7850 good enough for 4K in strategy games?

[maniac5999]

So, I've had an old 40" 1080p TV as my combined monitor/bedroom TV for years, but I've recently moved, and am going to be putting the desktop in the office, and the TV in the bedroom. That means I need to buy the first computer monitor since I built the first iteration of this desktop in 2008. I'm considering one of the new 28" 4K TN monitors for under $500, so I don't have to upgrade it for years, and I'm wondering if my venerable 7850 is powerful enough to play the sorts of games I like to play on it, things like Civ5, Civ BE, SoSE, etc. nothing that requires fast twitch responses, and nothing particularly graphics intensive.

I'd also like to point out that the 7850's OC'd to the point where it should come in close to or above the R7 370.

 

[Qwertilot]

It'll depend but maybe a little short - iirc (can't remember which of the many review sites it was now!) the 960 scrapes 30 FPS in Civ5 at 4k and that's non trivially faster than a 7850.

You can always scale down of course. If you 'have' to get the monitor now then its very plausible to get the 4k monitor, even if you have to scale back to 1080 to play games on it. (or 2560 x 1440 I guess). Then get a mid range from the die shrinks due in ~1 year, which will easily chew up this sort of thing even at 4k.

Although I would check if a 7850 can even drive a 4k screen on the desktop properly. (60hz). Not sure given its age.

 

[.vodka]

If it isn't enough you can always run the game at 1080p, which is exactly 1/4 of 4K. Even division, so the result shouldn't be too blurry (no rounding) and much more possible for your 7850 if the extra burden of 4k is too much, even in strategy games.

 

[maniac5999]

Oh, the 7850 is more than sufficient at 1080p with everything maxxed, and I'm pretty sure it has DP out, (I just took a quick look, and I think it does) Even if not, we're talking strategy here, the 30FPS that HDMI can do is more than enough for turn based strategy.

 

[happy medium]

wait your gonna buy a $500+ 4k monitor and your not gonna upgrade your card?
Jeeze, I say come out of pocket and grab a 380 or something a little quicker and enjoy the 4k, not some scaled down 1080p. really?! with a i5 4670? ditch that slow 7850!

 

[happy medium]

28 " 4k monitor 60hz 2ms for 380$
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009659

R9 280 3gb Dual X card for 200$ or 179$ AR is like 80% faster than your card and the extra memory might help in the future. And it will overclock also!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202112

that's 580$ or 560$ AR for both, now your set for a few years with your new monitor. .:thumbsup: and you can play your games @ 4k.

 

[JDG1980]

Although I would check if a 7850 can even drive a 4k screen on the desktop properly. (60hz). Not sure given its age.

All GCN cards support DisplayPort 1.2, and can do 4K output at 60 Hz (with or without MST, whichever the monitor requires). Keep in mind, the Mac Pro explicitly supports up to two 4K@60Hz monitors, and it uses GCN 1.0 chips (Pitcairn or Tahiti).

That said, I ran into some issues when using my PowerColor 7870 card with a Dell P2715Q monitor. The card has two Mini-DP outputs (no full-size DP ports), so I used a cable with a Mini-DP connector on one end and a full-size DP connector on the other. Unfortunately, this resulted in the monitor momentarily losing signal every 10 to 30 seconds (depending on the cable). Annoying blank screens for no apparent reason. I tried 2 cables including one which came with the monitor, but no luck. I suspect it may just be that whoever laid out the card didn't do the signal paths well enough to handle the bandwidth of 4K@60Hz, even though the GPU and DisplayPort 1.2 connection should support it. I'll have to see if this persists after I replace the graphics card.

Also, the 7850's 2GB of RAM isn't even enough to blow your nose on 4K. I hit the 2GB cap on my 7870 just from having a bunch of image-intensive Firefox instances open while watching a video on MPC-HC (you can tell it's run out of RAM because new web pages begin to appear as black screens; Process Explorer confirms it).

 

[happy medium]

Also, the 7850's 2GB of RAM

He should be able to play Civ5, Civ BE, SoSE, with a 3gb 280 @ 4k.
See my above post. I didn't want to blow his budget to bad.

 

[maniac5999]

28 " 4k monitor 60hz 2ms for 380$
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009659

R9 280 3gb Dual X card for 200$ or 179$ AR is like 80% faster than your card and the extra memory might help in the future. And it will overclock also!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202112

that's 580$ or 560$ AR for both, now your set for a few years with your new monitor. .:thumbsup: and you can play your games @ 4k.

I Said *UNDER* $500.

http://www.woot.com/offers/samsung-28-4k-led-backlit-monitor-24?ref=cnt_wp_15_9 $401.24 with tax and shipping, same panel. different housing, the Acer scored points for height adjustability, but the Samsung looks much cooler (and fits the room much better) Plus is $401 and change shipped w/ tax.

Oh, re: new card: I've got a Corsair 450W PSU, so I'm basically hard capped at 150W, (One six pin, but massively overbuilt) I'm waiting for 16nm to upgrade if at all possible. I'm not very happy with TSMC right now, but that's neither here nor there.

 

[JDG1980]

He should be able to play Civ5, Civ BE, SoSE, with a 3gb 280 @ 4k.
See my above post. I didn't want to blow his budget to bad.

Perhaps so; I'll take your word for that. Maybe Firefox is just worse than other browsers in VRAM usage, but I was rather alarmed that I hit the cap on a low-to-midrange card just with normal desktop applications, no gaming or rendering or anything intense.

 

[maniac5999]

He should be able to play Civ5, Civ BE, SoSE, with a 3gb 280 @ 4k.
See my above post. I didn't want to blow his budget to bad.

the budget is flexible, but everything I'm using for this is coming out of my "I want a sportscar" fund. Also, My profile is out of date, I just moved to Haddonfield and work in center city, btw.

 

[happy medium]

I Said *UNDER* $500.

Just a suggestion, I had a real good overclocking card once , god it was hard to part with it.

 

[Sequences]

I have a 7850 and game on 3600x1200 triple monitor eyefinity setup. Civ5 runs a little slow and I definitely notice the fan going. But in the end, it is not the graphics that make the game enjoyable. My standards for acceptable gameplay is low with respect to the population on this forum.

I'd say give it a go. If you can't stand it, you'll be positioned nicely when a good deal comes around.

EDIT: set up is 3600x1920...... wasnt sure what i was thinking last night.

 

[happy medium]

Maybe Firefox is just worse than other browsers in VRAM usage,

I think I have heard that before but I thought they fixed it? Well that's for another thread.

 

[happy medium]

3600x1200

Imagine 4k! He needs a new card.

 

[Sequences]

Imagine 4k! He needs a new card.

Everyone needs a new card. Want to send me one? :thumbsup:

 

[happy medium]

Everyone needs a new card. Want to send me one? :thumbsup:

I have a spare 5750 , 2 6870's and a gtx260 laying around somewhere.
Oh yea and a mx420.:'(

 

[tweakboy]

Its gonna be slower. gb

 

[soccerballtux]

It'll depend but maybe a little short - iirc (can't remember which of the many review sites it was now!) the 960 scrapes 30 FPS in Civ5 at 4k and that's non trivially faster than a 7850.

You can always scale down of course. If you 'have' to get the monitor now then its very plausible to get the 4k monitor, even if you have to scale back to 1080 to play games on it. (or 2560 x 1440 I guess). Then get a mid range from the die shrinks due in ~1 year, which will easily chew up this sort of thing even at 4k.

Although I would check if a 7850 can even drive a 4k screen on the desktop properly. (60hz). Not sure given its age.

7850 has 256bit gddr5. That's going to scale and hit 4k better than 960, and AMD GPU's handle bigger resolution better than NVidia ones

 

[blastingcap]

So, I've had an old 40" 1080p TV as my combined monitor/bedroom TV for years, but I've recently moved, and am going to be putting the desktop in the office, and the TV in the bedroom. That means I need to buy the first computer monitor since I built the first iteration of this desktop in 2008. I'm considering one of the new 28" 4K TN monitors for under $500, so I don't have to upgrade it for years, and I'm wondering if my venerable 7850 is powerful enough to play the sorts of games I like to play on it, things like Civ5, Civ BE, SoSE, etc. nothing that requires fast twitch responses, and nothing particularly graphics intensive.

I'd also like to point out that the 7850's OC'd to the point where it should come in close to or above the R7 370.

Turn off AA and you should be able to do 4K at modest but playable framerates with what is effectively a 7870. Turn-based, non-twitch games get to occasionally dip below 30 fps without killing gameplay.

 

[Qwertilot]

Imagine 4k! He needs a new card.

Thing is the card he 'wants' doesn't exist now. For this sort of gaming at 4k to be comfortable I guess you really want something like 980ish performance - maybe ideally even a bit more for headroom - but they're rather out of budget and a little too much power too.

Something like the Pascal 960 equivalent/die shrunk Fury should do it very handily.

I'm actually in very nearly the same position. Same game types, 750ti/360w PSU. Sorely tempted by these vaguely affordable 4k IPS monitors. Definitely if I had to get a new monitor *now* I'd get a good 4k one and reckon to cope for ~a year before the next gen GPUs were there.

I don't, so I might well do it all together instead.

 

[Denithor]

I say get the monitor and see how well the GPU handles it. If it's unbearable, there should be a flood of cards about to hit the used market as people start to upgrade to the new AMD cards.

 

[maddogmcgee]

Are you sure you want a 4k monitor for strategy games? Very few of the games I play have support for the larger text/interfaces you need for higher resolutions (from memory, Civ 5 and Beyond Earth do?). Even with a 1440p I have to be kinda close to play these games on it. I would imagine 4k would cause intense frustration as you try to deal with a tiny interface and read small writing.

Have you considered going for a 1440p IPS monitor? It would be almost perfect for the games you play. Your video card will work fine, games will look better but you will also be able to deal with non-scaled interfaces and menus. You will even save a bit of money which you can use to upgrade your card in a year or 2 if you feel the need. I have a 7850 which is a bit faster than your card, and it deals fine with Civ5 and SOSE at this resolution.

 

[Headfoot]

It's going to perform so badly at 4k that itll be noticeably sluggish and painful to play, even at minimum, even in turn based games. Civ 5 is a pretty good looking game. Well optimized but it still requires some grunt. It doesnt make sense to spend 100% of the budget on a 4k monitor with a 7850. Split the budget 60/40 and get a used r9 290 for $200 and a quality 1440p IPS for $300. The total experience with this will be significantly better than getting molasses FPS at 4k. Either that or play at 1080 and upscale. Which makes it pointless to get a 4k in the first place unless you just want it for browsing or whatever

 

[maniac5999]

Are you sure you want a 4k monitor for strategy games? Very few of the games I play have support for the larger text/interfaces you need for higher resolutions (from memory, Civ 5 and Beyond Earth do?). Even with a 1440p I have to be kinda close to play these games on it. I would imagine 4k would cause intense frustration as you try to deal with a tiny interface and read small writing.

Have you considered going for a 1440p IPS monitor? It would be almost perfect for the games you play. Your video card will work fine, games will look better but you will also be able to deal with non-scaled interfaces and menus. You will even save a bit of money which you can use to upgrade your card in a year or 2 if you feel the need. I have a 7850 which is a bit faster than your card, and it deals fine with Civ5 and SOSE at this resolution.

I'm looking at a 28" display, so it'll have the same pixel density as a 14" 1080p laptop screen, so it shouldn't be too bad, especially since I'm going to be sitting pretty close to it. Honestly, if I didn't need a new monitor because of splitting up the TV/computer combo I wouldn't be getting anything. (She who must be obeyed says the bedroom has to have a TV) In a couple of years 4K is going to be the standard resolution, and I don't want to drop $200 on a monitor that will be obsolete in two years when I can get the monitor I want for $400 now. Plus Woot is selling the Samsung I want(it fits the aesthetic of the room perfectly) for less than some of the cheaper brands. (Yes, I know it's a factory refurb, but I feel that sometimes that means the quality is actually better than new)

Worst case scenario is that I game at 1080p for a while, while enjoying the higher resolution on the desktop. I try to buy quality items at good prices and hold on to them. I feel like the samsung is well built, and Acer is kind of hit or miss (plus, it's fugly) I've already bought the monitor, now I just need to know what to expect.