Need An Upgrade from Saphire 7870 (piece of trash)

[Prince Ali Jaba]

so the card worked fine for awhile. then every now and then i would fract, and now its total constant fracting and crashing, along with a reboot. i read all over the place that this happens very frequently with this card. even if i were to rma it (which its past its limit), it could happen again. plus i feel amds drivers are bogus'. what i need help with is choosing a card that will work best for me and my machine. i just bought watch dogs and cant even play it yet haha. i play alot of games from LoL to Watch dogs or Bf4. i would say my max is $200. that might not be enough but what could i get that would work flawlessly with those types of games. this is what im working with
:Fx 8350 processor
16gb ram
64 bit operating system
windows 7
thermaltake blackwidow 850w
and asrock 970 pro3
if i could get any feed back i would be thrilled and greatfull.

 

[StrelokS]

I had a problem with my AMD card too. Every time i would try to update my display drivers i would get a blue screen. Later i discovered that it was caused by my outdated Windows. Pretty much what i'm saying is, update your Windows 7 to the latest updates, and then try installing the new drivers. It worked for me. But if you want to change your GPU then go with something like nVidia 650,660, or better, depending on your budget.

 

[Prince Ali Jaba]

I had a problem with my AMD card too. Every time i would try to update my display drivers i would get a blue screen. Later i discovered that it was caused by my outdated Windows. Pretty much what i'm saying is, update your Windows 7 to the latest updates, and then try installing the new drivers. It worked for me. But if you want to change your GPU then go with something like nVidia 650,660, or better, depending on your budget.

ty for the suggestion. my windows is up to date, i think the card might be fried. would a 660 run those games i mentioned? just need something that wont give me problems like the nvidia 9800gt im running right now as back up. its old but works like a charm. just doesnt have directx 11 support and would prefer more fps with high-ultra settings.

 

[Vynavill]

Well, if you asked me it would be the other way around. It's NVidia having bad drivers.

But either way. I think a good partner-brand GTX 760 (either ASUS, EVGA or Gigabyte) will do the trick for a price around 250$, while a 660 may feel a little sluggish on heavier (badly-configured BF4) or unoptimized games (Watch Dogs), although it'll cost much less obviously. It's still a very good card, but if you have the chance I'd ditch some more money in that, just for the ease of mind it may bring.

 

[StrelokS]

Good replacements for your GPU would be: Radeon R9 270x, GeForce 660,650ti,760. Google them for more information. But in my opinion they are a good choice at the moment.

 

[Prince Ali Jaba]

well i did some research. but just want to add i can spend more if it will be better in the long haul, i dont mind waiting for more spending money. i found the r9 270>r9 270x just by a tad bit. pretty good deal. im wondering if i should jump the price and go for a R9 280x. looks to be a pretty large percentage in framerate from the 760. r9 280x comes to about $300-$350. from what i learn, i guess you get tearing and artifacting with just about any card out there. so i wonder if i should just get another 7870 and try it out again >:0. but between "partner-brands". who is the leader in quality?

 

[Vynavill]

Everything of this is just my knowledge, and it may be wrong at some things, so take it with a pinch of salt... I'd wait for someone else to give his opinion as well before considering this a trustable answer 😉

Quality-price wise, the best you can get right now is either a R9 280x or a GTX 770. Depending on the budget you may get a notch down (270x/760), but anything lower will probably not meet your expectations, nor last long enough.

As per partner brands, the best kinda shifts with every model released.
I've heard Sapphire has the best pieces if you look at the "Toxic" models (featuring Tri-X coolers which keep the card and the VRMs decently cool with massive factory overclocks...), but I guess ASUS and XFX are good to go too, followed up by MSI being the noisiest of the bunch (if you care about fan noise).

Last, but not least, yes, you get tearing with every card out there, and artifacting as well with a smaller number, but that depends on your game settings, on its requirements and on your resolution. 1080p on high details (or max on some) can very well be run at +60Fps by a R9 280x, but you might get some dips with a 270x, causing tearing or 30-Fps capping if you got V-Sync active.
It pretty much depends on what are you willing to sacrifice, whether it's image quality or framerate

 

[Prince Ali Jaba]

Awesome ty for your advice @Vynavill. Ty for everyone whos givin a moment to reply to my questions. this would be my first go at forums for this site. But im loving the feedback from you guys/girls. This makes decisions more clear for me. ill definitely keep this thread open, in hopes for more input.

As for my reply. R9 280x, GTX 770 seem to be what im looking at, for the moment in terms of buying one.

i actually have another question that might be best served as a new thread. but im just going to throw this in here.. Like i stated in my original question, my saphire 7870ghz edition was great and ran things beautifully. but over time kept getting worse as in artifacting, and a whole system reboot. i would keep my eye on the temps, and would see it raise from low 30's and shoot up real high when in peak of games. thinking this might be the reason.

dont think ive changed anything inbetween when i had it installed to hitting rock bottom with it. i would even have the issues at lowest settings and my cards presets on max and min. just to test the thing to find the problem. i came to the conclusion that it got cooked from sitting on oc mode and not knowing haha. i dont think thats it because i wouldnt change anything manually like processing and what not. just that it would give a kick if i hit its peak. then after trying everything i reinstalled my old gpu and had a bios error where my pc wouldnt boot up. i found that problem and fixed it quite easily.

but wondering if maybe my bios settings was messing with my gpu. all in all is my 7870 really crap outa luck or is there that 10% chance-find that it actually works, and i couldnt find it. i really dont want to with my wifes pc to test it there. guess if i really wanna know huh? lol. ugh pc's... Assume ive tried every common troubleshoot.

also would be good to note my TV displays 1360 x 768 (native), 60 Hz framerate, 32bit color depth. i know tv's are not the best, but its what i have at the moment. also had 2nd display but not long enough to damage the card in anyway. or so i think. ( it was that way for like a month or 2).

 

[Vynavill]

Well, might have been anything in that case, but I doubt it would've been the BIOS. At best, and as far as I know, you might have forced some kind of power saving feature for PCI-E slots, but that would just make your card run slower.
Might have also been the PSU, provided it was an unbranded office-electronics cheap unit. Wattage is nothing if the unit itself is not reliable, and chinese unbranded PSUs tend to output a lower amount with time.

Might have just been a faulty unit as well, like my very old X1950XT, whose capacitors popped after a couple months (yay! fireworks! 😀).
Unless you overclocked the card yourself, factory overclocks from partner brands are usually very safe, unless cooling designs are extremely bad, but that's hardly the case.

But whatever, should you be playing at that resolution, my take is that the 280x/770 will probably breeze through anything maxed out, except some more VERY heavyweight or particularly unoptimized games. Probably a 270x/760 can do that too, but if you consider possible taking the step to 1080p in the future, the higher tier is probably your best buy. And, as of "VERY heavyweight" games, at that res you might only count a maxed out Crysis 3 or a heavily modded Skyrim.