my HD 7950 died. what should replace it?

trackerman

Hi Folks,
My HD 7950 graphics card died, it served me well but it's almost 6 years old now.

A quick bake in the over got it going again (PCB only) but I need to replace it soon.

Whats recommended these days as a fairly good gaming replacement.
I use a 2560x 1440 IPS monitor and like occasional gaming.


Thanks for any suggestion you may have...

Budget is sub 200 euro.

Homelander

Radeon 5500XT is a good value. Most places have a game promo at the moment so for £170 you can get the 4GB card with Resident Evil 3 + Monster Hunter free, or around £190 for the 8GB model.

There's also the GTX1660 6GB for around £190 though no free games.

If you're not playing very intensive games there is also something like the RX570 8GB for around £130 that is still a good card and still a decent upgrade on your HD7950.

If your PC is as old as the 7950 though there's a good chance your processor will bottleneck any new card to varying degrees depending on the game, could vary from negligible to severe.

beauf

I picked up 1050ti for 80 used as a stopgap until I had the budget to do the whole machine. Didnt have the PSU to get anything much better. If you have a decent PSU I would be looking for a 6-8gb card that you can take with you to your next machine.

trackerman

Thanks guys, most helpful.

Good point on the CPU and Power supply.

The current setup is:
Z77 pro3 motherboard
Intel i5 3570k 3.4 GHz
Crossair 600w PSU

I would mind if the new GPU was held back with old technology, I will most likely upgrade the MB and CPU in due course.

I will check out the recommendations above.

cheers!!! and stay safe!

trackerman

Hi Homelander, where do you see those prices?
I checked Komplette but they are at least 20% more

beauf

This is USA based but has great benchmarking tests. Skip to the end if it's too long...

https://youtu.be/siTAXBwvCow

Homelander

5500XT available here for preorder at £170 with free games.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/powercolor-radeon-rx-5500-xt-4096mb-gddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-19j-pc.html

Or £195 for the 8GB version. 4GB version is fine but make sure to stick to 'medium' texture quality in many new games, anything higher will really hurt performance as it could exceed the 4GB video memory.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/msi-radeon-rx-5500-xt-mech-oc-8192mb-gddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-367-ms.html

K.O.Kiki

trackerman wrote: »

Hi Homelander, where do you see those prices?
I checked Komplette but they are at least 20% more

In-stock on CCL:
MSI Mech OC 4Gb - £169.41/€194

The 8Gb version is only €20 more, too.

trackerman

Thanks folks, good review too.

trackerman

Folks,
It's been quite a while since I posted this question, since then the Radeon 5500XT is hard to get and I suspect it's a bit outdated.

Now with Brexit I am wondering what and where I should get to replace my HD 7950

PS setup is still the same:

The current setup is:
Z77 pro3 motherboard
Intel i5 3570k 3.4 GHz
Crossair 600w PSU

Thanks

Simi

trackerman wrote: »

Folks,
It's been quite a while since I posted this question, since then the Radeon 5500XT is hard to get and I suspect it's a bit outdated.

Now with Brexit I am wondering what and where I should get to replace my HD 7950

PS setup is still the same:

The current setup is:
Z77 pro3 motherboard
Intel i5 3570k 3.4 GHz
Crossair 600w PSU

Thanks

Whatever you can find really. Demand has completely outstripped supply and there's little sign of things getting better in the short-medium term.

Try to find good second hand deals or watch for stock drops at MSRP. Most UK sites are not delivering to Ireland because of brexit.

I had also planned on upgrading but I think I'm going to sit out this madness with my trusty r9 390 and wait until the dust settles

Slutmonkey57b

trackerman wrote: »

Folks,
It's been quite a while since I posted this question, since then the Radeon 5500XT is hard to get and I suspect it's a bit outdated.

Now with Brexit I am wondering what and where I should get to replace my HD 7950

PS setup is still the same:

The current setup is:
Z77 pro3 motherboard
Intel i5 3570k 3.4 GHz
Crossair 600w PSU

Thanks

If you didn't get a card 10 months ago, I'm afraid you are totally ****ed now and that'll be the case until summer probably. Particularly at a budget of under 200 as both companies have abandoned that price point entirely, even when stock does come back in.

trackerman

Thanks Guys, this bloomin Brexit and Covid is a double curse on us... I shall patch it up and keep going until later in the year.

AlmightyCushion

There is a guy on here who was asking what he could do with an old 7970. Might be worth throwing him a few quid for it to tide you over until GPUs availability and pricing improves.

Edit: here is the post.

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=116158496&postcount=4038

SeanW

At this point, I think the problem is mining. nvidia would usually have a market leading position, but it seems their cards are very good at mining Ethereum, and the price of that has been going skywards as world central banks have been engaging in "monetary easing" (i.e. printing money) to support their societies through the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.

AMD cards apparently are not so good at the oul mining, but they simply weren't prepared to be the near-sole source of graphics cards for gamers and enthusiasts. They might want to ramp up production of Radeon XT 6000 cards, but they can only get so many 7nm wafers from TSMC and those have to be divided between AMD chips for consoles, Zen 3/Ryzen 5000 CPUs and Radeon XT 6000 graphics cards.

For there to be any break in this mess, one of 3 things must happen:
1) The entity that controls the Etherium currency must move from a proof-of-work system to a proof-of-stake system, something I've read about.
2) The price of Ethereum and/or daily activity in it must collapse.
3) AMD and/or Nvidia must release large numbers of graphics cards that are not well suited to Ethereum mining. Nvidia could do it by making budget Ampere cards (e.g. a 3050 or even 3030) limited to 4GB in memory, as Ethereum mining needs or will soon need more than that for the card to be effective. Or AMD/TSMC could dramatically improve their supply of 7nm wafers, permitting AMD to sell dramatically more Radeons, or dedicating some of their supply to new budget-oriented cards like for example a 4GB 6500. It wouldn't be a perfect solution to say the least, but they could get graphics cards into the hands of gamers now if they really wanted to.

I can't speculate as to when - or even if - any of this will happen. The upcoming release of 5nm products for Nvidia Lovelace, AMD Radeon RDNA3 and AMD Zen 4 CPUs may change some of this, but for this generation it's a total cluster-bleep and it's going to remain that way for the foreseeable future.