28 replies to this topic

[Malachy Karrde]

I am looking to upgrade my graphics card. Right now I run a Radeon HD 5570. I'm looking to stay with the Radeon cards, and have a budget of $150 max. I detest Nvidia for the record. What's the best bang for the buck? Oh it needs to be PCI.

[EgoSlayer]

Malachy Karrde, on 21 May 2016 - 10:20 PM, said:

I am looking to upgrade my graphics card. Right now I run a Radeon HD 5570. I'm looking to stay with the Radeon cards, and have a budget of $150 max. I detest Nvidia for the record. What's the best bang for the buck? Oh it needs to be PCI.

If you are locked into a Radeon card it looks like your only choice is the R7 360/370 or you might be able to find an R9 380 on sale close to that price.
http://www.tomshardw...-gpus,4380.html

Prices are likely going to change in the next few months as both Nvidia (GTX 1080) and AMD (Polaris announcement June 1st) will drive the prices on the current crop of cards down. So really your best bet is to wait if you can as your $150 is going to buy a lot more performance if you can wait 2-3 months.

Edited by EgoSlayer, 21 May 2016 - 10:46 PM.

[JackOfDiamonds]

MWO is really demanding on the CPU. I made the mistake of upgrading to a better graphics card, when really my money would have been better spent on the processor.

Otherwise, there are lots of good reviews out there for graphics cards.

[Yosharian]

Malachy Karrde, on 21 May 2016 - 10:20 PM, said:

I am looking to upgrade my graphics card. Right now I run a Radeon HD 5570. I'm looking to stay with the Radeon cards, and have a budget of $150 max. I detest Nvidia for the record. What's the best bang for the buck? Oh it needs to be PCI.

You mean PCI-E right?

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Nobody should be suggesting you any cards without your entire system specs.

An HD 5570 is so old im wondering if theres any point to you upgrading if the rest of the system is as old.
In MWO CPU>GPU.

Edited by Oderint dum Metuant, 22 May 2016 - 02:29 AM.

[Khobai]

5570 is so old I would just put the $150 towards eventually buying a new computer. because chances are pretty good your motherboard bios wont be able to support newer video cards anyway

plus as other people have said if your computer is old the cpu might not be able to handle the game anyway. you really need at least a quadcore to run MWO.

you should be able to buy a new computer (with a gtx960 or whatever) that will run MWO smoothly on very high settings for about $800-$1000.

Edited by Khobai, 22 May 2016 - 02:59 AM.

[Malachy Karrde]

I have an Asus m4a77td motherboard with amd phenom II X2 955 quad core processor at 3200 mhz. When I had the system made, the 5570 was a middle of the pack graphics card. Upgrading the system is out of the question right now or in the next couple years. I am doubling the RAM and getting a better graphics card. I've had no end of trouble with Nvidia graphics cards so will be sticking to AMD. My system has the cooling to handle it. Some people have told me the R7 is better than the R9 card?

I used to be up on computer tech but it's been a long time. Ever since I moved west, I don't keep up on the latest tech trends. My current system runs mwo just fine fyi.

Edited by Malachy Karrde, 22 May 2016 - 04:54 AM.

[Yosharian]

Quote

My current system runs mwo just fine fyi.

Lol whut

This is the card that I just upgraded from because it wasn't cutting it for me with MWO, compared to yours:

http://gpuboss.com/g...GeForce-GTX-770

This is the CPU I just upgraded from for the same reason, again compared to yours:

http://cpuboss.com/c...henom-II-X4-955

Put simply, you're not going to achieve good results with MWO using that system simply by throwing in some more RAM and a slightly better GPU. The last time I upgraded my card (to the 770, from a 5970 iirc), my performance in MWO did not change whatsoever.

Edited by Yosharian, 22 May 2016 - 06:30 AM.

[Ghogiel]

I had a 955BE. Good cpu... 6 years ago. Phenom iis were the last good cpus AMD made.

You will probably get some better fps with a newer card over a 5570, which was never a mid range card and was a budget low end gpu. It's one of the lowest of that gen of cards. It's basically garbage,

I ran MWO with a 955BE with a 5830, which is a mid range card, and upgraded to a 270x. Which gave 0 fps improvments. But the 5570 is so weak I expect it be holding back a 955

[Flapdrol]

Could wait until june 1. Amd will probably announce a new card in that price range, which should be better price/performance and massively more power efficient.

Even if it's still a month out by then it'll still drive prices down. Especially used.

Edited by Flapdrol, 22 May 2016 - 06:50 AM.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Malachy Karrde, on 22 May 2016 - 04:53 AM, said:

I have an Asus m4a77td motherboard with amd phenom II X2 955 quad core processor at 3200 mhz. When I had the system made, the 5570 was a middle of the pack graphics card. Upgrading the system is out of the question right now or in the next couple years. I am doubling the RAM and getting a better graphics card. I've had no end of trouble with Nvidia graphics cards so will be sticking to AMD. My system has the cooling to handle it. Some people have told me the R7 is better than the R9 card?

I used to be up on computer tech but it's been a long time. Ever since I moved west, I don't keep up on the latest tech trends. My current system runs mwo just fine fyi.

Right a few things to set you straight.

Unless your running a 64bit Operating system, past 4GB is pointless i will assume however that you are at least running an up to date OS that is 64 bit, no more than 8GB of RAM is required (at least not for your old machine).

That Phenom II is ancient but it's better than the FX series that came after it for MWO. That doesn't mean it's ideal because it's not and as MWO relies more on the CPU than GPU this will bottleneck you for the foreseeable.

The R7 line is again midline as in you can't afford no more, stick with an under performing R9 series or move back to Nvidia.
If you stick with the AMD R9 series better check that PSU as usual AMD's cards use more power than Nvidia and an old PSU and new GPU is a problem that will happen sooner rather than later.
AMD should be paper announcing their new cards soon, so it could be advisable to wait and see what they have up their sleeve.

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814121963

Is right at your budget, but i'll reiterate that your CPU is going to kill your FPS potential in MWO .

Edited by Oderint dum Metuant, 22 May 2016 - 06:54 AM.

[GreenHell]

Hmm... considering your aging hardware, I'd say it's new computer time. Save up though, because this holiday season will drop some new tech from AMD (if they're your thing).

The "Zen" CPU is coming, and so is the "Vega-10" GFX card. They'll be expensive for sure, but it sounds like AMD are finally pulling their heads out of their butts for this one. No more bandwidth bottlenecks, yay!

That said, if you're not looking to spend $2k on a new rig, an i7 3770k+R380 (maybe 390 on sale?) build wouldn't break the bank.

[Ghogiel]

Oderint dum Metuant, on 22 May 2016 - 06:52 AM, said:

That Phenom II is ancient but it's better than the FX series that came after it for MWO.

The piledriver 8xxx FX chips run MWO twice the frame rate as a 955. So no one can say the phenom2s are better in anyway what so ever, but I would say the FX chips are not good.

[Pinscher]

Your best optiion is keep saving money till the end of the year. AM4 chipset will be the end of ddr3 when AMD also supports ddr4. After the launch, ddr3 and boards will start lowering in price. That will be your chance to pick thing up cheap. However I cannot stress enough the importance of not going cheap on a power supply. My trusted brand is seasonic now after several cheaper supplies blowing and killing my components. I run a 750w gold for my power hungry fx-4350 and r9 280x. Yes a quad core, I have no interest in playing a game, streaming it, and recording it at the same time. To be honest i wish they made a super bad #$$ dual core, this would suit my needs better. Spare me the 6 other cores and replace that same surface area with 30 megs of level2 and 3 cache.

[-Natural Selection-]

Pinscher, on 22 May 2016 - 08:50 AM, said:

I run a 750w gold for my power hungry fx-4350 and r9 280x.

Not sure why people would run anything else. Seasonic only makes power supplies and often others are just relabeled Seasonic. Most reviewers dont even bother testing them because they just that good lol.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Ghogiel, on 22 May 2016 - 08:26 AM, said:

The piledriver 8xxx FX chips run MWO twice the frame rate as a 955. So no one can say the phenom2s are better in anyway what so ever, but I would say the FX chips are not good.

Key part, the FX chips the came after PII (bulldozer).

Piledriver is just a much later revision that papered over the cracks of sharing FPU units because AMD's hedge bet of floating point being less important failed to come to fruition.

His board being AM3 wouldn't support an upgrade to piledriver, so at that point it would still be better to go Intel.

[Gyrok]

Oderint dum Metuant, on 22 May 2016 - 09:14 AM, said:

Key part, the FX chips the came after PII (bulldozer).

Piledriver is just a much later revision that papered over the cracks of sharing FPU units because AMD's hedge bet of floating point being less important failed to come to fruition.

His board being AM3 wouldn't support an upgrade to piledriver, so at that point it would still be better to go Intel.

That depends

Sometimes you can build a budget PC that will do the trick for almost nothing.

[zagibu]

An R7 370 is probably the best AMD card you can get with that budget: http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814121967

[Mech Jager]

I was in a similar boat about a year ago and kept the card and upgraded the system to an i5 4970k for gaming. I usually only keep one primary software open with web browsing (no video) so the i7 were not so important.

Huge jump in everything. It was $600 with ssd and good ram. SO more time saving. Many times more tried and true parts will get you better results than top of the line with new tech (compatibility and optimization are not lies).


I did have an older AMD board and some searching for make and model specific issues helped me gain some fps before being able to afford the switch. You may want to put your boards name and "optimize gaming" in a google search and see what pops up.

[Malachy Karrde]

I run around 60 fps with my current setup. I've never had any issues with it. My main objective is to be able to play rainbow 6 siege at better quality levels. I have a 64 bit operating system and a pretty good power supply. Buying a new computer is not in the cards for several years so I need to do whatever I can to limp this one along as long as possible. I recently had to buy a couple new saddles so that killed my electronics budget for a long time. Thanks for the suggestions I'll check them out!