AMD Rumor mill?

[JoJoBoy]

My 6850 1gb is starting to show its age with crashes and stuttering in some games. The crashes can be avoided if you drop the vram clocks from 1000mhz to 950mhz. My question is has there been any talk about when the next generation from AMD will appear? I don't mind waiting a few months of underclocking if there is something better coming out soon.

 

[Mr Expert]

Don't bother waiting and paying more money just get an HD 7950 or GTX 760 today and get the best vaule and performance for you dollar.

 

[Erenhardt]

If you have anything that you can play on, I would hang just a month to see if price/performance will change with AMDs new gen:
http://www.vortez.net/news_story/amds_codename_hawaii_gpu_to_be_formally_announced_in_september.html

 

[Piotrsama]

Maybe it's just dirt on the card... try to clean it.

 

[KingFatty]

Agreed, sounds like heat-related issues, which can develop over time as dust accumulates on heatsinks and other surfaces that prevents them from cooling off as normal. Also the surface of the heatsink where the fan blows directly on, that can get caked up and is often hidden underneath the shroud. One guy had his computer in the same room as a bird (cockatiel) and it was amazing how much hidden gunk was on that video card heatsink under the shroud. Cleaning it resolved all crashing issues, like a new card.

 

[ruhtraeel]

TBH, it depends on how much you are willing to spend. If you aren't willing to spend more than $350, getting a 7970 or something now would be the best choice, because AMD's offering next month won't be dropping that low for a while, and price/performance would probably still be slightly in the 7970's favour.

If you value performance more, I'd wait. The next-gen AMD cards are rumoured to be Titan level, for half the price. Although they won't be as worth it as the 7970's at first, the performance will definitely be there.

I'm personally waiting because I have some cash to blow.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Try using compressed air to blow out the dust bunnies first. If a clogged cooling system is not the issue then decide how much you are willing to spend and go from there.

 

[JoJoBoy]

The cooler was pretty full of dust so I cleaned it out. Now the system will not crash every time when running a bench at stock speeds but only can finish the test half of the time.

 

[JoJoBoy]

Got a new xfx 7950 the other day. So far no crashes during benchmarks or games. Games run much smoother with more eye candy to boot too.

 

[JBT]

Even if they were going to be "released soon" it doesn't mean you will be able to get them and for a good price at that. Pick up a 7950 or something and enjoy it now.

 

[TY-1]

Glad to hear that your card is running better now since you cleaned out the dust. If you are still looking to upgrade though AMD will be having a launch event for its new Hawaii line of cards on 9/23/13 so best estimate puts new AMD card release in early October. That's not much a of a wait if yo are still thinking about upgrading, though depending upon your system you might end up hitting a bottleneck.