2 gb graphics card....?
hello yahoos,
im going to upgrade from a 1gb radeon hd 6870 to a 2gb something. could someone recommend a good one please. i have a m5a97 motherboard with a 600W psu. i have a 300$ budget but hoping to not spend it all so i can get some RAM or something. thanks in advance for any suggestions / recommendations. by the way i am getting an AMD card. thanks and have a good one.
Update:i know ishould probably get a 3gb card but im not really much into the high intensive games anyway and i think 2gb would suffice for now plus my budget is not that much. i only play racing games mostly and what i need the graphics card for is design and 3d animation but maybe someday i will start doing some battlefield.. to see what all the fuss is about 
. THANKS ALL. i will check out each of your suggestions. i really appreciate the help. much luck to all of you. i guess i will choose best answer of whoever's card i will get in the next few hours. thanks again
Comments
hi mike
although the radeon HD6870 is a excellent card 1gb is slowly becoming outdated as a recommended amount of video memory(vram) .. so I can understand why you want to upgrade ... so with that in mind you should check out the "Sapphire Radeon R9 280X Vapor-X OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Card "( http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other+products... ) which is a exceptional card
with its 3gb frame buffer and vapour X cooler this is the latest gpu technology .. and specifications include a 1070mhz core clock and gddr5 memory clocked at a massive 6200mhz effective
although XFX were once one of the best graphic card manufactuers around they have stopped doing their lifetime warranty in Europe and this was a bad move on their part .. however sapphire make reliable graphic cards and are the card of choice for many enthusiasts due to their efficient cooling solutions and fast core and memory clocks
I had a similar problem with a XFX HD4850 many years ago were the fan stopped spinning,however I replaced the bulky stock cooler with a arctic cooling accellero 3rd party gpu cooler and not only did this sort out the fan issue but reduced load temps by 11c ..
the Sapphire Radeon R9 280X Vapor-X OC 3072MB main selling point is its 3gb of ram ... and another is "mantle" support which would make cross-development between PC and console games much easier, and there appears to be a performance benefit to those running AMD Radeon graphics!
also battlefield 4 will be releasing a mantle patch will should give R7 and R9 radeon gpu,s around 20% better performance than non mantle cards
at the moment theres little information on exactly how mantle will perform,however its essentially another api(application program interface ) like direct x and open gl,but mantle can
1) can do nine times more draw calls per second than other api,s by reducing cpu overheads
2) enables higher graphic performance with direct access to all gpu features
3) newer and better rendering techniques
4) leverage optimization work from next gen game consoles tp pc,s
however most of this will be alien to gamers .. all they want and need is better performance in games ... and that's what the R9 and R7 graphic cards will deliver .... so that's why im recommending the R9 280X .... it may be fairly expensive at around £250 however its more than capable of running any current and up and coming game at maximum detail
if that's over your budget then check out the "
Sapphire Radeon R9 270X Dual-X Boost OC AMD Graphics Card 2GB Graphics Card "( http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other+products... ) ... this is still a 2gb card and has excellent core and memory clock speeds and 1280 stream processors
I hope this helps mike ..any questions let me know
good luck mate !
Yes XFX is fast but a bit unstable! they at one time, gave a lifetime warrantee but no more! IF your 6870 is still working is still a good card, Today I wouldn't go with anything less than a 7850 better still a 660Ti for $300 you can get up to a GTX 670, 2GB and have a few bucks left over. for about $330 you can have a 4GB! even many of the newest game still don't need 2GB but some can, I play Skyrim on a 670 4GB I have 98 ad on "mods" that eat up graphics memory, hence the 4GB. I'm kind of drooling over this...http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8... cause I don't want to spend the money for a Titan! I'm not cheap...I'm frugal!
Don't get a 2gb card. Get a 3gb one.
Look at the HD7950, Either Sapphire, msi, gigabyte, His IceQ boost.
ideally you want 8gb ram for any gaming machine.
I suggest getting one of the Sapphire graphics cards.
http://www.sapphiretech.com/landing.aspx?lid=1