Best Graphics Cards for the Money (Archive)

[logainofhades]

How do they figure an AMD 390x won't play well at 1440p with the newest titles? I have an R9 290x running 1440p playing absolutely everything under the sun at high / very high detail settings.

The 390x was the recommended card for maxed out 1440p, with the 390 getting the playable nod. I am not sure what you are getting at here.

 

[lroberson]

don ot like the new format. so much less info and not organized by price. ;(

 

[aceprowler]

I don't care for this new setup to find out what cards are in your ballpark of buying..

Yes, all info is there but just too much!

I want to see the names of cards and prices and if want to go further then that, let me click on it to expand the details or something!

Just is too much!

Please go back to old GPU, CPU - Guides!!

 

[Zenthar]

I understand where this is going and why it was done, but for me the new format is utterly useless; let me explain to make this criticism as constructive as possible.

First. "resolution" is almost meaningless in the sense that not all game engines take the same toll on GPUs (I'm sure many of you still remember the good old "will it run Crysis" era ). Unless you add a list of games/benchmark/settings used to make the list, there is no way someone can make a informed decision based on this, at best they can simply take your recommendations and buy that hoping it meets their target games.

Second, I believe most people buy "on a budget" (which is, I guess, why the article was money-based since it first came out), which means they have an allocated amount of $$$ they are willing to spend on some components. This new lists has huge gaps that might seems to be "don't bother" zones, such as the ~125-150$ gap between the "Playable" and the "Maxed out" categories of FHD. But this "dead zone" could actually be future-proofing your card a bit or allow you to play more demanding games with higher settings. This is now a bit lost to the reader.

Third, I do believe the resolution and "playable/maxed" is worthy, but I would have moved that as markers in the hierarchy chart; those "steps" in the chart are already a "fuzzy" concept, so the resolution as a general indication would seem to fit way better in there that here.

Please bring back the old categorization by price for the "Best Graphics Cards for the Money" and move the resolutions to the "Desktop GPU Performance Hierarchy table".

 

[orph]

Just want to throw my hat into the "I hate the new format" ring.

 

[kevinrockx]

Hello,

What card would be best within $150 - $200 in CANADIAN dollars?

Thanks

 

[logainofhades]

An R7 370.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Video Card: XFX Radeon R7 370 2GB Core Edition Video Card ($184.99 @ NCIX)
Total: $184.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-12 16:54 EST-0500

For a little over, a GTX 950

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 950 2GB Video Card ($201.98 @ Newegg Canada)
Total: $201.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-12 16:54 EST-0500

 

[phantommaggot]

How do ultra wide resolutions fit into this?

 

[Linc42]

Terrible article formatting now. It should be renamed to Tom's GPU recommendations or some such, taking out the price breakpoints completely undermines the original intent. I have enjoyed this article for years and always went to it for researching before an upgrade, the detailed analysis and benchmarks helped a lot. Now it feels as much of a cheap sales pitch as the rest of the site has become

 

[Dumb__]

Your article is pretty well done, except 1 thing. Us , enthusiasts, would have liked to see gameplay benchmarks for frames per second at 1080, 2K, and 4K.

Frames per second matter a lot, and most of us, are not happy with 30-60 fps.

Most of us, in the informed category, want up to 144 frames per second, and maybe beyond, if they produced such a monitor.

I can assure you, our eyes can tell the difference, and until we match the human eye, there is always room for improvement in technology.

 

[Tehnation]

Not a fan, I've been using this article for years, probably a decade, for 100's of different builds.

This article has cards jump from 70-120, and then from 120-220? Granted I do like the added display perspective, but its a bad move for the people who determined things on price, which is majority of the market. Most people don't care for display, and are looking for the best card for their budget.

The way this information is portrayed, tells me I basically can't play a game at 1080p unless I drop $220? This seems very biased for some reason. This doesn't seem very informative, and more like advertising. This isn't true Tom's Hardware fashion. This is not what a lot of people are looking for. The article is best graphics cards for the money, but you basically get 3 options.... prior articles gave you around 3 cards between 75-120 alone.

If the rise of all the fhd, qhd, and uhd has made things more complicated, then a more complicated article is needed, this seems very ......... useless.

Very disappointed. At the very least you should have done 2 articles and then done a survey to see what people prefer.

This just seems lazy and gimmicky, no data, no stats, no options, this is basically garbage and a waste of time. You obviously need to change the name of this article because "Money" is not a factor here obviously. If you called this article Best Card for the Resolution, then I would not be so upset and you guys ruining such an amazing series of articles with this playschool nonsense.

 

[deathcall666]

Why is the gt 730 gddr5 the only entry level gaming card. I mean the r7 240 gddr5 is way better when it comes to bandwidth (72gbs vs 40 gbs) as seen here
http://www.game-debate.com/gpu/index.php?gid=2403&gid2=2274&compare=radeon-r7-240-v2-2gb-vs-geforce-gt-730-v2
Can anyone explain how it works or there is any in game benchmark for both

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

I would just like to see Fury X Crossfire shown, I have seen reviews with very significant performance improvement from 980 TI SLI to Fury X Crossfire due to the fact that Crossfire scales better. Great organization, though.

 

[Onus]

I believe the GT740 should be the entry-level card. It is much stronger than the GT730, but does not cost a lot more.

 

[hoihoi8]

No prices listed by the card is majorly hurting the quality of the article just to get you some more affiliate dollars. I'm not clicking on 50 cards to see the price.

BRING BACK THE HIERARCHY CHART!

 

[william p]

The Hierarchy Chart is still there. Look under "Hierarchy Chart"

 

[xaephod]

I thought the 980ti was the best single card, period. This article says the AMD offering is actually better as a single solution where in SLI/Crossfire the 980ti is better. Just doesn't make sense that a card that needs its all closed loop cooler that is louder and uses a lot more juice is a better choice.

 

[Nathancasey]

I don't know what to think about recommended resolution for the graphic cards now because I have a r7 360 and it plays almost every modern game high-ultra 1080p no problems. I'm looking to upgrade but there's so many options.

 

[Anders235]

This is the most useful graphics card article Tom's Hardware has produced in a long time!

How much will it cost me to play modern games at my chosen resolution?

Power consumption is a gigantic red herring.
CUDA-Doodle cores and Mhz are also red herrings.

"I want to play GTA V @ 60 FPS on max settings @ 1440p. How much?" is the only question consumers should have to ask. The rest of it is simply a distraction.

 

[wintran]

The new organization by resolution is absolutely useless to me. I want to know the best graphics card for the money, and I always start here first since "Best Graphics Cards for the Money" was the original title. I use multiple monitors and varying screens so by resolution really has no meaning to me. I just want to know the best graphics card I can get for a specific price point. I want to use the graphics card more for photography and rendering then for gaming. If you do not switch this back, then I will stop using this site for Video graphics card research.

Maybe produce both articles and see which one the users view more.

 

[tman694]

This format sucks. Gone are days of useful information...

 

[Saurabh Harwande]

Old format was really more useful to make buying decisions.
If we look at the R9 380 that is recommended for the playable FHD has performance varying in the range of 29-81 fps for different games at 1080p. So in such situation the categorization according to price is useful.
Not saying that this is bad but old format was much more detailed. We always were able to review the cards for their performance in the reviews and decide the best for us..

 

[Martijn van der Kooij]

A Occulus and Vive VR section would be nice. (both playable and optimal) but make sure there is a proper description what it would mean, for instance running games for 90% on 90fps

 

[Ninjawithagun]

Great article, but I have to mention that the author left out a very important resultion step; UWQHD (3440x1440). With 21:9 aspect ratio monitors becoming more main stream, this resolution really does need to be added to all future video card hardware reviews.

 

[johndnn]

I want to know why the gtx 560 did not make the list, cost less then the r7 360 and is faster and better, so why exclude it, also I am just looking for the best card at the best price, should you not make a list of cards that fit this, maybe I want to game, maybe I want to draft, or design, or just surf the web. So what card should I get for less then 100, less then 200, less then 300, ect...,thank you