Radeon 7850 to 7950 upgrade?

[ohiou_grad_2006]

Hey everyone, I've currenty got the following system.

FX 8120-OC to 4.2ghz stable
Gigabyte 970a-ud3
8gb gskill ddr3 1600
2 Hard drives(1 boot, 1 storage)
DVD burner
EVGA 600B PSU

Anyway, got money for Christmas this year, my system plays everything fine really. But I had been looking at graphics cards and got the upgrade itch. I began perusing Microcenter, newegg, etc before Christmas, and started to like the r9 280. Anyway, after reading some cards were rebranded older ones, and seeing some guys were getting deals on new cards, I began to peruse ebay. Found this card.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Powercolor-Radeon-7950-GDDR5-3GB-PRICED-TO-SELL-/251760772254?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item3a9e1c849e

Price was right on it, seller had good feedback. He said all fans were strong, and it was one of the better performing So I went ahead and pulled the trigger on it, and it came out to 116 and change. I figure I can sell my 7850 for 50 bucks or so, giving me essentially a card for 60-70 bucks that should be 2 tiers above my current card.

Found this review on it, apparently it's factory clocked to 880 mhz. What do you think, good step up for the money spent?

 

[holyrage]

i have a 7950 and i have it Oc'ed to 1310/1900 at 1.22V just to play current games at 60 fps Ultra no AA or 2X AA imo wait for R9 300 maybe get a better heatsink to get the CPU to a higher OC

also 1310mhz on air is very rare so u should wait for R9 300

 

[ohiou_grad_2006]

I actually already purchased it. But i figured vs the 7850 being basically an upper entry level card(seems to compare to the gtx 750ti in performance), at least I could get back to mid range performance and maybe use this as a hold over for a year and wait to see what amd and nvidia release. I've enjoyed my 7850 and it's still a great card. Just got the upgrade itch and price seemed right. Am i correct in thinking performance wise this is basically like the r9 280?

Btw. Heatsink forgot to mention that I'm actually running a cooler master v6 gt for cooling on the cpu in a push pull setup. Tried to push it higher than 4.2, think i went to 4.4, but was not stable with just multiplier. I didn't want to feed it too much voltage. Tried to overclock the front side bus but many times the bios seemed to reset when i adjusted that. Maybe I'm at the limit on that cpu? Or could my board be holding back the overclock? Possibly vrms getting too warm? Either way i figured a 1.1 ghz was not bad, fx 8120 was stock 3.1ghz i think.

 

[PoochZag]

I've had a 7950 with stock 880mhz (its an MSI TwinFrozr III) for 3 years now and its been great. Paid $325 at the time too. At 1080p you can play just about anything maxed or close to max at 60fps no problem. I can overclock to around 1100mhz core 1500mhz memory with 1.15v stable, and that's great. Many games even will be 100+ fps at 1080p, especially only moderately demanding ones.

I recently got a 1440p monitor, and it doesn't quite cut it in demanding games. For example, it will only do 30-50fps in DA:I on high settings with no AA filters.

But 1080p its been phenomenal

 

[ohiou_grad_2006]

Yep, and 1080p is what i play at. I right now can't/won't justify spending the money on 4k. Like all new tech, when 4k gets cheaper in price then I'll upgrade. But I figure this will at least tide me over until all the new tech releases, then i can save up and get a card like the gtx 970 or whatever the big performance card is at the time.

 

[PoochZag]

Yep, and 1080p is what i play at. I right now can't/won't justify spending the money on 4k. Like all new tech, when 4k gets cheaper in price then I'll upgrade. But I figure this will at least tide me over until all the new tech releases, then i can save up and get a card like the gtx 970 or whatever the big performance card is at the time.

Yeah I agree, 4k is just not feasible right now. I will say I recommend 1440p in the future, it's been nice. However, like you just said, it will probably push me to upgrade to a 970 or something sooner rather than later

Best of luck

 

[holyrage]

yup the 7950 is a good card and will last a year ill end up upgrading when the R9 300 is out and ill get the card with the best performance per $ ratio

if u ever wanted to OC your card just don't go above 1.25 Volts max safe temp imo ill keep it bellow 85C for 24/7 my card runs @ 79C


and yes the R9 280 has a Tahiti pro Core same as the 7950 but with lower power consumption i think

 

[jeffredo]

Last summer I went from an MSI Twin Frozr HD 7850 @ 1050/1400 in one of my PCs to an HIS IceQ HD 7950. At the stock 800 Mhz it was no faster in games than the overclocked HD 7850. I OC'd it to 1100/1350 and it was definitely better, but not as big a jump as I'd hoped for.