ATI 3850 Upgrade

[MacAlisterL]

My friend Brian's Computer has had a huge bottleneck for about two years. His graphics card is The ATI 3850 with 256mb of GDDR2 and his CPU and Mobo are 4930k and a blackout X79 board from Asus. Last night during some Netflix, his card took a crap. He has $450 to spend on a new card and HE LOVES WINDFORCE coolers. Ahhem... He used to work at Gigabyte USA when some of the first Windforce cards were released.  I was thinking either a 390x windforce, two windforce 960's or a 970. What would you recommend?

[Guest]

not 960s, 1 faster card over 2 slower cards, 970 or 390x, 390x is slightly faster, but take your pick.

 

[Magikarpdrowned]

For $450, I would go with an R9 390x

[TheRandomness]

1 minute ago, Mycrafter5 said:

not 960s, 1 faster card over 2 slower cards, 970 or 390x, 390x is slightly faster, but take your pick.

 

The 390X is MUCH faster than the 970. It's more comparable to a 980.

[Guest]

Just now, TheRandomness said:

The 390X is MUCH faster than the 970. It's more comparable to a 980.

Still find it quite surprising Hawaii GPUs are holding up so well

[KemoKa]

If you want a Hawaii card you can get 290Xs for way less than a 390X, and they have damn near the same performance.

[Dzzope]

If he plays allot of games that scale well with the 960's, then I woulkd go 2 4GB models BUT in games that don't scale well, the 970/390 will walk all over it.. other than that it's pick whichever card suits more of his games, the 390 and 970 trade blows generally.

[Castdeath97]

At this budget your best bet is the R9 390X (unless you can find a discounted 980).