Upgrading GPU (HD 6950), is it worth upgrading to R9 390?

Johnny Lightning

I built my PC over 4.5 years ago, and it's still running amazingly well. A tiny bit slower than 4 years ago but it's only ever crashed about 4 times in it's life, so I think it's doing well.

But anyway, one of my main interests in a good PC is gaming. Games these days are becoming a lot more demanding on the hardware. At the moment, I haven't found a game that doesn't run perfectly on very high graphic settings but I don't think that will last much longer.

On systemrequirementslab, most newer games fail my GPU on Recommended requirements, but I've tested it on some games and get a solid 60fps / max graphics, so I'm not sure how accurate these requirements are. Also some of the big newer games like Witcher 3, Just Cause 3 and Fallout 4 fail my GPU on Minimum requirements also, but only by a hair. I haven't had the chance to try them myself yet so I don't know how accurate they are. It just makes me consider an upgrade.

My specs are:
GPU: Asus Radeon HD 6950 2GB
Motherboard: ASRock P67 Extreme4 (B3), Socket 1155, ATX
CPU: i5-2500K 3.4GHz
RAM: 8GB G.Skill RipJaws-X PC3-12800U CL9
PSU: Super Flower 80 Plus Bronze Series Netzteil - 650 Watt

So I was looking into getting a new graphics card, and I was looking at the R9 390, which seems to be a big step up from my current one, while not being ridiculously over the top and expensive, but my questions are:

1) Is it a big enough upgrade to make it worth it or should I leave it until my current GPU really starts showing it's age?

2) Are there any other parts of my PC that would need upgrading also to really benefit from the newer GPU? I like to think my CPU and Mobo are still good but I'm not sure, they seem to perform very well still.

Thanks for any help

Digital Solitude

It would be a fairly big upgrade yeah, the CPU wouldn't be bottlenecking you, rest of PC is fine to run with a 390

TerrorFirmer

An R9 390 would probably be double the speed of a 6950, which isn't actually much faster than a basic €130 graphics card these days, if at all.

The HD6950 will run all new games still, but nowhere near ultra/60fps. The R9 390 would be a massive upgrade and the rest of your machine is perfect.

Skerries

I have similar specs to you and was thinking of upgrading my pc but as you said it is still powerful enough to run anything thrown at it today.

i5-2500K
MSI P67A-GD55 (B3)
Sapphire HD 6970
6GB-Kit Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1600 CL7
Corsair HX850 PSU

I have the 6970 and have just put in a R9 390 Gaming G1 from mindfactory.de as some games were giving me problems particularly The Witcher 3 and it is a big improvement and I can put all my settings back up to Ultra
so my advice is to do it

weisses

I am thinking of upgrading as well (from a 7950)

Handy tool here to compare

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1589?vs=1594

MarkAnthony

Sandybridge K skus - still awesomesause.

If you want a nice cheap boost wait until one of the other sells a card and use 2 in X-fire. That or buy one of the 290xs going on adverts for about €250.