Best cheap graphics card for gaming

[Guest]

I need to buy a graphics card for the rig I'm building but money is tight and I'm on a budget. What graphics card would be the best to be playing games like call of duty, battlefield and Minecraft. I would also like it to be able to last me a few years. I'm on a budget of around 250 US dollars or about £150. Thanks.

[HewinFM]

For around $250 you can get either the AMD HD7870 or the NVIDIA GTX660. Which ever is cheaper honestly. They perform very similarly.

[Dragon_Cannon]

On the nvidia side you are looking at a 660 if you can find the extra money however go for a 660ti as it has the same GPU as the 680. Its slower and has a smaller memory bus which means that it won't perform as well as a 680 but still extremely well.

On the AMD side you are looking at a 7870 or a 7850.

When you find a few that you like find some reviews on them and choose the one that performs the best.

[killerx525]

Technically speaking, the 7870 is about 3% faster then the 660 with the new 12.11 drivers from AMD and for games that you play like Battlefield, the card is still faster.

Source: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Catalyst_12.11_Performance/23.html

[Lumi]

A Raedon 7770 GHZ edition or Geforce 640 or gtx 650 will run those games flawlessly.

[skullbringer]

Even some 7950 for sale are about 250-260 bucks... best bang for buck!

[Money]

Go for a 660ti. It can easily be overclocked to the performance of a 670. It's been acclaimed as the best card for the money many times.

[TechFan@ic]

For around that price I would recommend an HD 7870 over a GTX 660 for a number of reasons.

The first being that the GTX 660 suffers from it's narrow memory bus, and you can see the profound effect that has on performance once you start applying Anti-Aliasing and/or anisotropic filtering..

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-660-geforce-gtx-650-benchmark,3297-18.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-660-geforce-gtx-650-benchmark,3297-24.html

General performance comparison :

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/56674-nvidia-gtx-660-2gb-review-20.html

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/56674-nvidia-gtx-660-2gb-review-21.html

The second reason is overclocking, it's well known that Nvidia capped the overclocking potential on all 600 series cards by locking the maximum voltages at very low ceilings which crippled overclocking ,thus giving the HD 7870 an overclocking advantage.

Other things to consider is that you get Far Cry 3 with the HD 7870 and Assassins Creed 3 with the GTX 660.

[Dim]

Like above posters have said, the 7850/7870 are nice mid-range cards below your budget... I would suggest getting a 7850 and an SSD (if you don't already have one). If you're absolutely limited by money and already have an SSD, the 7870 is a good choice. If you're able to fork out a little more, the 7950 is great, and high-end!

My two cents.

[Dim]

Go for a 660ti. It can easily be overclocked to the performance of a 670. It's been acclaimed as the best card for the money many times.

It's amazing how often I see "X can be overclocked to Y"

The 660 can be overclocked to the 660Ti.

The 660Ti can be overclocked to the 670.

The 670 can be overclocked to the 680...

But they each overclock, so the idea is pointless; it can overclock to the performance of a 670 when the 670 is at stock and isn't overclocked.If you're going to buy a 660Ti and overclock it, you would overclock a 670 anyway, so stock core clock becomes irrelevant. That in mind, the 660Ti is an excellent card, probably the best bang for buck along with the 7850.

[Umeshwarnath]

hd 7870 is the way to go!!! its awesome and overclocks like mad......!!!! end results will be much better than a overclocked 660!! the xfx ones are around 240$ and overclock very well .

[Dave :)]

Have to recommend the 7870, with latest Catalyst drivers it really does shine through at the price point. You can easily find one for under $250,

this is a great card for the price

and for only $10 more, this too

[Guest]

Thanks for the help guys and the rest of my system is a intel i5 2570k ,8gb vengece 750 watt power supply,corsair 400r, 64gb ssd and a 500gb harddrive.

[Money]

Go for a 660ti. It can easily be overclocked to the performance of a 670. It's been acclaimed as the best card for the money many times.

It's amazing how often I see "X can be overclocked to Y" The 660 can be overclocked to the 660Ti. The 660Ti can be overclocked to the 670. The 670 can be overclocked to the 680... But they each overclock' date=' so the idea is pointless; it can overclock to the performance of a 670 [b']when the 670 is at stock and isn't overclocked.If you're going to buy a 660Ti and overclock it, you would overclock a 670 anyway, so stock core clock becomes irrelevant. That in mind, the 660Ti is an excellent card, probably the best bang for buck along with the 7850.

I see what you mean for sure, but it's just a way to compare an overclock to something else.

[AvoK95]

In my opinion the HD7870 would be a better choice, Nvidia's new graphics cards are awesome in terms of performance, no doubt about that, but they are bottlenecked cards. They are very bandwidth limited. In some cases or in newer games, the 660Ti is chocking where the 7870 is performing better. Plus, you'll get the Never Settle deal, where you'll get a free copy of Far Cry 3 and 20% off on Medal Of Honor. So for $250, you're getting a nice card and a nice game. Also, the 78xx can very overclockable. You can reach 1.2GHz without any problems.

[Katze]

I got a GTS 450 about 1 year ago for about $150 AU. It cant run many games on Ultra, but can run all of the games you mentioned on Low and Medium. But this is an old card now, a GTX 650 is about the equivalent to the GTS 450 (At the time) and is about the same price ($150). If you are willing to spend a bit more, I would suggest a GTX 660 TI, It will last a lot longer (In future proofing terms, NOT quality). GTX 660 TI is around $300.

If you must stay under your $250 budget, I suggest the GTX 660 (Without the "TI", It is around $250

NOTE: The GTX 650 is newer then the GTS 450, they are in about the same class but because the GTX 650 is newer, it preforms alot better then the older 450. It "may" be able to run Battlefield 3 on high.

Sorry that I haven't suggested any ATI cards, I use nVidia, so I don't know much about ATI cards.

[Crowcore]

I am very surprised to be the first one to ask at what resolution he is planning to play...

[christoi]

Thanks for the help guys and the rest of my system is a intel i5 2570k ' date='8gb vengece 750 watt power supply,corsair 400r, 64gb ssd and a 500gb harddrive.[/quote']

Looks like a pretty sweet system you have got there. :)

Regardless of whether you go for a HD7870 or a GTX660, neither of those cards pull that much power, so even with overclocking in mind a 550w unit should be sufficient.

Also if you are looking up benchmarks and such, do note that a lot of older reviews don't actually give accurate scores since the performance of both cards have been improved over time with driver updates. AFAIK these are the most recent numbers:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Club_3D/HD_7870_jokerCard_Tahiti_LE/28.html

[Nertballs]

up to 1080p, realistically the 7850 is the best option, maybe 7870 if you wanted to spend a little extra. i have a 560 ti now and all that's holding me back alot of the time is memory.

[Dragon_Cannon]

if you are willing to spend the money try and get your hands on the 660ti Power Edition card as you will be able to overclock the hell out of it because it supports triple overvoltage

[Chevaishr]

for your budget and assumed 1080p gaming u have about 3 cards u can choose from. there is the 7850 2gb, the 7870 and the 660.

the 7870 and the 660 both perform similar but my recommendation would go the 7870 unless the 660 can be had for less.

the 7850 should only be considered if u really want to save money for other stuff (another ssd :D ) or if shipping is costly and would cause any card more expensive to go past your budget.

also if u do want to save a bit more money the 1gb 7850 is just fine ... just it wont run future games smoothly with all the bells and whistles turned up

[Nexus]

looking on www.scan.co.uk it appears as though you will be struggling to get anything better than the 7850 or a gtx660 for £150

GTX 660: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-msi-gtx-660-oc-28nm-pcie-30-(x16)-6008mhz-gddr5-gpu-1006mhz-boost-1072mhz-cores-960-dport-dl-dvi

hd 7850: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-msi-radeon-hd-7850-twin-frozr-iii-oc-4800mhz-gddr5-28nm-gpu-900mhz-hdmi-mdp

hd 7870: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-xfx-radeon-hd-7870-double-dissipation-edition-4800mhz-gddr5-28nm-gpu-1000mhz-1280-cores

Personally I would go for the 7870 even though it is slightly over budget.

If you shop around you could probably get one for a bit less.

Hope this helps :)

I try never to factor in overclocking when buying a GPU as its not guaranteed. Always buy the fastest single GPU you can afford for the games you play and look up benchmarks online and your good to go. :)

[Mentalguy]

ebay bro, give it a week or 2 and ill have my 7870s on there

[mono]

Just for FPS i'd choose the HD 7870. But GTX 660, has nvidia features (CUDA, PhysX, etc.), AND better frame latency. Using a GTX 660 myself - a great card.

[Askejm]

On 1/3/2013 at 9:34 AM, Eddyz1122 said:

I need to buy a graphics card for the rig I'm building but money is tight and I'm on a budget. What graphics card would be the best to be playing games like call of duty, battlefield and Minecraft. I would also like it to be able to last me a few years. I'm on a budget of around 250 US dollars or about £150. Thanks.

A GTX 1050 Ti is under $250 and it can run most older games at max settings and newer games medium to low