Nvidia's 660 ti just released. I just bought an AMD 7850. Should I switch?

NeonBlackJack

Hey folks,

I am building a new ITX system, just ordered the parts from Newegg this week and they should all be delivered by Saturday afternoon. One of those parts is an XFX AMD 7850, which I chose because at $250 it seemed to be in a pretty sweet spot for price/performance/longevity.

Now the 660ti is out, and the reviews seem to be pretty good. It would cost $50-70 more for me to get this card over the one I have, and benchmarks seem to be showing about a 15% performance advantage.

My strategy with GPU purchases is to buy a card that can rock the current-gen games (Skyrim, The Witcher 2, BF3, etc.) and provide passable performance on high settings for the new stuff over the next 3 years or so, when I can buy another mid-to-high range card.

Do you think that, for the $50-70 upgrade, I could get better longevity from the 660ti than the 7850? Should I send that sucker back to Newegg?

Thanks for your knowledge!

Dehumanized

If you're okay with waiting a few days and paying a little more, sure. Speaking to personal preference I like Nvidia's drivers a lot more than AMD's. The only case where I don't think you'd see tangible benefit to making the swap would be if you play games at a smaller resolution.

NeonBlackJack

I guess I should clarify that I'm using a 24" monitor with a native res of 1920 x 1080, so that's the resolution I will play most games at.

Dehumanized

Yeah, that's fine. Either the 660ti or the 7850 should have few to no bottlenecks right now, and I'd expect the 660ti would hold up slightly better a couple years down the line at that resolution.