Looking for an upgrade (link heavy)

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jscynder

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Dec 16, 2011
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I am looking for an upgrade from my Sapphire Radeon 7870 XT Its specs are 2GB gddr5 ram with a 256 bit bus and an effective 6 Ghz mem speed and 925 Mhz clock.

The rest of my system is:
CPU: Amd Fx 4170 clocked at 4.3 ghz with turbo
Ram: Gskill Stealth 8GB (2X4GB sticks) running at 1.25v 1600 Mhz cas 9-9-9-24
Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA UD3
Power supply:Rosewill Performance series 600w (will be upgrading to This PSU soon.)
Case: Haf 932 blue as seen HERE

I don't have any intention to overclock beyond what the video card has out of the box.

I do plan to play games such as Borderlands the Pre-sequal and soon Far cry 4 at 1600x1200 generally at high settings.

I am limiting my budget to aprox. $300 preferably from an honest E-tailer (i.e. Newegg) but will consider places you may have had a good shopping experience with.

I plan to make this purchase within the next month.

I am currently looking at these 3 cards: SAPPHIRE TRI-X OC at $299.99 on newegg, GIGABYTE GV-R929OC-4GD at $309.99 also on newegg, and XFX Double Dissipation R9-290A-EDFD at $269.99 on you guessed it newegg. The first 2 are running at ~1000 mhz the last is running at 947 mhz.

I may have these 3 but I appreciate all options. And if I left anything out let me know.
 
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If you can stretch your budget by 50$, then this would be the best upgrade you can get:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4150 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor ($114.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Asus H81M-D PLUS Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($44.49 @ Newegg)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 280X 3GB Double Dissipation Video Card ($194.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $354.47
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-12 16:23 EST-0500
I really recommend going to Intel as their CPUs are faster and give you a better upgrade path.
 
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I don't get what your comparing. My cpu while older is still a Quad core running at 4.3 Ghz with full PCI-e 3.0 support which to my knowledge cannot be saturated by any single card solution. And I do know of at least one twitch streamer Gassymexican who is running a EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Super-Clocked on his i7 3770 which is in the same ballpark as far as performance goes.

Again though if I am missing something please feel free to let me know.
 
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It will cap some of the stronger cards in CPU intensive games such as Planetside 2,Battlefield 4. Games which require a powerful CPU.

It's usually best to ensure your parts are in a similar range together, like right now you have a mid range gaming CPU and a top of mid range GPU and if you put the R9 290 in it would be mid and high.

My advice would be to get a more powerful CPU on your motherboard(I didn't realise you had such a good mobo before) Do you know how to Overclock? If you don't it's fine you can get something like this:

[PCPartPicker part list](http://pcpartpicker.com/p/ybqsYJ) / [Price breakdown by merchant](http://pcpartpicker.com/p/ybqsYJ/by_merchant/)

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
**CPU** | [AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/amd-cpu-fd8320frhkbox) | $139.98 @ OutletPC
**CPU Cooler** | [Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/cooler-master-cpu-cooler-rr212e20pkr2) | $29.98 @ OutletPC
| | **Total**
| Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available | $169.96
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-12 16:30 EST-0500 |

and then get a stronger GPU when you have more money, there's no point switching to intel when you have such a good board (it's not cost effective in my opinion)
 
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The Fx 4xxx are the quad core faster chips the fx 6xxx are the 6 core balanced chips and the fx 8xxx are the 8 core multi tasking champs. but as I play games that are generally optimized for 2 or 4 cores I bought the quad core fast chip. There is also the fx 9730 that came out recently that is an 8 core beast that comes with water cooling out of the box when bundled with a cooler.
 
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Yeah of course but I am talking in terms of maximum cost efficiency for the OP, that isn't cost efficient at all.

also then if you already have a cooler then I would grab the New PSU+FX-8350 then.

and once you've got the money get the R9 290 or you can get the R9 290 and THEN the CPU it's just you'll need a better CPU to make the most of your card.
 
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Eventually (probably this spring during tax season) I plan to overhaul my rig and pass my amd cpu,vid card, and board to my daughter. My picks for that upgrade are either the ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Killer with the Fx 9590 or the ASUS MAXIMUS VII with the i7 4790.
 
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It might not be cost-efficient right now, but in the long run, it's better. the 4150 has the upgrade path to the 4690K, which CRUSHES ANY AMD CPU, be ti the 4170 or the 9590.
 
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If you're going to change your motherboard, move to Intel.
 
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Well from experience AMD is just fine. The system I'm running right now far exceeds what any 1080p 60hz monitor can display. A solid 60 FPS with V-synch and in the 100's with it off, that's with Max settings. The 9 series chip is A ok. Runs a little warm but gives you an excuse for water cooling. Intel on the other hand is very good too. They seem to be pumping the chip models out every month it seems where as AMD stopped at the 9 series and won't be pushing anymore for a while focusing on APU's which is kind of a bummer.
 
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then get the GPU, the point was that the GPU will be limited in performance during some games by your current CPU choice.

Not that it won't work or will perform any worse than your current card.
 
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What retailer has the GTX 970 for $330? Also what brand would you suggest if I did go with Nvidia? I havent had one since my EVGA FTW GTX 9800 and accidentally voiding my warranty or my Pny fx5500 that burned out trying to play Halo.
 
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my point was that if you're upgrading your other parts as well then there is no issues.
 
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