Graphics card with better performance than AMD HD 7850

Question

Introduction

I would like to purchase a graphics card (GPU) with a performance ~2x better than my current GPU, a Radeon HD 7850.

Preferences

• Price < $120 (If it costs more and I can get it used for this price that's fine)
• Performance at least 2x better than the HD 7850
• Compatible with windows
• nVidia preferable, but anything more than a miniscule performance downgrade and I'll take AMD
• I can wait a few months if something is coming out
• I'd prefer not to do SLI/CrossFireX, but if the peformance benefit is substantial, I'll consider doing it with two cheap cards.
• TDP <= 300W

Additional Information

• I play games such as Team Fortress 2, Trackmania 2, Trackmania United, Minecraft, SimCity 4, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and World of Warcraft.
• I also do Blender rendering, however this supports OpenCL and CUDA now so AMD is not a concern
• I have done my research and know about cards such as the GTX 960, GTX 770, R9 280X, R9 280, HD 7970, etc. I just want to know if there's something I've missed.

I would prefer if you provided benchmarks, links and maybe the occasional picture to back up your answer.

Answer 1

There's nothing that meets both your price requirement and your performance requirement.

Price-wise, the traditional budget GPU is the 750 Ti at around $90-$100, but it's slightly less powerful than your current card; $120 gets you a factory-overclocked 750 Ti that just about matches your card for performance.

Performance-wise, three times your current performance is the GTX 980, at a price of around $400.

At twice your current performance, there's still nothing within your budget: the options are the GTX 970 (twice the specs) for $275, or the GTX 770 (twice the raw number-crunching ability, but only moderate gains in pixel-pushing) for $200.

The Tom's Hardware GPU Hierarchy illustrates the problem you're running into: you're looking for something three to four tiers above your current card, and you're already near the top of the chart.

Answer 2

If you have not upgraded: I would recommend the MSI GeForce GTX 1060 DirectX 12

3GB 192-Bit GDDR5
Core Clock 1544 MHz
Boost Clock 1759 MHz
1 x DL-DVI-D 1 x HDMI 2.0 1 x DisplayPort 1.4
PCI Express 3.0 x16

Some Futuremark stats for both cards:

1. HD 7850
2. GeForce GTX 1060-3GB

Anandtec review of the GTX 1060-3GB

Note, the anandtec review shows the EVGA card, but the MSI is the same chip.