Suggested Upgrade for Radeon HD 6870

[PrinceofNoobia]

I'm looking to replace the GPU, which is an AMD HD 6870, in a four year old Dell XPS 9100. I'm willing to spend around $200.

I want to make sure that what I'm getting is both 1) a significant upgrade and 2) not too taxing for the original Dell 525w PSU (which I do not intend to replace) or otherwise incompatible with my system in some way.

The rest of my system:

Intel Core i7 960 3.20 Ghz

12 GB DDR3 SDRAM,1333MHZ, 6x2GB

AMD Radeon 6870 GPU (1GB VRAM)

1.5TB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive 7200 RPM

16X DVD+/-RW

PSU - Dell 525W


My CPU is fairly old, but since it's an i7, I assume it will not create a bottleneck with a newer card - if this is wrong please let me know.

I've looked at both the GPU hierarchy chart and a few energy supply calculators and am leaning towards a 7970. But I would like to hear what other people suggest.

Thanks.

 

[clutchc]

$200 allows you to just squeeze into the R9-380 class. Probably the best card for $200 right now.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%204017%20600565502&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=RATING&PageSize=30
It should be a substantial performance increase if your aging i7 doesn't bottleneck to much. I'm thinking you'll be OK.

But I'd like to know the nameplate specs of the Dell 525W PSU to be sure it will handle it.

 

[PrinceofNoobia]

$200 allows you to just squeeze into the R9-380 class. Probably the best card for $200 right now.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%204017%20600565502&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=RATING&PageSize=30
It should be a substantial performance increase if your aging i7 doesn't bottleneck to much. I'm thinking you'll be OK.

But I'd like to know the nameplate specs of the Dell 525W PSU to be sure it will handle it.

Thank you very much for your response. This is the PSU:

http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Studio-Supply-H525AF-01-D525A002L/dp/B00VF2K6ZG

The specs are little more visible in this image:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Precision-T3500-525W-PC-Power-Supply-H252AF-00-6W6M1-/201411548462

Another question - I'm seeing a 4GB version of the R9-380 for about $30 more than the 2GB - seems to me this is worth the extra, right?

And is there any good reason to favor one manufacturer over another for this card (say MSI over Sapphire or vice versa)?

Thanks again for your advice.

 

[clutchc]

Looking at the description for the PSU, it is said to have 2 x 6 pin connectors. The +12V rails' specs indicate that rail can handle 54 amps up to 500W. That should be sufficient for the 130W CPU and 190W gfx card (and the rest of the system). Dell always used fairly decent PSUs in their builds.

If you game at 1080p, you will rarely use over 2 GB of VRAM* even with maxed-out settings in A-A, DoF, textures, etc. But to avoid limitations for the future, it may be wise to get the 4GB version if the cost is within reason.

* The amount of VRAM has no direct bearing on fps. But it determines how much information can be stored per frame; how deep the textures, are, how much DoF you can see, etc. which indirectly may determine fps if those settings are high.