GPU advice

[HardwareWhore]

I just upgraded my motherboard/ram/CPU but i'm concerned about the graphics card. I have a Radeon 6970 that is only a little over a year old and paid $400 for it. I have been looking over benchmarks for the 680 and 7970 but this of course is another -4 to 5 hundred.

My question is, is it worth to upgrade already or will the 6970 be ok for another year for me to wait for the next generation?
Am I going to have to fork over $400 evey year?

Specs are as follows:

AMD FX 8350
MSI 990 FXA
Corsair 16gb @16000mhz
Intel 120 SSD

advice is appreciated

 

[flamehead269]

I mean, as beast as the 7970 is, you won't have to upgrade that thing for like 2 or 3 years at the absolute most.

 

[bigshootr8]

No you are not going to have to fork out that kind of money every year. It all truly depends on what you are expecting and wanting. If you are wanting to always be on the bleeding edge sure that is what it will cost. However, I would say your card is probably fine for another generation or two possibly. I would look into things as you start to have issues with the games you play.

 

[HardwareWhore]

I mean, as beast as the 7970 is, you won't have to upgrade that thing for like 2 or 3 years at the absolute most.

That what I thought with the 6970 as well. Evolution is a B---h!

 

[bigshootr8]

It happens but that doesn't make the card useless or any less of a good card.

 

[HardwareWhore]

No you are not going to have to fork out that kind of money every year. It all truly depends on what you are expecting and wanting. If you are wanting to always be on the bleeding edge sure that is what it will cost. However, I would say your card is probably fine for another generation or two possibly. I would look into things as you start to have issues with the games you play.

I notice the timeline is a lot shorter with Nvidia than with AMD, When the 6970 came out is was all about the 460 GTX and they have already jumped two generations. AMD has only hopped up 1. I'll probably wait til the AMD 8X series

 

[bigshootr8]

Well it depends you see on what you buy. If you are someone who buys the mid line cards the time period is. Also over time architectures change for example 400/500 was Fermi and 600 was Kepler so its possible that can be a explanation as well but either way you may be right.

 

[HardwareWhore]

I ended up getting the 7970, solely for low rate dx11 performance on the 6970.