Worth upgrading Radeon 6950 on i3 machine for SW Battlefront (160$ budget)

[kommisar]

This is simple enough to test. You say you play bf4 (assuming bf4 over bf3), get something like MSI afterburner, turn all settings to low, use the on screen display to show gpu usage, if it is less than 90% most of the time you are cpu limited. In that situation a new video card won't make a whole lot of difference.

BF3 actually. Good suggestion. What is afterburner? Does it replace Catalyst Control Center? Can I play multiplayer while having the on-screen display on?

I'm kind of miffed that no one has done these kind of tests somewhere on the interwebs. All the review sites seem to test the same configurations and single player and are not very useful to most people. I mean yes BF will run really fast with 4790k overclocked with a gtx 980. But I don't need a review site to tell me that.

 

[nurturedhate]

I'll reiterate OP,
You should wait.

You're in a thread where people are giving you recommendations to spend money, while owning setups that are 2+ times the worth of your setup in cash, and they'll spend far more than $160 on their next GPU upgrade.

Wait. See how the game plays when it releases. Then upgrade if you want to.

But it all depends on your budget/life style and how flexible you are for cash and much this money will impact your finances...
If it's just meh $160 then spend it now and enjoy it.
If every dollar counts and you don't got much saved, you're stupid to spend it now before the game comes out if that's the reason you're purchasing the card is for that one game.....

Wise words and I concur.

Side note - your statement "You're in a thread where people are giving you recommendations to spend money, while owning setups that are 2+ times the worth of your setup in cash, and they'll spend far more than $160 on their next GPU upgrade." That should really be the first post/disclaimer made in basically every purchasing decision thread.

 

[nurturedhate]

BF3 actually. Good suggestion. What is afterburner? Does it replace Catalyst Control Center? Can I play multiplayer while having the on-screen display on?

I'm kind of miffed that no one has done these kind of tests somewhere on the interwebs. All the review sites seem to test the same configurations and single player and are not very useful to most people. I mean yes BF will run really fast with 4790k overclocked with a gtx 980. But I don't need a review site to tell me that.

I agree, I spent the past hour or so (dinner, cubs/mets game) trying to find data and only found a couple of youtube videos with fraps as the fps source and saw dips into the high 30s but nothing that really answered the posed question, so I wouldn't even take that 35ish fps as a valid data point either.

MSI afterburner is a program that among many little things lets you track gpu usage while in game.

http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/msi-afterburner-beta-download.html

It will install two components, afterburner and rivatuner. The short answer is Afterburner will allow you to setup what you want to see in game and rivatuner will display it.

Once you install afterburner, open the settings, go to the Monitoring tab, select GPU Usage from the list, then once selected youll see an option down below that says "Show in On-screen Display" and check that box. I would also do the same for "Framerate" so you can see your fps

Now go to the On-screen Display tab and in the box "Toggle On-screen Display" press the key you want to turn it on and off in game. I personally use my home key. Haven't found a game yet where that has caused an issue.

While in game press the home key or whatever you set it up as and you should see some writing appear in the top left corner I believe, I think the default color is a pinkish/purple.

 

[skipsneeky2]

He is not cpu limited with a 6950.......ANd a i3 will play most games just fine.
A gtx950 will probably give him 2 or 3x the fps that he has now in BF4.

I think that card would be a good match,i know a rig i had with a i3 3220 certainly pulled less frames with my 770 then it did with a i5 2550 with Ultra+4x msaa at 768p in BF4 and seeing a 960 not being far off i wouldn't bother with a 960 at that resolution.

 

[AtenRa]

He is not cpu limited with a 6950.......ANd a i3 will play most games just fine.
A gtx950 will probably give him 2 or 3x the fps that he has now in BF4.

Are you making this 2 or 3x times the fps out of your .......... ????

GTX950 could be 10-30% faster at best vs HD6950.

Also for BF4 you want to use Mantle, especially when you have a slow CPU and that suggest an AMD GCN GPU.

 

[iiiankiii]

He is not cpu limited with a 6950.......ANd a i3 will play most games just fine.
A gtx950 will probably give him 2 or 3x the fps that he has now in BF4.

A GTX750TI ~ 6950
Therefore, a gtx950 is ~%50 faster than a GTX750TI / 6950

Having said that, I do believe the GTX 950 is a good match for the i3-2120 because that CPU will bottleneck anything much higher.

If it was me, I would drop a used i5-2500k in there and overclock it. It should cost about ~$135 off ebay. A 4.0GHZ i5-2500k will run almost everything and will last you a very long time. . Then pair it with a used R9 280x for ~$160 off ebay.

135+160=~$300

You have a h61 motheboard so no overclocking. Sucks

 

[atticus14]

I take it you missed the open beta...would have been a good way to find out.

Since you are gaming at basically 720p with a 6950, I personally think you MIGHT be good enough already. Wait and see IMO.

if you include rebates R9 380s hit 169

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...07709 600489223 600473876 600531760 600565502

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if you notice the powercolor has 4GB for the same price

review: http://www.bjorn3d.com/2015/07/powe...axr9-380-4gbd5-ppdhe-affordable-4gb-solution/

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and seem to outdo the 960 pretty easily in the battlefront beta benchmark

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_page...ta_vga_graphics_performance_benchmarks,5.html

 

[Mondozei]

I take it you missed the open beta...would have been a good way to find out.

Since you are gaming at basically 720p with a 6950, I personally think you MIGHT be good enough already. Wait and see IMO.

if you include rebates R9 380s hit 169

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100007709%20600489223%20600473876%20600531760%20600565502

--------------------------------------
if you notice the powercolor has 4GB for the same price

review: http://www.bjorn3d.com/2015/07/powe...axr9-380-4gbd5-ppdhe-affordable-4gb-solution/

------------------------------------------------

and seem to outdo the 960 pretty easily in the battlefront beta benchmark

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_page...ta_vga_graphics_performance_benchmarks,5.html

Best reply in the thread. I'd wait and see if they fixed the budget AMD GPU issue until release. But AMD cards in the midrange segment and above have been doing much better than NV. Just like BF3/BF4 was tilted to NV, Battlefront seems to be tilted to AMD. If that's your game, get a 380 for 169 or similar when the game is released if you find out your current setup isn't enough.

 

[railven]

For Battlefront, there is a serious issue affecting AMD cards on low-end CPUs like yours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nlMJ7Ysdzk

Hopefully this gets fixed at launch, but as it stands:

My recommendation is either upgrade to a 750 Ti for around $90 - $100, or get a 960 4GB (though the cheapest available are $30 over your budget).

A 960 might be bottleneck by your CPU though. If you're looking for a good experience at 1366x768, a 750 Ti is probably your sweet spot. You could also experiment with some DSR.

Alternatively, you could try and get a secondhand i5 processor and stick with you 6950. It should be able to about match 750 Ti performance, though these old architectures can choke in newer games.

Did no one in this thread watch this video? It shows a R7 260 hitching with an i3 4130. Here, I'll save you the trouble:

https://youtu.be/9nlMJ7Ysdzk?t=150

I would factor that into my buying decision. To me that kind of hitching is game breaking.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Yeah, I'd wait for dx12.

Good chance you'll be able to do something like a used 7870 or 7950, which can be really cheap.

 

[kommisar]

I think that card would be a good match,i know a rig i had with a i3 3220 certainly pulled less frames with my 770 then it did with a i5 2550 with Ultra+4x msaa at 768p in BF4 and seeing a 960 not being far off i wouldn't bother with a 960 at that resolution.

So what you are saying is cpu is going to have a bigger effect than video card at 768p in Battlefield/Battlefront? What kind of difference did you see in frame rate between i3 3220 and i5 2550?

Because an alternative $160 upgrade for me is to get a used i5 3570 but I thought I answered that question in my other thread on the cpus and overclocking forum but you seem to have personally tried that upgrade.

 

[tential]

Did no one in this thread watch this video? It shows a R7 260 hitching with an i3 4130. Here, I'll save you the trouble:

https://youtu.be/9nlMJ7Ysdzk?t=150

I would factor that into my buying decision. To me that kind of hitching is game breaking.

Game isn't out.... Would wait til it's out first to see if hitching still occurs. The point of the open beta is to find issues and fix them.
This is why I'm saying wait see launch day benches, see how the game performs on his current rig then purchase

 

[Headfoot]

If you upgrade your GPU now, you will be limited by your CPU and you will have to make a (possibly compromised) decision based on that.

If you upgrade your CPU first, you can see if your FPS are acceptable, and then you can buy a GPU later and your CPU wont be limiting it.

It depends on whether you think you will have the cash to upgrade again in the near future.

If you can afford to do the two upgrades, I would do CPU (3570) plus the best GPU you can get in your budget at the later time when you can buy it.

If you can absolutely only afford to do a GPU upgrade, I'd wait until the game comes out, try it out, and see if you can get a good black friday deal on any of these gpus: gtx 950, gtx 960, r9 285, r9 380, r9 280, r9 280x. 2GB vs 3GB vs 4GB doesnt matter much on 1368x768. It will matter more at 1080p.

 

[happy medium]

Get em while there hot EVGA gtx960 4gb super super clocked for 160$ AR .

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2452010

I may buy one of these for my budget i3 6100 @ 1080p, Skylake build ,really good price.

 

[Zstream]

I have a i5 2400 and a r7 270... not overclocked. I played the beta and it worked just fine. I have no idea what the settings are (default?) but the resolution was at 1920*1080.

I guess once you reach age thirty, you don't care anymore about settings.

 

[tential]

I have a i5 2400 and a r7 270... not overclocked. I played the beta and it worked just fine. I have no idea what the settings are (default?) but the resolution was at 1920*1080.

I guess once you reach age thirty, you don't care anymore about settings.

Speak for yourself......

I care just as much now if not more.

 

[skipsneeky2]

So what you are saying is cpu is going to have a bigger effect than video card at 768p in Battlefield/Battlefront? What kind of difference did you see in frame rate between i3 3220 and i5 2550?

With BF4,i saw dips sometimes into the 40-50s with the i3 3220 but with the i5 2500 i pretty much never dropped below 60fps.Same settings used with different results with the 770.My native resolution was 768p at the time so i am one of the few who can speak from experience with both cpus.

The i3 performance was still pretty good overall but the observation of a bottleneck was seen.Resolution bumps above 768p brought the bottleneck right back to the gpu.