Best Graphics Cards For The Money: January 2012 (Archive)

Page 14 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Status
Not open for further replies.


😀 I just ordered that $189 Radeon HD7870
(not to quibble, it's actually $220 with a $30 rebate and Crysis3)

I caught a review -- it looked great, and suspect I'll be running a 20% OC no problem on that pupply :lol:





 
Yes they dont factor rebates in on the recommendations.
Quite honestly I don't look at rebates either.
Too many times I have had the rebates denied or more trouble than they are worth.
A rebate is extra bonus too me.
I factor my budget on non-rebate price.
 


Of the hundreds I've done, I've had few issues ... I did have to smack OCZ around once :pfff: ... but they quickly saw the **light**

Closely follow instructions and keep backup docs!


 
I am a little lazy so me and rebates don't get along LOL

Well I picked up two 7770s for my folding rig since they get decent points and dont use alot of power plus they are cheap
I looked up CF 7770s and they match up to a 580 and 6970 in gaming and just behind a 7950 so somewhere around a 7850/7870/660Ti or so by my guess
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/HD_7750_7770_CrossFire/19.html
right now can get a pair for about $240 on the Egg
I game on a 660Ti at 1920x 1080 and those are Folding at Home cards but decent backup to the 660Ti
would really be nice to see CF/SLI rigs on the Toms Hierarchy charts one of these days but that is alot of work so I understsnd if they dont
 


Two 770's take up the same amount of slots as a 690 only in our hearts. I'm sure that's what he meant.
 
I'm running dual XFX Radeon HD 6970's and performance-wise they can handle more than a 7970. But when shopping that second card I was appalled to see they were still going for almost $300 on Ebay, when a EVGA 780 Classified was down to a little over $400 and that single card out-benches my dual 6970 setup. Maybe AMD is starting to slip up in the gfx market too?
 

No. Older GPUs are almost always badly priced at retail. That's normal.

The 6970 costs about as much to produce as a 7970, even though it's a lot less powerful. The 6970 has a die size of 389 square mm, the 7970 is only 352 square mm. The 7970 packs a lot more transistors into that slightly smaller die, because it's made on the 28nm process vs. the 40nm process the 6970 is based on.
 


Actually the point is that The 7970GE is in the same tier as GTX770. From Tom's Hardware:
If you run an average of the single-card frame rates generated in this review, GeForce GTX 770 is a 52.4 FPS card. The Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition lands at 53.8 FPS.
Click to expand...

So why wouldn't you agree that 770 is in the same tier as 7970GE? is 2,6% big enough difference to justify a whole new tier? In my opinion (and most people's opinion I think), no.

Edit: The funny thing is that If you look at Tom's Hardware GPU Charts, GTX770 (142.92) is faster than 7970GE (133.31).
 
I would really like to see dual cards in crossfixe and sli listed in the hierarchy chart. I have dual HD6850's but I cannot use the highest settings in SWTOR. I'd like to upgrade, but I'm not sure if its time yet, since I want best bang for the buck. Is two HD7870s going to be worth upgrading my dual HD6850s? Is one HD7950 an upgrade over two HD6850s in crossfire?
 
take a look at this bench
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_6850_CrossFire/13.html

CF 6850 is about equal to a 5970 or 480 so that puts is at about a 7870 XT/7950
I wouldnt think that a 7950 would be worth upgrading
a GHZ 7970 or 680 might be worth it but I would personally wait to upgrade if I were you
also realize if you are playing online games like SWTOR that there are other factors that affect gameplay like internet connection speed or ping time to server
 


IIRC - review of GTX 760 came out after the GPU round up. Should be in the list the next time they do a GPU round-up.
 


Thanks, I'll take your advice. BTW, I logged into newegg at 6a.m. in the morning last week and they had an HD7950 for $185.00. I went to the gym and decided to buy two of them, but when I got home just an hour later, the price had jumped back up to $279.99. I wish I had ordered them as soon as I saw that price.
 


Following Toms will cause a disease.
It is known as "Upgrade Fever"
symptoms included constant reading of reviews,drooling over Newegg ads,taking money from the kids college fund,trading with shady characters on Craiglist,lying to your spouse etc
devastating disease
very costly
can even ruin marriages
 
this is total BS..
everywhere , even here on toms hardware it shows 770GTX as being faster than a ghz 7970, yet it is still sitting one tier lower than the ghz,,,,that 7970ghz is not that faster than the vanilla 7970, just like there isnt much diffrence between a 680 and a 770 yet they're both on the same tier....
Tom please lower the ghz version back to the vanilla 7970 tier....
trust me it will look RIGHT !
 
Don,

From your article, ".....AMD's Radeon HD 7850 2 GB recently dropped in price to compete with the GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost. While it's still about $10 more, on average, than Nvidia's card, we feel it comes close enough....."

The green Newegg buttons (what do I call them?) on the page showing both these cards shows:
$169.99 for the 650 Ti Boost and
$159.99 for the 7850 2GB

I was about to type this comment saying you probably got it wrong with these two prices.
But then I realised it could be because these green buttons get updated everytime the page loads, and you don't have control over the prices they show.

Am I right?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom