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B Grade Graphics Card

Waltee
By Waltee
in Graphics Cards
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Last month I entered the world of PC gaming and built my first PC, a bit of a budget build with an AMD FX-6300 and an MSI R9 280 3G as a rough guidline to let you know what I'm working with (although both are OC'd).

I was actually pretty lucky and got a pretty solid OC on my graphics card bringing it well above performance of a stock 280X, but I've now reached a point that it still isn't giving me the FPS I feel that I want. 

 

So my question is, is it ever worth buying a B Grade Graphics card from a reputable seller to save quite a substantial amount on a card?

 

I don't have the budget to buy a brand new 780ti for example, but they have had some killer B Grade prices recently and I'm really tempted. I will also be buying a new processor and motherboard in the coming month or two as well, so I'm not worried about a bottleneck from that side of things. 

 

Any advice would be great. 

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It never* makes sense to get the best graphics card either AMD or Nvidia release.

 

The absolute best performance per money tends to be around the R7 260X - R9 270X (~GTX 760) range. But obviously this doesn't mean much to you if you want more performance than this. If you want performance, it usually makes the most sense to go with the second-best either AMD or Nvidia offers, and then double up if you really do need more. A year ago I'd be advising you to get a 290 or a GTX 780. As it is, 970 or 290X makes the most sense.

 

*the exception is the 290X right now. The imminent release of its successor, and being massively undercut by the GTX 970 a few months ago have cut the price of this by a huge amount.

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Last month I entered the world of PC gaming and built my first PC, a bit of a budget build with an AMD FX-6300 and an MSI R9 280 3G as a rough guidline to let you know what I'm working with (although both are OC'd).

I was actually pretty lucky and got a pretty solid OC on my graphics card bringing it well above performance of a stock 280X, but I've now reached a point that it still isn't giving me the FPS I feel that I want. 

 

So my question is, is it ever worth buying a B Grade Graphics card from a reputable seller to save quite a substantial amount on a card?

 

I don't have the budget to buy a brand new 780ti for example, but they have had some killer B Grade prices recently and I'm really tempted. I will also be buying a new processor and motherboard in the coming month or two as well, so I'm not worried about a bottleneck from that side of things. 

 

Any advice would be great. 

its your cpu bottlenecking the card..

NEVER GIVE UP. NEVER STOP LEARNING. DONT LET THE PAST HURT YOU. YOU CAN DOOOOO IT

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I've got my CPU to a stable 4.7ghz OC so that should help things on that front a little bit.

 

A direct quote from Overclockers UK on B grade items: "B Grade Items may have been used, have damaged packaging, missing accessories or a combination of these". 
None of those are really an issue to me as such, but was wondering if anyone had any first hand dealings with such a thing. It could literally be saving me £150+ on certain cards if I time it right. 

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I've got my CPU to a stable 4.7ghz OC so that should help things on that front a little bit.

 

A direct quote from Overclockers UK on B grade items: "B Grade Items may have been used, have damaged packaging, missing accessories or a combination of these". 

None of those are really an issue to me as such, but was wondering if anyone had any first hand dealings with such a thing. It could literally be saving me £150+ on certain cards if I time it right. 

 

OCUK are a great seller, and I've bought a few B grade stuff from them; often it has been brand new, still sealed but sent back as unwanted. It might have some slight usage, or might have been sent back but only has a minor fault.

 

I check most days in the clearance section on OCUK and today was my lucky day: 

 

post-68461-0-47049100-1424381488_thumb.p 

 

Sent back my 970, will soon receive payment of £310 back for it.

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OCUK are a great seller, and I've bought a few B grade stuff from them; often it has been brand new, still sealed but sent back as unwanted. It might have some slight usage, or might have been sent back but only has a minor fault.

 

I check most days in the clearance section on OCUK and today was my lucky day: 

 

Sent back my 970, will soon receive payment of £310 back for it.

 

Wow, I've been checking quite a few times a day for a couple of weeks now which is why I've really been starting to think about just going for one, didn't see that turn up though! Definitely worth considering in your opinion then? 

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Wow, I've been checking quite a few times a day for a couple of weeks now which is why I've really been starting to think about just going for one, didn't see that turn up though! Definitely worth considering in your opinion then? 

 

There's still one left, snag it while it's there! You could probably get ~£100 for your 280, so an extra £100 for a 290x? Doesn't seem too bad to me. And I got it because I refreshed the page as they were going up!

 

I think it's worth it.

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There's still one left, snag it while it's there! You could probably get ~£100 for your 280, so an extra £100 for a 290x? Doesn't seem too bad to me. And I got it because I refreshed the page as they were going up!

 

I think it's worth it.

Unfortunately I don't get paid until Tuesday, but I'll be putting my 280 on the market and certainly keep an eye out for other decent deals, hopefully I'll get just as lucky! Cheers for the recommendation! 

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Unfortunately I don't get paid until Tuesday, but I'll be putting my 280 on the market and certainly keep an eye out for other decent deals, hopefully I'll get just as lucky! Cheers for the recommendation! 

 

You're welcome, hope a good deal comes up for you soon buddy! :)

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