at 1080p i don't wanna go any higer for now.

and Lavans thanks for the information even i think i will go for a single 670 gtx as long as my processor is fine with it.

so how much fps am i gonna lose with 670 gtx with my processor at 1080p?.

 

Not enough to worry about maybe 5-10fps at max.

 

so what happened to staying with amd lmao

 

Right now i wouldnt stay with amd either, u dont get an driver level fps limiter for example and theres no adaptive vsync either, which are bogh really nice features to have.

If the 670 is anywhere acceptable price levels ( which in germany it isnt ) go get it !

Ur cpu will hold u back a fair bit, ( Especially BF3 MP ) but thats nothing an i5 2500k cant fix later on....

 

Hard to say. In GPU bound games, you'll get a nice boost in performance, but not so much in CPU bound games. I didn't see much gain in Tera Online and GTA4 when I was playing on my Q9450 system, upgrading from my old HD5970.

 

If you play gpu heavy games like Crysis 2, upgrade the gpu, for cpu heavy games like Arma 2, upgrade the cpu.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-7970-cpu-scaling-performance-review/1

 

If u would want to crossfire just get a 6 core phenom 2 or an fx 8 core I seen a video with an guy quad firing 2 690s with fx vs Intel and yes Intel did a little better but not by all that much or sorry sli ing. If I want to stay amd that's ur option.

 

Im gonna call bs on ur claim. Fx cpus suck. In no way in hell can a fx8150 run 2 690s. http://www.guru3d.com/article/evga-geforce-gtx-690-review/11

 

I gotta call bs as well

 

For anything OTHER than gaming, is when your CPU is limited, but gaming there is little difference in performance having a Phenom II X4 or a 2500k, so saying that the CPU will always bottleneck him in game, is not accurate what so ever.

Only games that I have seen that uses more CPU horsepower and not as much GPU was....Farcry 2......Lost Planet?

My buddy has a Phenom II X4 925, with an OLD motherboard, but has the same VC as me, and I see LITTLE difference in performance between my current spec PC and his IN GAME at 1920x1080. Only a few FPS here and there.

Hell My last rig which was a 2500k clocked at 4.2ghz had very little difference in like I said every game but the rare cases like Far cry 2.

Always best to do extensive research online!

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-3-graphics-performance,3063-13.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overclock-phenom-ii,2119-8.html

http://www.guru3d.com/article/crysis-2-dx11-vga-and-cpu-performance-benchmarks/6

2nd edit-This is for single GPU's as I have never used Crossfire or SLI.

 

And here is some Crossfire CPU scaling....not seeing even a 10% difference in CPU scaling with an old i7 920 and a 2600k....That being said...with the second link comparing a i7 920 to a Phenom II X4 965, its obvious that the Phenom beat the i7 in almost every test INCLUDING the game benches. So......i7 920 vs 2600k has little difference in crossfire.......2600k vs Phenom II X4 965, same thing.

http://www.****.org/article/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review-cpu-comparison-w-core-i7-920

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/102?vs=47

 

first link cpu scaling on BF3 gpu bottleneck graph
second link Crysis gpu bottleneck graph
third link Crysis 2 dx11 gpu bottleneck graph
ie the video cards cant do any more fps due to being gpu limited.