Should I upgrade AMD Radeon HD 6850 to RX 580

[toskeee]

I’ve been thinking of upgrading my Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 1 GB to an XFX AMD Radeon RX580 8GB OC+ (Most value for the price right now).

I’m aware that there will the CPU will be bottlenecking the system, but maybe this card could be of good use for current and future gaming, Blender OpenCL rendering using GPU and such until I buy myself a new rig (could be in 2 or more years).
The CPU has been great all these years and even today is behaving like a beast – the old HD 6850 has been holding it back for a while now.

By the way, the RX 580 would fit in my case (40mm longer in length), I have a 6+2 pin PCIe connector (6850 requires 1x6, RX 580 requires 1x8 pin), and the new PCIe v3.0 card should be compatible with the PCIe v2.0 x16 motherboard slot.

My question is: Is the bottleneck worth it with the new GPU, until I get a new, better rig in 1-3 years? My plan is to keep using the RX 580 later on, with the newer, better PC.

My system:

CPU: Intel Core i5-760 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Processor

Stock CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3L ATX LGA1156
Memory: Kingston HyperX 4 GB (2 x 2 GB) DDR3-1333 CL7

Memory: Kingston 4 GB (1 x 4 GB) DDR3-1600 CL11 Memory
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ Series 64 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Green 1 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 1 GB Video Card
Power Supply: Chieftec 500 W A-80 Series CTG-500-80P ATX Power Supply

[phillpower2]

Power Supply: Chieftec 500 W A-80 Series CTG-500-80P ATX Power Supply

You will need to replace the PSU as well I`m afraid, XFX recommend a 550W PSU or a minimum of 500W for your potential card but the PSU that you have while labelled as 500W even when new it could only produce 400W, you can confirm this here and here the present PSU is old, not even Bronze efficiency rated and not covered by any warranty and therefore unwise to be used with any new hardware.

[toskeee]

You will need to replace the PSU as well I`m afraid, XFX recommend a 550W PSU or a minimum of 500W for your potential card but the PSU that you have while labelled as 500W even when new it could only produce 400W, you can confirm this here and here the present PSU is old, not even Bronze efficiency rated and not covered by any warranty and therefore unwise to be used with any new hardware.

Thank you very much. I’ve read somewhere that 500W would be more than enough and that card manufacturers put more watts recommended because people tend to buy crappy PSUs, so they don’t blame AMD or NVidia for dead cards, but that does seem unwise. Since even a PSU upgrade is now needed, maybe it’s more worth to make a whole new build instead of buying new PSU + the RX 580.

[phillpower2]

Hello toskeee,

You have a wiser approach than many who post asking for GPU upgrade advice which is a refreshing change (y)

Having lost count of how many times people post that they had read that it was ok to use a weaker PSU than recommended by the card manufacturer I wrote a canned response and just change the GPU and PSU output accordingly, see below;

I would recommend a minimum of a Gold efficiency rated PSU from a proven brand such as Corsair, EVGA or Seasonic, a 500W or above is recommended to be used in a system that has an XFX RX580 8GB OC+ so this must be your minimum, remember, it is the card manufacturer that is expected to honour your warranty should the card break and not some faceless person on the internet that says that it is ok to ignore any minimum PSU requirements specified by the GPU manufacturer.

You are welcome btw