UPDATE from Sapphire 5850 to ASUS 7970 reference , is it worth ?

[MeKon 2013]

Hi ,

I have a Sapphire 5850 reference card

http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?psn=000101&pid=286&lid=1

and I am looking for upgrade ( some times I feel that is no decent performance from upgrade now and its better to wait for the HD8000 series )

one of my friends offer me a used ASUS 7970 reference

http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/HD79703GD5#overview

it will cost me as the same price of new 7870 non reference cards

so is this upgrade is good ?
is this card support Direct X 11.1 ?
is the difference from this reference card and non reference one is about cooling system and some over clock only ?

Note : I don't live in USA , so I cant use online shopping stores


My PC:
I7 920
ASUS P6T
24G RAM
Thermaltake 750 w +80 Silver

 

[plasmaj12345]

It will be a good upgrade as the 7970 is a very powerful GPU. However ,you may need to overclock your CPU cooler, as your CPU may bottleneck the GPU. Get a CPU cooler to overclock if you have to.

 

[JJ1217]

Seems like a good deal: I like reference boards as they are great for crossfire setups. However the issue with most reference cards is that they are basically gone from sale once non reference coolers start to hit the market. If you wanted matching cards to crossfire maybe later on, you might have to mix a HIS 7970 with a Asus 7970. Asus reference cards always tend to look a *tiny* bit different in terms of color.

I agree with Plasma, a nice overclock on your i7 will definitely help in some games.

Also remember the 7970 reference is extremely loud at load, its not as good as the GTX reference coolers (Which are pretty good for reference). You might want to look at an accelero solution if noise levels get too high.