Asus HD 4670 512MB -> MSI Radeon 7750 2GB Upgrade Worth It?

[JDCalvert]

Hi everyone,

I currently have an Asus Radeon HD4670 512MB and am considering upgrading to an MSI HD7750 2GB version. Tom's Hardware says it's the best card in the price range (around £70). I'm a student so a little tight for cash, but I like to game and am reaching the point where my card doesn't really cut it.

I'm about to start my final year project (I do Computer Science and managed to convince my project leader to let me make a game yay!), which I would also like to be able to use OpenGL 4.0 and maybe DX11 for (for practice mainly).

So basically what I'm asking is whether it's worth the upgrade. Tom's Hardware says it's a few tiers above mine on their most recent hierachy chart (can't post a link because my first post), but looking on another website, hwcompare, it seems that while the memory and pixel bandwidths are better by far, the texel rate isn't so great. Not sure if this is a mistake on the website, a weakness of the 7750, or a great strength of the 4670.

Anyway, here are some of my other system specs:
Asus M2V Motherboard
AMD Athlon X2 6000+ (3.0Ghz)
6GB DDR2-800 RAM
OCZ Solid 3 120GB SSD
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Any advice, including suggestions of other cards for around the same price, would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Jon

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The 2GB version is most likely to use DDR3/GDDR3. The HD7750 GDDR5 is what you need to look at.

The HD7750 GDDR5 is around twice the speed of the HD5670 GDDR5:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/HD_7750/26.html

The HD5670 GDDR5 is around 25% faster than a HD4670 GDDR3:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/H...0_IceQ/28.html

[JDCalvert]

Thanks for the reply. I didn't realise that it would be that much faster, I expected maybe pushing a 100% increase if I was lucky
I hadn't actually noticed the memory type before; you're right it does use GDDR3, it's quite a big difference, but then again so is the price from what I've seen (the 1GB versions tend to be around £100). Is it significant seeing as I'm still on PCI-E 2.0 though? I'm not looking too much for future-proof; when I upgrade again I intend to do it properley since I'll be replacing everything else anyway.

I've looked up a few bandwidths and it seems that GDDR3 has a bandwidth of around 20 GBytes/s (Wikipedia, 64 lanes, the 7750 card is 128 lanes am I right?) whereas PCI-E 2.0 on 16 lanes has a total rate of only 8 GBytes/s. I suppose it depends on the application whether it'll be transferring between the main memory and video memory a lot or not so much?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The HD7750 GDDR5 is around £70 to £80 and PCI-E 2.0 is more than enough.

Edit!!

Quite a few are under £75:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/VTX3D-Graphi...8084651&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.co.uk/VTX3D-Radeon...8084651&sr=1-6

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sapphire-Rad...8084651&sr=1-1

For around £85 to £90 you can get an HD7770:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/MSI-R7770-DD...8084721&sr=1-6

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-DirectC...084721&sr=1-10

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is how much GDDR3 reduces performance:

http://ht4u.net/reviews/2012/budget_...r3/index25.php

[JDCalvert]

Wow I never realised quite how much of a difference it would make! I thought there would be a slight performance hit but nothing on this scale. I guess the 2GB version is out then.
..and now I'm tempted by the 7770, that's a large performance difference considering the price.

Definitely something to think about, thank you for your help, I'm swinging towards the 7770 at the moment

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I think in some games though the CPU might also start to limit you,but OTH the HD7770 can be carried over to a newer system. What PSU do you have??

[JDCalvert]

Yeah I can see my CPU will be the bottleneck on some of the newer games, it's not been so bad up until very recent titles, and hopefully I'll be upgrading the rest of the PC some time in the not too distant future.

At the moment I have a 400W PSU in my machine, but I have a new 650W one ready if I need it. I know the 7750 draws all the power it needs from the PCI-E slot, but the 7770 needs a 6-pin connector; it shouldn't be a problem.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What are the model numbers of your PSUs??

[JDCalvert]

The 650W is an OCZ ZS Series, OCZ-ZS650W-UK I believe is the model number.

As for the 400W one I'm afraid I don't know. It was installed by a shop when I took it in for repairs (I blew up my old 300W power supply by installing the Athlon 6000+). It seems to be a good PSU though, although just not up to the task of powering a 7770; it lacks a 6-pin connector and with everything else I have in my machine it doesn't have 2 free molex connectors to use with a converter (I believe that's what's required, I saw a card come with a 2xMolex -to 6-pin adapter and assumed).

[Biscuit]

If it doesnt have PCI-E connectors then chances are its probably not great!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The 650W is an OCZ ZS Series, OCZ-ZS650W-UK I believe is the model number.

As for the 400W one I'm afraid I don't know. It was installed by a shop when I took it in for repairs (I blew up my old 300W power supply by installing the Athlon 6000+). It seems to be a good PSU though, although just not up to the task of powering a 7770; it lacks a 6-pin connector and with everything else I have in my machine it doesn't have 2 free molex connectors to use with a converter (I believe that's what's required, I saw a card come with a 2xMolex -to 6-pin adapter and assumed).

BTW,Amazon have price matched PC World on a limited offer:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-lis...&condition=new

An HD7770 for around £67 is a bargain,and you might need wait a few days for more stock but I would jump on the offer now before they put the price up!!

[stevie lee]

and if you want to know how well a radeon 7770 performs. then have a read of the one i reviewed.
links in my signature.

and swap to that OCZ 650 psu. itll be worth it in the long run.

[JDCalvert]

Unfortunately I didn't check this when you posted so I missed the Amazon deal (damn £67 is good!) but it happened to go on sale at overclockers.co.uk for £80, so I decided to snatch that up. I'll be installing the 650W for sure, just so as not to risk the 400W one (I can put it back if I get a new PC and use the 650W PSU and the 7770 in the new one).

Anyway, thank you very much, especially to CAT, if it weren't for you I would have a card half as good!

[kompukare]

A bit late, but in case anyone else is interested the difference between GDDR5 and DDR3 as well as ht4u.net, hardware.fr also benched the 2GB DDR3 HD7750:

http://www.hardware.fr/focus/76/amd-...e-etouffe.html

The first benchmark results there shows just the difference between GDDR5 and DDR3:
http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos...IMG0039893.gif

LESSON: as always with entry-level cards don't get mislead with headlines like 2GB etc.