Okay.. I guess I had my HD 7850 (2gb) for a good year or two, and within that year or two, I may have been "mining" bitcoins on it 24/7 while doing other things as well (games mostly only thing noteworthy). I'm not quite sure how I noticed problems to begin with, but I suppose it dosen't matter. I realised my fans on the card were dieing, going very slowly, and my card started to suffer. One morning I woke up seeing my GPU at a constant temp of 102 (my computer was mining bitcoins at the time, so, under extreme load), and I shit my pants. I took the card out of the computer, unscrewed the fans from the heatsink, and tried to clean them and whatnot. Didn't do anything. I did this afew times, before I said screw it (at this point I was desperate, didnt care), and doused those fans with WD40. All seemed ALRIGHT, fans were going at a better speed. I figured it was only a temporary solution, so I bought a replacement fan thingy that mounts on heatsink. I get the feeling the damage was already done, because now when I play games(usually) or put alot of stress on my computer(actually its usually only when I play games), my video card dosent "crash" in the general sense of the word, it makes my monitors go haywire, like crazy artifacts everywhere (in the same way a tv channel goes kaput and shows snow)(when this happeneds my tempature is fine, seeing as I got a new fans), and I have to reboot. I assume, no doubt, my video card is the culprit, and needs to be replaced? If that is so, and I assume it is... I guess I'm on the market to downgrade my videocard to 1gb (budget), and im looking for some suggestions! I do indeed want to stick to AMD(ATI) because they are king of "mining" bitcoins(or other altcoins), compared to nvidia. My only requirements is that it needs to have 2 monitor plugs(one HDMI & one DVI) as I use two monitors, PCI-E, and hopefully 1gb. If I had to put a number on my total possible cost, I suppose I'll go with $150. I'm just looking for a good bang for my buck! I was considering this one here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...eASIN=B00A0HZOEA&linkCode=as2&tag=mey8chud-20 As well as this one here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814129189 This one seems too good to be true? 1gb $45? I'm not too knowledgeable on these things, so I'd appreciate any and all insight!
Considering price, that 7770 is quite expensive. Just a little more and you can get 7850 class card that is much better. That too good to be true is just slow card if you try gaming. Nothing else wrong there. You might as well buy Radeon HD 5450 with 512 MB memory. Other half of 1GB just goes to waste because card is too slow anyway.
You should still be able to find a 7850 for your price if you look around. The price is starting to creep back up because they've been replace by R-series cards and if the R9-290's are any indication, Bitcoin mining has shot the prices way up. The Radeon R7 260X seems like a comparable solution to the 7850 and should be easier to find within your budget. Also, I've been pleased with the quality and support from XFX, so I would certainly recommend looking their way.
