Graphics Card Recommendations

[povat]

Hi guys! I've been contemplating on upgrading my GPU and would like some recommendations since I've been quite out of the loop in terms of PC hardware for this gen. My current GPU hasn't been upgraded since my rig was built, so I've been running with the same card for about 6 years. What I'm looking for is a card that is reasonably priced, my budget is about $300. I would also like a card that won't go berserk in terms of power consumption. I'm also running a dual monitor setup both being 1080p screens.

 

My rig:

CPU : Intel Core i7 920 OCed @ 3.5 GHz 

Motherboard: Asus P6T

PSU: Corsair TX650 650 Watts

Memory: 9GB of Corsair XM3 

GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD4830 

SSD: OCZ Vertex3 120GB

HDD: Western Digital Green Caviar 1TB

 

 

Thanks for you help!

[CoolBeans]

290, but if you want to loose some performance in favor of power consumption 770

[SpyRosL]

R9 280x or GTX770.

 

280x consumes more power but has more vram.(250watts, 3gb)

770 consumes less power but has less vram.(230watts,2gb)

[Cpt. Shadows]

Hehe, "Caviar". Just saw the name of the HDD

*ehem* So.. hm. I'd say get another processor while you're at it, but if you haven't had it for a while, then keep it until it just says boom I suppose.

Anyways, if you use your PC for gaming, I'd say go for an AMD if you want to get a cheap good card. Get a 270, 270X or a 280. XFX have solid results, while MSI focuses more on gaming. Gigabyte GPU's are great on cooling, the ones that have 3 fans. Whatever floats your boat, these should work out for you.

[Growlith1223]

both cards are about $350 if i remember correctly. if you're looking for something that's a bit of a bang for your buck, i suggest you get a GTX 760 or the R9 270. both equally matched and both for $250 as well. otherwise if you can go a little higher, the 2 cards CoolBeans stated are a really good choice

[povat]

both cards are about $350 if i remember correctly. if you're looking for something that's a bit of a bang for your buck, i suggest you get a GTX 760 or the R9 270. both equally matched and both for $250 as well. otherwise if you can go a little higher, the 2 cards CoolBeans stated are a really good choice

The GTX 760 and R9 270 are within my budget. Definitely going to look into those.

[Sauron]

The gtx 750ti is a great bang for the buck card and consumes extremely little power, if you don't need crazy performance you should go for that one. It's equivalent to a gtx 570 performance wise for comparison, but it draws FAR less power.

[connorpiper]

You may be able to find a GTX 770 right at $300 or you can get a GTX 760 (2GB or 4GB) with a nice cooler for just under $300. (Some 4GB Models are $320)

[Growlith1223]

if you go for a GTX 760, i currently have a Zotac AMP! Edition, and it's incredibly small but jees it has quite a bit of power for it's size lol

[povat]

The gtx 750ti is a great bang for the buck card and consumes extremely little power, if you don't need crazy performance you should go for that one. It's equivalent to a gtx 570 performance wise for comparison, but it draws FAR less power.

If I'm correct that is the one without a 6 pins? Wouldn't I be running into some issue with powering it? I don't know if the power specifications of PCI-E 3 .0 changed from PCI-E 2.0... 

[SymphonyX7]

Will you be gaming on two screens or is the extra screen just for productivity? Since both the R9 270X and GTX 760 are within your budget, you should take a good look at the R9 280 which costs the same as the GTX 760. This article will interest you: http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/zardon/msi-r9-280-gaming-v-pny-gtx760-xlr8-185-shootout/22/

[povat]

Will you be gaming on two screens or is the extra screen just for productivity? Since both the R9 270X and GTX 760 are within your budget, you should take a good look at the R9 280 which costs the same as the GTX 760. This article will interest you: http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/zardon/msi-r9-280-gaming-v-pny-gtx760-xlr8-185-shootout/22/

Just one screen, I use the other one as a productivity screen. 

[That Norwegian Guy]

R9 270x or GTX 760, or ideally a 280x or 770 that fits your budget if it's a good deal.

[Thony]

GTX 770 is not worth the money, thats what linus said several times in his vids. He preffers R9 280x for the price/performance ratio. So thats what I would recommend u.

[Sauron]

If I'm correct that is the one without a 6 pins? Wouldn't I be running into some issue with powering it? I don't know if the power specifications of PCI-E 3 .0 changed from PCI-E 2.0... 

 

From what I know the reference 750ti can run directly off of the PCIe bus power, you don't even need to connect it to the psu. Afaik the power specifications haven't changed, otherwise other cards whould have issues too. You can check with google, but I think you should be in a clear.

[Guest]

R9 280x or GTX770.

 

280x consumes more power but has more vram.(250watts, 3gb)

770 consumes less power but has less vram.(230watts,2gb)

 

R9 280X does not conform to that reference standard wattage. Some R9 280X like mine have 2 8-pins.

 

@povat I would still recommend the R9 280X over the GTX 770, as long as you have a good PSU and know which cards are good and which cards are not. GTX 770 is definitely not worth the price increase, at least where I live. Unless you really want Watch Dogs or PhysX.

 

How did you get 9GB of DDR3??

[TechFan@ic]

Both the 280X & 770 perform the same. I would recommend the 280X over the 770 however due to the never settle bundle which allows you pick three games out of the never settle collection for free.
http://www.anandtech...forever-program
The collection incliudes : Murdered Soul Suspect, Thief, Alan Wake, Dungeon Siege 3, Hitman Absolution, Tomb Raider, Dirt 3, Darksiders ,Darksiders 2, Company of Heroes, Shogun Total War 2, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Payday 2, Just Cause 2, Titan Quest Gold Edition & Supreme Commander Gold edition + a number of indie titles.
http://images.anandt.../7951/Tiers.jpg

The 280X also has more memory and more memory bandwidth both of which you can see the benefits of right now and even more so in the near future.

In PCPer's testing both the GTX 770 and GTX 760 experienced numerous lag spikes that Ryan described as being "very noticeable" in Bioshock Infinite, both in 1920x1080 and 2560x1440, these lag spikes did not exist with an R9 280X, the conclusion was due to the 770 and 760 running out of memory
This time-stamped link will take you to when Ryan talks about it : http://youtu.be/_sl__2PEHRI?t=22m40s

And this issue becomes even more detrimental in SLI because as the game becomes more demanding the higher memory it will require and so you will run into a memory brick-wall before you can make use of the additional performance of the second card.

And it's not just Bioshock Infinite, a lot of modern games like Tomb Raider, Batman Arkham Origins, Rome 2 Total War & Skyrim with high-res textures even BF4 with 100%+ sampling.
These games already use over 2.4GBs+ of memory on 2560x1440 and 2GBs+ on1920x1080.

Both the PS3 and the XBOX360 had 512mb of memory available for the GPU, in contrast both the PS4 & XBOX1 have 8GB of memory shared between the CPU & GPU. Game development starts on the consoles and trickles down to the PC, developers only had 512mb of VRAM to work with just two years ago and now they have 6-8 times as much, we'll start seeing much higher resolution textures in games and moref memory intensive effects that the developers could not have implemented before, this includes global illumination and other forms of ray-tracing, much larger view distances, more complicated depth of field effects, sub-surface scattering, more tessellation and so on.


Your power supply is more than capable of supporting a 280X. The best 280X out there in terms of cooling & noise is the Sapphire Vapor-X followd closely by the Asus DCUII.

[povat]

 

How did you get 9GB of DDR3??

3x 1GB modules with 3x 2GB modules.

 

 

Both the 280X & 770 perform the same. I would recommend the 280X over the 770 however due to the never settle bundle which allows you pick three games out of the never settle collection for free.

http://www.anandtech...forever-program

The collection incliudes : Murdered Soul Suspect, Thief, Alan Wake, Dungeon Siege 3, Hitman Absolution, Tomb Raider, Dirt 3, Darksiders ,Darksiders 2, Company of Heroes, Shogun Total War 2, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Payday 2, Just Cause 2, Titan Quest Gold Edition & Supreme Commander Gold edition + a number of indie titles.

http://images.anandt.../7951/Tiers.jpg

The 280X also has more memory and more memory bandwidth both of which you can see the benefits of right now and even more so in the near future.

In PCPer's testing both the GTX 770 and GTX 760 experienced numerous lag spikes that Ryan described as being "very noticeable" in Bioshock Infinite, both in 1920x1080 and 2560x1440, these lag spikes did not exist with an R9 280X, the conclusion was due to the 770 and 760 running out of memory

This time-stamped link will take you to when Ryan talks about it : http://youtu.be/_sl__2PEHRI?t=22m40s

And this issue becomes even more detrimental in SLI because as the game becomes more demanding the higher memory it will require and so you will run into a memory brick-wall before you can make use of the additional performance of the second card.

And it's not just Bioshock Infinite, a lot of modern games like Tomb Raider, Batman Arkham Origins, Rome 2 Total War & Skyrim with high-res textures even BF4 with 100%+ sampling.

These games already use over 2.4GBs+ of memory on 2560x1440 and 2GBs+ on1920x1080.

Both the PS3 and the XBOX360 had 512mb of memory available for the GPU, in contrast both the PS4 & XBOX1 have 8GB of memory shared between the CPU & GPU. Game development starts on the consoles and trickles down to the PC, developers only had 512mb of VRAM to work with just two years ago and now they have 6-8 times as much, we'll start seeing much higher resolution textures in games and moref memory intensive effects that the developers could not have implemented before, this includes global illumination and other forms of ray-tracing, much larger view distances, more complicated depth of field effects, sub-surface scattering, more tessellation and so on.

Your power supply is more than capable of supporting a 280X. The best 280X out there in terms of cooling & noise is the Sapphire Vapor-X followd closely by the Asus DCUII.

Very interesting, future proofing is an other point that I forgot to mention that I'm looking for.