Hello guru3d community. I'm a long time reader and visitor to the forums and was hoping to get some advice as I'm really getting an itch to upgrade but I'm not sure if the current line up of available cards would make it worth it. The card I'm replacing is a 2gb GTX 770. It's a bit less than two years old and was bought as a replacement for a 7950 that went out on me. Unfortunately when I bought it, the 970 came out a few months later, and the 770's performance went from mid-high range to low end within the same year, as many probably know. I really don't want to make that mistake again. The 770 is still getting by, but I'm really having to lower settings on newer games. If I were to upgrade now, I'm looking at the r9 390 which fits my budget of around $300-350. I recently purchased a freesync monitor and have been upset with Nvidia's business practices, so I definitely want to go with AMD. My main question is whether or not it's realistic to expect a polaris-based AMD card around my budget to release within the next 6 months or so, and whether or not it would quickly make current gen cards obsolete, as happened with my 770. I've noticed that AMD cards seem to be holding up much better than Nvidia with newer games, and the 8gb of memory seems pretty future proof, but as earlier stated, I really don't want to make another mistake again. Thanks for any help you may offer.
I think you'll have Polaris in that price range Just a little patience, Im waiting with upgrade also for Polaris (but i go for Big Polaris, i need GPU for 3-5years) So we need to wait until summer :nerd:
Hmm, dunno if polaris will be in that price range. Fury cards aren't either. But chances are you will get new tech with roughly the same performance as what you can get now for that money. If you want it to hold for 3 years, it would be best to wait yes. As for your 770, that's pretty dramatic yes. I recall the 770 being in the same league as the 7970 cards at the time. And the latter is still capable of pulling decent frames at high settings.
whats your res? if your 1080P dont think it would be much of an upgrade but if your higher then you will notice a difference.
gtx770 is barely keeping up with gtx950, its a shame what a crap gk104 has become while Tahiti lives on. Just sell your 770 (like 150$) and get a R9 390 (330$) now. Performance increase will be dramatic and worth it and you are not spending a fortune. No need to wait and many games will be out before Polaris hits the stores.
ya that's right I was thinking he had a 970, I didn't read it very well. That would be a huge difference to upgrade.
Something is wrong here... In most games and benchmarks even stock GTX760 is a bit faster than stock GTX950, let alone GTX770. Highly OC'ed GTX760 and OC'ed GTX950 are neck to neck in most situations. Stock GTX960 is a bit faster than stock GTX760 in almost all situations, but stock GTX770 easily beats stock GTX960. OC'ed GTX960 vs OC'ed GTX770: GTX770 is still a faster card, no doubt about that. OP, OC'ed GTX770 still can keep up with 1080p gaming if you shave a bit graph.details here and there. Wait a bit for new cards from NVidia and AMD and then make your decision what to buy. Keep your money for now, don't rush...
Biggest issue must be that 2gb of ram. Not the horse power the card has tbh. Upgrading now is rather moot. In 6 months we have polaris out for sure. If not AMD has failed hard.
Yep, probably 2GB VRAM is the main issue in OP's case, that's why I wrote about shaving graph.details in games here and there to maintain decent look and good enough fps, but OP is already well aware with that. Although I don't game for about a year and half (my 970 is colecting dust for months, hate to update rig in my CPU/GPU/MB specs here on G3D) my boys are gaming a lot on their primary gamings rigs with their 290X and 970, but still we're keeping two spare gaming rigs at gome (when their friends come) with R9 270X and GTX760 both highly OC'ed and thb both of those cards with their 2GB limit are still holding very nice for 1080p gaming after messing a bit (or a bit more) with graphics options in modern titles like GTA V, Witcher 3... On both of those spare gaming rigs we're managed to keep the VRAM under 2GB, games are still looking nice and fps @ 1080p is more than decent for fluid gaming without noticable hickups. But I admit, as time passes with every new shiny PC title and console games poorly ported to PC I'm spending more and more time for graphics optimisations to fit everything below 2GB limit on those R9 270X and GTX760. I'm tired a bit with that tbh, and when I consider the fact that I'm not gaming on any of those rigs often find myself asking: wtf I'm wasting my time on with two of those spare gaming rigs!? If OP can't wait anymore upgrading now from 770 2GB to nothing less than 970/980/290/290X is worth ONLY of OP can get them dirty cheap now and sell them super-fast for at least same price he bought them, at least few weeks before new GPU's from NVidia and AMD hit the market. If he buys one of those cards and miss the opportunity to sell them before new GPU's hit the market he'll probably be forced to sell them dirty cheap to jump on something newer because we're already aware of the fact that market will be flooded with used 970/980/290/290X cards in a matter of days/weeks when Polaris and Pascal cards arrives. Same thing I'm gonna do for both gaming rigs of my boys: sell their 290X and 970 few weeks earlier before new cards see the sunlight, let them use my 970 and that 760 for few weeks (or whatever it takes) to decide what to by next and then buy them two shiny new cards from higher midrange with at least 6GB, more likely with 8GB. For 1080p gaming on 24" screns that should be sufficient for few more years. Still I'm holding my wallet tight and not even thinking about jumping to 1440p or 4K gaming for my boys: if 1080p/24" gaming is still good for them I'm not complaining and not my wallet either Also one more thing, hope it's not related with this thread... Is it just me or here at G3D in past few weeks we have more and more freshly registered newcomers who just register to start new thread and ask about advice and then there's no sign of them...?! :3eyes:
Thanks for the responses guys. In response to the last comment - I was actually previously registered here and was participating pretty actively in an older thread dealing with a defective batch of Sapphire 7870's. I didn't feel like trying to recover that account so I made a new one. About the upgrade.. I'm still pretty conflicted unfortunately. On one hand, there are quite a bit of games I'm interested in coming in the next 6 months, Dark Souls 3 specifically. I'd hate to have to settle for poor performance on one of my favorite game series. On the other hand, any cards value purchased now will assuredly be diminished when Polaris arrives. I'd be willing to accept that to some extent, provided that both support and performance of the card doesn't turn into what happened with my 770. The 390 does seem like it should last a bit longer, but then again it is based on an architecture from 2013. On the 770. I wish I could have anticipated the massive jump in vram usage. At the time, not a whole lot of games were exceeding 2gb vram. The issue wasn't really brought to my attention until the wide release of current gen console ports.
OP, no hard feelings about my last comment About waiting or not waiting for upgrade, well here's my story... Earlier, 15, 20 years ago, when I was a single (read: without wife and three kids on my back) HW upgrade for one or two of my gaming rigs for me was not a question of choosing a right time for purchase but how deep is my wallet atm. Spending 500€, 1000€ or even more for HW upgrade just because of some specific game was similar to decision to go or not to go to the shop to buy a bread for breakfast: there is almost no bread, lets go and buy some so that I don't starve from hunger Things had changed a bit when I got my first son and later build his first gaming rig, but not too much: still I was spending way too much on freshly realeased hardware, but at that point started to realise that I could get that HW at reasonable cheaper price if I could wait for at least few more months, but: I couldn't wait then... But things changed dramaticaly when I got twins back in 2007 and few years later felt the "need" to make them gaming rigs: keeping up with HW upgrades for my gaming rig, older son gaming rig and two more gaming rigs for my twins also was a complete nightmare for my wallet. Still I was in temptation to buy all those shiny latest hardware almost the same day/week when they hit the market but couldn't do that (my wallet couldn't make it) and that made me to change my strategy about "HW upgrade plan" for all of our gaming rigs at home... Why am I writing all this: now I could easily wait for months after some new tech hits PC market, wait for right moment for price drop, before that to sell "obsolete" HW (or put it in some other less used gaming or HTPC rig at home) and buy whatever I want, but now whithout that "scissored sheep" feeling I had earlier after realising that I could get that HW significantly cheaper if I could keep my wallet away for few more months. That's how I'm buying HW in past 5, 6 years or so. Main problem that still exist here in Serbia (in past 15 years, probably even more) is that HW market and HW offer at domestic importers/retailers here is changing sloooooowwlllllyyyyyyyy: when some new HW gets released in the rest of the civilised world we're geting it at least few weeks later for (I'm not joking) 30, 40% higher price compared to prices in surounding EU countries, it's nothing more than f#*king insane! That's one more reason for me to wait at least few more months more, sometimes even 6 months to do a propper HW upgrade at some reasonable prices. So... When when Pascal and Polaris GPU's hit the market few of our "obsolete" gaming GPU's from previous generation will already be sold, money will be waiting on the stash for the right moment, in the meantime spare GPU's will do the job and few months later when the dust settles my wallet's gonna jump in and do the job... good things come to those who wait
I hope I can help with my experience. I usually tend NOT to upgrade to new architecture when it comes out first, rather let it settle and let the drivers - and perhaps even the available models - mature. Cost is also a reason. I've been running two 7950's in Crossfire for three years, happy like a baby with their performance at first, nervous then pissed as Crossfire support grew weaker, finally fed up with the current situation that sees most games not supporting mgpu out of the box, the remaining divided between those who work well (few) and those (the majority) whose performance gain is barely acceptable - considering that you theoretically have twice the power at hand - and for which you end up waiting forever, usually long after you've finished the game or got bored with it, for a decent Crossfire profile which in some cases will never even come. Not counting the many cases where a profile exists but causes glitches or leaves the second gpu under-utilized. In the end, to me Crossfire never felt really much like harnessing two gpu's; more like, at its best, one gpu + another trying to give a hand when possible. To cut things short, I decided that this limbo (end of R9 and Polaris anticipation) was the perfect time to jump on the 390X bandwagon: affordable, sturdy, solid and mature, both architecture and driver-wise. I couldn't be happier. The card runs like a champ and is certainly going to last long enough for Polaris to hit the market, settle as a product, improve its architecture and become more affordable in price. Contrary to what the early reviews stated, 8Gb's on the 390X are proving to be a future-proof feature, as quite a few games require +3Gb's vram for high-res textures. Older games run beautifully on this card (Arkham Knight, MGSV, Shadow of Mordor) and at the time being Rise of the Tomb Rider, which in its current state is known to be a resource hungry title, strenuous as it is even on high-end builds (benchmarks at hand), runs without a hitch at 1440p with a mix of high and very high settings. For me the price-performance ratio of the 390X made it a no-brainer decision, so I went ahead and got a factory overclocked Sapphire Nitro Tri-X with backplate and can do nothing but recommend it. As someone said on a forum where I was asking for upgrade advice: why wait? This card will probably show in game's recommended requirements for a while still. Polaris can surely wait another year. Believe me, you can't go wrong with a 390X today. Hope this helps, good luck with your decision
Thank you lurk and crazy for sharing your personal experiences. Lurk you bring up a great point about letting a new architecture mature. I now remember purchasing my 7870 the week it came out for a pretty hefty price and there were bugs, not to mention the previously referred to hardware issues that caused me to have to go thru two rmas. I think I've made up my mind and am going to go for the 390 now. Thanks again for all the help.
with new hardware purchases it's always safer to say: "fingers crossed"! On the other hand I'm pretty confident you will have no reason to regret your decision and will fully enjoy the new card instead! Keep us posted! :thumbup:
Hey guys, Just wanted to update all those who so greatly helped me on this topic. I ended up purchasing an XFX R9 390 and I am very happy with it. It handles all my games so far at high settings and ultrawide resolution (2560x1080). Whether it's just psychological or not, it's great knowing that there's 8gb of vram there compared to my old cards 2gb. Also nice to have freesync working great. Only slight cons are the card is noticeably hotter and louder than my old Asus GTX 770, which in all fairness was virtually silent and the most quiet videocard I ever owned. Airflow is decent in my case though, so temps haven't gone any higher than 74 degrees celsius. All in all, it's really great to be back with AMD again. And here's a pic of my now four year old system that's still holding up strong (edit: Wow, is it now five years since Sandy Bridge came out? :nerd :thumbup:
Heheh, I feel the same about my 2600k. For at least 2 years already I'm ready to upgrade, but still fail to see much gain from it. As for the temps, they usually stay below 80°C although a high overclock could make it go a bit over that. I had a 6950 that reached 85°C quite easily. They never budge though and take that heat with ease. Congrats man, and happy gaming
Have you set up a fan profile with msi afterburner or similar? 74c is about right for stock fan settings i would say but doesn't leave much room for overclocking my 280 at stock speeds is super cool at 55-60c loaded (972/1250) clocks oc'd it can hit 72c with 80% fan speed (1180/1500) clocks good buy by the way also
Oh yes my cards hit 94 and 85 now with xfire in intense situations. The MSI gaming 290x just lacks in terms of cooling power.
