featured_spectre Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 Wont be an immediate purchase (maybe end of the month). I have a budget at an absolute max of £200 (if I sell my current GFX cards, I can expect maybe £250, but for now will stick with £200). What would you recommend for that price range. Doesn't matter the retailer, just want the most powerful card I can get. I like to stick with AMD as I have had bad experiences with nVidia in the past. Will look at any card however my preference is really with the AMD camp.
ICTDirect_Dave Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 I'll also bee looking for one soon, though I'm on a far tighter budget, I'm thinking something like a GTX570 perhaps if I can find one for a bit less than £100? 1
3s-gtech Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 For £200ish the R9 270X is your best bet, or a 7950 if you can find one, as the 280X is just outside of the bracket. I would hold off for a little while, as the R9 280 is on its way which should hit your price bracket perfectly, and be a powerful card (replacing the 7950). All of these cards will play the latest games at 1080P - what is your monitor res? 1
w-clarke101 Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 MSI Radeon R9 270X Gaming 4G PCI Express Graphics Card - R9 270X GAMING 4G - Scan.co.uk or Gigabyte Radeon R9 270X OC WINDFORCE 4GB AMD PCI Express Graphics Card + BF4 Game - GV-R927XOC-4GD-GA - Scan.co.uk I'd go for at this time. 1
featured_spectre Posted February 17, 2014 Author Posted February 17, 2014 monitor res is full HD capable (1920x1080). Like I said, I will be selling my current GPU (1 of the cards will be a donor for my stepdads machine, the other will be sold) which will bump up the budget, but no guarantee as to when that will happen and for how much (hoping for £50 at least).
featured_spectre Posted February 17, 2014 Author Posted February 17, 2014 Well I am torn at the minute between a new GFX card or an SSD Drive (or two). I will get both in successive months, just a case of when. SSD wise I have my mind made up (a 250GB Samsung or 2). But yeah GFX card is what I am looking at for a while. My current screams and gets very very hot (near 90C) when running BF4 in low (I get like 60FPS so can't complain) but would like to play it on a higher setting as I like the look on the higher settings.
3s-gtech Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 AMD working on Radeon R9 280, another re-branded GPU - TechSpot May be a bit of a wait. Otherwise, the R9 270X should hit the spot, or the 280X if you can really go to town (and look for good deals). 1
Achandler Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 Mayeb you should save some money for a few months until you are out of any probabtion period in the new job you got, just in case. 1
featured_spectre Posted February 17, 2014 Author Posted February 17, 2014 (edited) Mayeb you should save some money for a few months until you are out of any probabtion period in the new job you got, just in case. My HMRC "debt" is paid off, on JSA I can comfortably live (along with my partners income), Even with this purchase at £200, I still have enough to put away £600 into a savings account, so I have no financial worries. Edited February 17, 2014 by featured_spectre
sonofsanta Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 Like others say, and @w-clarke101 links to, the 4GB R9 270X is your best bet; the jump above that is too big, nearer the £300 than £200. Get a 4GB model as they're not much more than 2GB and with the next gen consoles having so much RAM, game engines should start to take advantage of it in the future. The 4GB models tend to be the ones with the nicer coolers as well i.e. don't let out a tortured whine as they slowly die at 90C. Or you could get the SSDs now and wait to see if the R9 280 comes out. 1
featured_spectre Posted February 17, 2014 Author Posted February 17, 2014 sounds like a plan, will probably get the SSDs first. Mine is being RMA'd at the minute, so should be good to go in about a week when its back (or replacement arrives). Will definitely get a 250GB one, maybe a 2nd also, depends on my mood lol. From there I will see if the GFX cards drop in price a bit then go for what I can with the budget.
featured_spectre Posted February 17, 2014 Author Posted February 17, 2014 Decision has been made SSD: Will get Samsung 120GB (Primary drive) and Samsung 250GB (Secondary drive) coming to £180 - This will be the February purchase GFX: Will wait until end of March to see what deals and prices are on for an R9 270X, 280 or around there
sonofsanta Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 Why split them? A ~240GB drive will be faster than a ~120GB drive as it fills all its flash channels so has more parallelism. What do you want to use the secondary storage for? Even if its games, I'd say you don't get enough benefit from an SSD to make one all that worthwhile. Sure, it's an improvement, but nothing like as dramatic as the improvement to boot and applications. I'd either get a 240GB Samsung 840 EVO for boot and a mechanical drive for secondary - £130 for the former, £50 for a 1TB HDD - which is same cost but greater capacity and faster system. Or get a Crucial M500 drive, that are on ridiculously good offers at the moment - 240GB for £102 or 480GB for £215. (there may be better offers than eBuyer out there, that was just a quick glance at what's about atm.) 1
featured_spectre Posted February 17, 2014 Author Posted February 17, 2014 120GB drive is going to literally be for OS, photoshop, illustrator and a few movie editing bits (thats it) the 2nd drive would be for steam/origin games.
mac_shinobi Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 120GB drive is going to literally be for OS, photoshop, illustrator and a few movie editing bits (thats it) the 2nd drive would be for steam/origin games. If 120gb is for OS and 2nd drive is for games etc - would one of those PCI-E x16 SSD's be an option ( better , faster read and writes on those ) ?
featured_spectre Posted February 17, 2014 Author Posted February 17, 2014 Probably, but I don't like them personally.
sonofsanta Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 120GB drive is going to literally be for OS, photoshop, illustrator and a few movie editing bits (thats it) the 2nd drive would be for steam/origin games. In which case, personally I'd get a Samsung 840 EVO/Crucial M500 at 240GB, partition 75% off for use (giving you 180GB to play with) and leave 25% spare to improve performance, then use a 1TB 7.2k drive for Steam. Much more cost effective, much better day-to-day performance in the OS, and maybe you're waiting a few seconds longer on level loads but you're saving a lot of money and have 4x the space to install games - saving you hours of managing that space and redownloading games. 1
featured_spectre Posted February 17, 2014 Author Posted February 17, 2014 (edited) Looking at it, a crucial 480GB SSD is just in my price range, its no bigger than I have now and I have plenty of space to play with (I dont install more than 4 or 5 games at a time, and I can run everything off the 1 drive), Thanks @sonofsanta. I would rep but it says I need to spread the love. *edit* no, wont get the crucial, looked online, plagued with issues. Lasts on average 3 months and you have to pay for the RMA. No thanks. will look at another option Edited February 17, 2014 by featured_spectre 2
chazzy2501 Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 Gainward GeForce GTX 760 Phantom 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card Core: 1072MHz, Memory: 2048MB 6200MHz GDDR5, Stream Processors: 1152, Shader Clock: 2170MHz, SLI Ready, PhysX/CUDA Enabled, 2 Years Warranty Higher Core speed (1072 vs 980Mhz)and higher RAM speeds (6200 vs 6008Mhz) This card is £199.99 at the moment. 1
featured_spectre Posted February 17, 2014 Author Posted February 17, 2014 I did have a look at that card, but for my machine to run it, I need to get a new PSU on top (not a massive issue, but still, a hassle)
Arthur Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 (edited) Or get a Crucial M500 drive, that are on ridiculously good offers at the moment - 240GB for £102 or 480GB for £215. (there may be better offers than eBuyer out there, that was just a quick glance at what's about atm) Crucial had an amazing deal on M500 SSDs last week. I purchased a 240GB M500 for £83.80 (after cashback) as it was too tempting an offer. Edit. Perhaps that's why they were cheap? Edited February 17, 2014 by Arthur
mac_shinobi Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 I did have a look at that card, but for my machine to run it, I need to get a new PSU on top (not a massive issue, but still, a hassle) Your sig says you have a 1000w PSU - what on earth have you got that needs that much power / umph etc ? FX 8350 8core CPU, Asus M5A78L-M, 8GB Kingston Hyper-X 1600MHz, 4GB Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz, ATI 5770 (x2), 1000w OCZ Psu, W7 64 bit
featured_spectre Posted February 17, 2014 Author Posted February 17, 2014 yeah that should be adjusted really, that went bang after a nice surge this weekend. lol. Now got a 550W in there. 1
Arthur Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 will look at another option Samsung 840 EVOs are reliable. 1
mac_shinobi Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 yeah that should be adjusted really, that went bang after a nice surge this weekend. lol. Now got a 550W in there. aahhhh ok - that make's a bit more sense, was gonna say, what are you gonna upgrade your PSU to, 2000W ?? lol. Not even sure you can get anything better than a 1000W, if you can, I must admit , I haven't seen any That doesn't mean to say they don't exist, just not paid much attention to power supply wattage ratings etc he he
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