Choosing a video card...need help

[Urza29]

ok so i thought i had decided on a video card but after doing more research and talking to people, i'm back to square 1.

Basically i have 300-350$ with closer to 300 better to spend on a video card

I have a XFX Raedon 6870 2 gig card atm, its from 2012, it runs my games decently, but not on ultra or high settings without some slowdown, it looks decent though, but my monitor is ancient also

i have Phenom II x4 970 BE cpu @ stock speeds (3.8 i believe) and standard gigabyte board, 8 gigs of DDR3, 1600 (corsair) and a 750w Thermaltake power

So i was thinking about going with Nvidia for my new build, i started to read about the 760 and thought for 300$ that was pretty good, but then i was swayed away from that, seeing that the 770 is around 350, for 50$ more i could have a better card...

And then i started looking at AMD's lineup, the 270/290x etc, and I'm really liking the reivews, and that new mantle technology looks pretty awesome, although it seems the purpose is for multiplayer fps games (ie BF4) of which i have no interest in playing at all

I play: Wow, SC2, Diablo III, Rift, POE, (basically blizzard games) not really into fps games, or intense online games like that (bf4 etc) but i would like to max out Wow and D3's settings (d3 i can max out now but i only get ~30-35fps) and future proof for WOD and ROS coming this year, and have nice performance for a few years

My new cpu is going to be the FX-8350, 1866 ram (still 8 gigs though) and an SSD, i'll be oc'ing the 8350 to probably at least 4.5ghz or so, getting a good heatsink (EVO 12?)

So it comes down to this: Nvidia or AMD for the money? 760/770 range or the RX270/280 etc...which do you think will(has) better performance right now given a cpu of FX-8350@4.5ghz, and i might also toss windows 8.1 on new machine (so i guess some better performance there too)

Nvidia 760
Nvidia 770
Raedon Rx270
Raedon Rx280 (is there a 280?)

Also since i have a 2 gig card now, i need at least 2 gig, but would 4 gig be worth investment for future proofing? ie 770 4gb, RX270 4gb? or 2gb perfectly fine still?

I'll be running 1 monitor, 1080 @ 1980 (or whatever the resolution is) hd, etc, haven't narrowed down a monitor...but should be fine with any of card i choose.

thanks

[glo]

Your processor is holding you back much more than your GPU. That said, you need to ditch the 8350 idea. It will only give you a marginal increase in performance compared to a near 60% increase in IPC with an Intel Haswell chip. IPC performance directly translates into performance for CPU bound games like Blizzard titles.

I'd go back to the drawing board and come up with a budget for a new motherboard, processor and GPU.

[Dextar]

I agree with glo.

On the basis of just the video card, I'd go with the 770. I have a GTX 680 and I'm running at 2560x1440 and I rarely have issues with any games, AC4 was the first game I had to turn the settings down on and the 770 is the upgraded version. Running at 1080 you'll be able to run most games at max settings without issue (as long as other components aren't bottlenecking your system).

[chazus]

Moving this to the build/upgrade subforum!