Looking at upgrading my GPU soon, need some opinions :D

Hey guys, I just found out that my AMD Raedon HD 6950 is now under "legacy" and is not getting any more drivers updated (last one was July of 2015... really bad), which really sucks for when new games come out. This is somewhat sad because my GPU has been with me for 5 years and has been working great, and also to mention that buying a new one will burn a hole in my pocket. I find it also a good thing because I can play amazing looking modern games back at higher settings and be up-to-date for the next 4-5 years once again.

Anyway... I'm running AMD and was wondering if it's bad on the computer to switch brands? (my CPU is an i5-2500k, if that has anything to do with this... probably not, so I'll just leave that here lol) And if my Asus P8P67 Pro motherboard will accept the newer series of GPU's.

I have a budget of roughly $300-400 and was wondering what brand or card is the strongest in that price range. I know AMD is a bit cheaper compared to Nvidia, but I also might want to try Nvidia out, since there are a lot of top games that recommend Nvidia GPU's for their games... Anyway, again $300-400, but if there is anything below that price range, or just slightly above that would kick serious ass, let me know!

I also heard that the new line of GPU's coming out this year will be pretty damn good, as they usually always are when newly released... so is it worth to wait for those or nah? I am playing The Division, and I get flickering lights indoors (due to drivers out of date and not being supported by the game), and it is kind of annoying, but I don't want it to ruin my experience and maybe its just best to get a new one now, but if some pretty beast GPU's are coming out and I should wait, I can make the sacrifice and wait and deal with the flickering lights and shitty frames every now and then.


Thanks and hope to hear some opinions on what you guys recommend :D

We are supposed to be hearing about Nvidias new GPU within rougly two weeks, with a release in early June. It's still a bit unknown for AMD. If you can, I would say wait. These new GPU's seem to blow the previous generation out of the water.

If you'd rather not ..

Nvidia: GTX 970

Amd: R9 390

I need a new whole system right now, but I am gunna wait for the new GPU's to come out, and either get one of the new cards or a GTX 980 Ti when the price drops.

Yeah I am thinking the 970... or maybe even save a bit and going with the 960, since they are already a year or two old and not worth a big investment at the moment. I am curious what the prices will be on the next generation of GPU's coming out.

Btw, my prices range is in Canadian dollars... so yeah, our dollar is crappy right now and GPU's are definitely not cheap, especially with a crappy dollar.

If you don't mind a refurbished card EVGA has a GTX970 for $249 and $259. That's an absolute steal. I have bought cards from their "b stock" before and never had any issues with them.

http://www.evga.com/Products/Product...04G-P4-3979-RX


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Again if you wait for the next gen. Current gen should drop in price.

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Originally Posted by AOD_BritishBob

Again if you wait for the next gen. Current gen should drop in price.

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Good call

The actual gaming performance is only about 1.5x this generation. But yes i would still say wait, it might be a good idea to wait till the new generation comes out, then buy a current generation card, as they will probably drop in price quite abit when the new generation does roll in. its a bit out of your price range atm, but when pascal and polaris come out hopefully it will drop abit in price. get a 980Ti, 6 Gigs of GGDR5, so more futureproof, has a better chip than the other maxwell cards, currently on triple A titles at max settings you can get around 100 fps at 1080p with one of these. $600 atm on amazon. and should drop abit after the new gen stuff comes out. totally worth it, should easily last you the next 5 years or so.

I would wait for Pascal/Polaris to launch. By the time they do, you might have enough money saved to allow you to buy one!

970 has already dropped in price - I bought one about two months ago for $350

Check out this chart for some fast info:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...rchy,4388.html

Bare in mind - when looking at reviews, there is never really a difference visually in frame rates if it's under 10 FPS. You can see the difference between 30, 60, 90, and 120 FPS, but generally not very noticeable when it's say 40-50 FPS (you can see it - but not like you can see the difference between 50-60+ FPS).

For example: Running <random game here> the 980 Ti might have 2-5 FPS higher than the 970 - not really noticeable UNLESS it's in the 55-60 FPS range. This is where the pricing comes in - and you can see the difference in pricing with those two cards. This is what eventually led me to buy the 970, because the 980 doesn't give enough FPS increase to justify the price.

This is from the link I posted - something to keep in mind as well: "...I don’t recommend upgrading your graphics card unless the replacement card is at least three tiers higher. Otherwise, the upgrade is somewhat parallel, and you may not even notice a worthwhile difference."

Hope that helps, good luck with the purchase!

im not talking about the 980, the 980 is crap for fps per dollar, but a 980ti will give you about double the fps of a 970, with way more VRAM. and since he seems to want these gpus to last many years, a 980ti is a much better bet than a 970, especially since we seem to finally be moving away from 1080p as the mainstream standard.
Also my point was that since it gives so much more performance, its worth getting cos he wants it to last so long. I.e he will be able to play games with it for longer
and for the record theres a massive difference between 60 and 75 fps :P
i will give you an example, the 970 runs the witcher 3 at max settings in 4k at 12 fps, the 980Ti 35 fps.
at 1080p, the performance difference isnt quite that high, but its still roughly double the 970.

Thanks all for the feedback. I have a pretty good idea of what I will get.

Cheers!