help Best option for r9 290x upgrade (£350 budget)

[Matti1311]

I have a budget of £350 and i'm not sure what graphics card(s) to get. I'm using an fx8350 CPU, (however its not the bottle neck as in games the card hits 100% and the CPU tops at 60%) and i want to make sure the new graphics card does not get bottle necked too hard. (second hard cards are not a problem for me).

 

My ideas:

Sli Gtx 970 

Gtx 980ti 

Gtx 1070

 

[elago]

Give it  another year, especially with the GPU market as it is and if you're only playing at 1080p. Besides, you'd probably see decent gains just by upgrading the CPU first.

[Zando_]

My 980 Ti is pretty boss, with Nvidia DSR I can run EA's Battlefront at near true 4K which a decently steady 45-60 fps on medium, maybe med/high if I really bothered to tweak settings. But it causes problems with windows, since I use a 1080p screen and another 1680x1050 screen. That said, the point it it can run 4K pretty well, and I only have a 3.2GHz i5 2400, which is probably around the same level as your FX. With an i7, it'd probs run even better. 

 

But I think the R9 290x is the same as an R9 390 which is pretty good....

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

My 980 Ti is pretty boss, with Nvidia DSR I can run EA's Battlefront at near true 4K which a decently steady 45-60 fps on medium, maybe med/high if I really bothered to tweak settings. But it causes problems with windows, since I use a 1080p screen and another 1680x1050 screen. That said, the point it it can run 4K pretty well, and I only have a 3.2GHz i5 2400, which is probably around the same level as your FX. With an i7, it'd probs run even better. 

 

But I think the R9 290x is the same as an R9 390 which is pretty good....

Yea the r9 could run games around high at ultrawide resolution when I had it, so it's still not a bad gpu. Somewhere between the 570 and 580 I believe

[Fraser Cow]

You should save a bit more and upgrade your CPU and then get a new 1170 or whatever it ends up being next year. I know a few people running their 1070 on a FX8350 and they say it's fine.  I used to run a 4690k @4.6Ghz with my 1070 and I upgraded to Ryzen 7 because it wasn't fine, I had all kinds of trouble with frame dips in Battlefield 1 and I had a hard time breaking 100FPS.  With my 1700 I don't get random dips and my frame rate is over 100 90% of the time. CPU load is typically around 35-40% while gaming.  The R9 290 isn't a bad card for 1440P and lower, so my advice is you should try to upgrade your CPU and then save some money for whatever Nvidia releases next year.

[Monkey Dust]

The 290X is still a solid, if slightly power hungry, card.  I'd keep saving and just build an entirely new rig when you can afford it.