Hey, i'm have been looking to make some changes to my system and have been advised that the gpu would be a good place to start. Currently I have a HD 6870.
I was wondering what card you think would be the best investment that would last the longest before needing upgraded?
Many people like the 7870 Tahiti LE but how long do you think it will last before I need to upgrade it compared to a card that maybe cost a bit more? But many say that the 7950 isn't worth it compared with some of the 7870 Tahiti LE cards.
Another thing that I was thinking about is are any of the nvidia cards worth getting as not many people seem to be talking about them? The main reason that I thought nvidia cards were good was for the PhysX and better fps when using AA or does AMD have something for that as well?
Thanks for reading!
First - 7870 Tahiti is only > 7950 stock speed if you overclock the 7870 and leave the 7950 @ stock speed. The 7950's are known to have massive overclocking headroom, one Tom showed had OC potential to actually break even with an overclocked GTX 680, that is simply n ot possible with a 7870 tahiti no matter how much you overclock it. Does this mean you should get a 7950 instead? No. Read below.
If Longivitey is a concern here you need to take a good look at your setup from the top down. What monitor are you using? 1080p 60hz? 99 percent of people use this type of monitor, i will assume you are as well. The 6870 you already have is perfectly sufficient for this, a 7870 standard or 660ti would be about the maximum reasonable GPU for such a monitor at this current point in time, and in the foreseeable future with new games, such as BF4. Will you get higher FPS with a 7870+ than your 6870? Yes. Will you see it? Not usually, you will not see anything above 60 frames per second on a monitor like that. If this is your situation, i would reccomend upgrading your monitor first, the Asus VG248QE is a 144hz monitor, and will allow you to see up to 144 frames per second. This will give you legitimate reason to upgrade your GPU. The downside? It's 299$. The upside? It's the cheapest 120+hz monitor. (aside from the discontinued acer with bad input lag)
So for benefits you will notice, we have two options (assuming a 1080p 60hz monitor).
1 - Maybe a 7870, you will notice a small improvement on a small amount of games.
2 - The most logical option here. Upgrade your monitor first. You will notice immediate, and significant improvement on all games the 6870 can get more than 60fps on, which would be the majority of games, minus eyecandy games such as bf3/crysis/farcry. This would also open up room to upgrade your GPU with significant visible improvement.
A- A dual core athlon is more than enough to handle physx in games with exception of boarderlands 2 or something like that. AMD also has released a legal version (nvidia patented physx, a very desperate move imo) of their own physx, it's being showcased in the new laura croft game.
B- Single monitor gaming, again, will depend on your monitor. As of right now, your 6870 will perform just as well on a typical single monitor, as three TITAN sli GPU's, even though the titans would generate more frames per second, the monitor will not display it. Anything over 60fps is not shown on monitors unless you get a monitor higher than 60 hz. The Asus VG248QE again is what i reccomend.
