Buying a 7950 at this point in time, wise?

[VirtualLarry]

I was a bit underwhelmed by the rumored GTX960 specs and price. (2GB, 128-bit, and $249? Bleh.)

So a Hot Deal thread popped up, for some HIS 3GB 7950 cards, for $130, no rebate, at Newegg.

Seemed like a good deal to me, so I'm in for two, one for each of my G3258 rigs.

Yeah, it takes two 6-pin PCI-E power connectors, rather than one. But it's around half the price.

Am I crazy? Or was this a good move?

How do you think the performance compares between a 7950 (==R9 280), and a GTX960?

Would I be too bottle-necked with a 3.8Ghz G3258?

 

[HumblePie]

If you are playing games for now and in the conceivable future at 1080p resolutions or close to that, then a 7950 is still a great card for old, modern, and many future games. You'll get your money's worth of usage at that deal price if that is your intended usage.

If you are wanting best gaming graphics at the highest resolutions and framerates.... yah not so much.

As far as bottleneck, not really. Depends on the game and how CPU dependent the scene is.

 

[el etro]

Very good deal.
BTW, G3258 is a good processor, but lacks two threads that is essential for gaming today.

PS: I game with an AMD FX 4100 plus a R7950 boost and plays all games on high settings, good fps.

 

[psolord]

Since you have dual cores, I'd suggest to focus on Nvidia's offerings. due to lower cpu overhead in DX. Unless you are focusing on Mantle games.

Don't get me wrong. I do own two 7950s and they are great cards.

I would expect the supposed 1408 core, 256bit 960 to be 40% faster than a 7950.

The 1280 core 128bit one around 15% faster.

Just wait until it comes out and then make up your mind. There will be good deals then as well.

 

[HumblePie]

Since you have dual cores, I'd suggest to focus on Nvidia's offerings. due to lower cpu overhead in DX. Unless you are focusing on Mantle games.

Don't get me wrong. I do own two 7950s and they are great cards.

I would expect the supposed 1408 core, 256bit 960 to be 40% faster than a 7950.

The 1280 core 128bit one around 15% faster.

Just wait until it comes out and then make up your mind. There will be good deals then as well.

Depends on what he is playing and the resolutions and amount of eye candy he can live with. Recently built a system for a friend and tossed in my old unlocked 6950 in that for him. Why? He basically only plays League of Legends and Wow and at fairly low 720 ish resolution. It plays what he wants perfect for him. If the OP is in a similar situation, the 7950 deal is a good one for that.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I was a bit underwhelmed by the rumored GTX960 specs and price. (2GB, 128-bit, and $249? Bleh.)

So a Hot Deal thread popped up, for some HIS 3GB 7950 cards, for $130, no rebate, at Newegg.

Seemed like a good deal to me, so I'm in for two, one for each of my G3258 rigs.

Yeah, it takes two 6-pin PCI-E power connectors, rather than one. But it's around half the price.

Am I crazy? Or was this a good move?

How do you think the performance compares between a 7950 (==R9 280), and a GTX960?

Would I be too bottle-necked with a 3.8Ghz G3258?

Rumour also says 192 and 256bit. And 128bit is the least likely.

The card you look at is this i guess?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-400-_-Product

Seems like a no boost card. So its slower than a 280. And most likely quite slower than a GTX960. Expect the GTX960 to be 285/280X performance or faster.

 

[psolord]

Depends on what he is playing and the resolutions and amount of eye candy he can live with. Recently built a system for a friend and tossed in my old unlocked 6950 in that for him. Why? He basically only plays League of Legends and Wow and at fairly low 720 ish resolution. It plays what he wants perfect for him. If the OP is in a similar situation, the 7950 deal is a good one for that.

I also happen to have old cards (570s and 5850s) which I benchmark with recent games. Some of the results I have posted in respective threads and some of these tests show that even these cards can provide playable framerates at reasonable settings, so no argument there.

Still I answered in a generic way, since we were not given any specific targets.

Would you disagree that an Nvidia medium range maxwell card would be a better fit for his G3258?

 

[Leyawiin]

Depends on the game. I was using an HIS IceQ HD 7950 @ 1100/1400 and it was pretty good for most games on high to max settings @ 1920x1200. The surprise was WoW's Warlords of Draenor expansion. I was expecting to use Ultra settings everywhere, but in Shadowmoon Valley there were a few heavily forested/grassy areas that dropped me down from 60 FPS to 45 FPS. Dropped shadow quality from "ultra" to good/fair and it fine after that. Bit of a surprise I couldn't max it and keep 60 FPS though. Got an R9 290 during Black Friday and it can do ultra shadows in those spots.

Basically, yes, its still a good card. Just be prepared to drop a setting here or there to keep things smooth in some games. That HD 7950 Newegg has is an older non-boost model and that HSF looks... underwhelming.

 

[escrow4]

G3258? Didn't you have an old ass quad instead? For that price may as well.

 

[Rezist]

That's a pretty weak looking cooler but I haven't seen a 7950 that won't do 1GHz on the core so it should line up between a 7950B and 280 in benchmarks. I would recommend OC'ing since the 800 MHz core was more or less just to create a gap from the 7970.

 

[VirtualLarry]

G3258? Didn't you have an old ass quad instead? For that price may as well.

I still have my Q9300 rigs too, but these cards are for my G3258 rigs.

 

[Greenlepricon]

My MSI TwinFrozr III 7950 is still going strong. It's at stock right now since I just replaced my cpu from a g3258 to a 4690k. I ran it for a couple of months with the pentium at 4.2GHz and it was fairly rare that I would notice stuttering. There is definitely a difference with my new cpu, especially when I'm multitasking, but considering I paid 2.5x as much for the 7950 a few years back, $130 is a terrific deal all things considered. I would OC the cpu a bit more or invest in an i3, but otherwise I really don't think you have any bottleneck to worry about 97% of the time while gaming.

Honestly since a 290x is more or less equal to a 970 performance wise, I think the 960 will be between a 280 and 280x, especially if a Ti version comes later. Maxwell is really underwhelming in my opinion without a good overclock, and I don't see them putting their 960 so close to the 970 that it eats at its sales.

I'm even surprised by how power efficient my 7950 seems to be until I need to crank up the voltage. Maxwell might trump it in that department, but it's really nothing to scoff at either. I would rather save 70 dollars than 50 watts any day.

 

[DigDog]

there were some GTX680 on the FS forum for the same money, just now.

 

[Headfoot]

$130 is a solid price. Set em to 1 ghz at stock voltage and receive frames per second

 

[RussianSensation]

I wouldn't get that 7950. A solid 7950 can overclock to 1.15-1.25Ghz, while still maintaining reasonable noise and temperatures, but this requires a high quality hsf, preferably 6+8 pin power delivery and proven user experience. Cards from MSI TwinFrozr, Gigabyte Windforce, Sapphire Tri-X, His ICEQ lineage. I would much rather buy a used 7970Ghz/280/280X than that new 7950.

 

[futurefields]

G3258 + a high end gpu = perfect rig for Fallout/Skyrim + mods no? Thought Bethesda games love dual cores

 

[Face2Face]

Like RS said, if you are thinking about getting the 7950 that Shintai linked, then I would pass. A single orb cooler on a 7950 makes for a noisy and hot experience. Personally, I would be looking for something used on [H] - 7970 - 7950 - with a better cooler, and potentially cheaper.

 

[KaRLiToS]

Don't buy that HD 7950, one of the worst cooler.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

Up until a couple months ago I was using a cheap MSI 7950. Face is correct a single fan cooler is noisy and ran hot. It did run games at 1080 well though. There is a solution to the noise too. Zip tie an AIO cpu cooler to it. Google redmod.

 

[KaRLiToS]

Up until a couple months ago I was using a cheap MSI 7950. Face is correct a single fan cooler is noisy and ran hot. It did run games at 1080 well though. There is a solution to the noise too. Zip tie an AIO cpu cooler to it. Google redmod.

This will add an additional 40-50$ to his purchase and will most likely void the warranty.

 

[therealnickdanger]

LOL, I read the post thinking GeForce 7950. I'm still running one with a softmod to a Quadro FX3500 for some older CAD work and it works well. ;-)

 

[mindbomb]

i'm in a similar boat, looking at some 7950's in the used market, but I think I will pass simply because I feel the lack of freesync support is gonna make monitor upgrades a pain in the future.

 

[el etro]

G3258 + a high end gpu = perfect rig for Fallout/Skyrim + mods no? Thought Bethesda games love dual cores

Yeah, but 2014/2013 AAA games will not be playable then...

 

[Jovec]

Yeah, but 2014/2013 AAA games will not be playable then...

Yep, won't even load.

A G3258 with a 7950 is what it is. It's more powerful than the vast majority of setups that are currently being used to game by average users who bought their computers at Best Buy. A drop-in i3 or i5 would make it a more powerful setup than what many who label themselves as gamers use. It's not a HW-E/4x GPu competitor.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Yeah, but 2014/2013 AAA games will not be playable then...

Yep, won't even load.

All but one plays fine dont they.