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Hi, 5 years ago I purchased an HD7850 and its starting to show its age in newer games. in 2016 I upgraded to a Skylake i5-6500 system, then an M.2 PCIe SSD, and now I think I am ready for the new video card to go with it all and round out the system.

1) With the crypto crap spoiling the market, should I just wait? I mean, games are playable, just a bit pokey when things get complicated on the screen, sometimes causing potentially avoidable deaths which can be a bit frustrating at times.
2) What would you suggest as an affordable, not top of the line, upgrade to the 7850 that will have an immediate, noticeable beneficial impact? I'm not beholden to either Red or Green team, price:performance is my usual driving force. However, I've been told by more than one source that the specific game I play runs a little better on the Green team's products.

Shinare wrote:

1) With the crypto crap spoiling the market, should I just wait? I mean, games are playable, just a bit pokey when things get complicated on the screen, sometimes causing potentially avoidable deaths which can be a bit frustrating at times.

Yes, wait.

If you really want to get a new GPU apparently you can get one at near MSRP prices if you catch them when they come in stock. Your best bet
is at your local Best Buy/Frys when they get in new stock but you would need to be there when the GPU show up as they seem to sell out in a few
hours. Buying online is tougher since people buy them so quickly and the resellers are charging two arms and a leg. You might get lucky if you tried
with the company stores like EVGAs. Still have to keep checking the site for when new stock shows up.


To answer your other question it seems like any new GPU will be better than what you have. My suggestion would likely be a GTX 1060. The 5GB is best,
but it seems the 3GB 1060 isn't that bad at 1080P according to the tests that Steve on Hardware Unboxed's Youtube channel did.

I went from an R9 270 (basically the same GPU as your 7850, just rebadged) to a GTX 1060 6GB- I saw some very nice performance improvements, at a lower power consumption.

Of course this was before things went totally insane with cryptomining.

Anything more powerful than a 7850 is horrendously overpriced right now. The GTX 1050 or RX560 are going to be approximately the same speed as your HD7850. Both are affordable at around the $135 mark and both almost of no benefit to you if you want more performance.

Twice as fast as the 1050 and RX560 are the GTX 1060 6GB and RX580 8GB, MSRP $250 and $230 respectively. These would be ideal upgrades allowing high/ultra settings at 1920x1080 with fluid 60fps framerates.

You'll find the GTX 1060 marked up from $250 to over $500 anywhere that has it in stock, and Newegg has listings for almost $1000 for a cool 4x the MSRP.
You'll find the RX 580 8GB marked up from $230 to over $700 anywhere that has it in stock, and Newegg has listings for over $1000. Yeah :\
You could try and pre-order one of the out-of-stock ones for under $400 and hope/wait, or you could use the automatic stock notifications to jump on cards the second they become available (I'm not exaggerating, the minute they become available is too slow).

You might also want to take a look at ebay/craigslist prices of your 7850 and sell it off. Maybe you can get over $200 for it, which would fund a GTX 1050 (roughly 15% faster than a stock 7850 2GB) leaving you with a quieter, cooler, more power-efficient card and anything from $50-100 in your pocket. It's not fast enough to make a huge difference, but Nvidia's drivers are better optimised for their current-generation GPUs, so that would probably make a significant difference to all these TWIMTPB gameworks titles that don't run so well on other hardware.

I went from a 7870 to rx580 8gb and at 1920x1080 its a huge difference in what visual goodies you can turn on.

I was able to get it for ~$240 from Newegg with free shipping and a $10 MIR in late November of last year.

The two cards are mostly equal for power draw while the new card is around double the performance.

If you can find another deal like that again I would upgrade. Wait for prices to drop around the thanksgiving deals.

Glorious wrote:

Shinare wrote:

1) With the crypto crap spoiling the market, should I just wait? I mean, games are playable, just a bit pokey when things get complicated on the screen, sometimes causing potentially avoidable deaths which can be a bit frustrating at times.

Yes, wait.

And while waiting, you can try to catch the few being sold at MSRP from certain outlets when they restock. For example, EVGA's webiste or Massdrop if you're quick.

cynan wrote:

And while waiting, you can try to catch the few being sold at MSRP from certain outlets when they restock. For example, EVGA's webiste or Massdrop if you're quick.

Yeah, if you can get one like that, sure.

Thank you all for that great insight. The performance comparisons are especially helpful. $200 is usually the price point I buy at for a video card so $250 isn't unthinkable. It certainly sounds like I need to wait and just keep my eye out for a 1060.

As a new "empty-nester" this is the first video card upgrade that I will be doing in a long long time where the current card will not be getting "passed down" to an offspring. I may just try the craigslist thing and sell it off for a bit of offset. Thanks!