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

[king smp]

Thank you very much 17seconds
did some digging but still could figure out the answer to my question yet
what does a 660Ti SLI match up to in a new single GPU?
I will have to start a question thread....

 

[Weak1ings]

In general a single card is always better but almost never the better price. Your 660 Ti is powerful enough alone right now. But if you are dead set on upgrading I would suggest doing SLI as it will be about the performance of the GTX 690. Be careful about heat however.

 

[Neal_nelson]

I keep checking to see if Richland has been added, Radeon HD 8670D, or Haswell, Intel HD 4600 up to 5200. Thank you for your updates to this valuable tool!

 

[king smp]

In general a single card is always better but almost never the better price. Your 660 Ti is powerful enough alone right now. But if you are dead set on upgrading I would suggest doing SLI as it will be about the performance of the GTX 690. Be careful about heat however.

Thank you.
Gaming is not the only consideration
I also do folding at home to help medical research
http://folding.stanford.edu/
having the two cards so I can fold on both is a big consideration

Well I have a chance at a lightly used EVGA FTW 760
It would be a trade for my heavily used EVGA 660Ti SC plus $50
tempted but not sure if I am going to do it

 

[RedJaron]

Thank you.
Gaming is not the only consideration
I also do folding at home to help medical research
http://folding.stanford.edu/
having the two cards so I can fold on both is a big consideration

Well I have a chance at a lightly used EVGA FTW 760
It would be a trade for my heavily used EVGA 660Ti SC plus $50
tempted but not sure if I am going to do it

If you're folding, the AMD is leaps and bounds ahead of nVidia since the 600 series.

And I may be wrong, but I have a hunch that SLI 660s is more likely to hit the memory controller limit. Two cards means you want to play more demanding games or at higher resolutions where the 192-bit memory controller can start flagging a bit.

 

[king smp]

very true
one of the reasons I am considering going for one stronger card
tempted by R290

 

[Onus]

I thought folding was one of the GPGPU tasks that nVidia handled quite well. It seems to me that a pair of GTX660Ti cards would significantly out-fold a single GTX760, but there's the matter of power consumption.

 

[RedJaron]

I thought folding was one of the GPGPU tasks that nVidia handled quite well.

I hadn't heard that so I tried a quick search. Turns out nVidia has done some specialized CUDA for F@H. Problem is I haven't yet found any scores or benchmarks comparing nVidia 600 to AMD 7000 series. Will keep looking at this.

EDIT: AnandTech has added FAHBench to their reviews. Here's the 660 versus the 270. In one test, the 660 barely beats the 270x. In the other it gets blown away by every single current Radeon. Anand also states that F@H has moved exclusively to OpenCL this year, so I suppose that means they've dropped CUDA support.

 

[Weak1ings]

You can actually do SLI with different cards BUT they both have to run at the weaker card's specs.

 

[king smp]

after some thinking I might either sli 660Tis or SLI 760s or go with a R290 with aftermarket cooler.
it is end of the year bonus time and I have been a hard working good boy all year
i would use the 660Ti for my secondary 1100T BE rig and the R290 for the 3770k rig
I plan on moving next year so money will get real tight so I want to get all my upgrades done with
just upgrade the heck out of my rigs so I dont have to worry about for a long time
and a R290 for $400 is a heck of a deal though I have to do some more review reading

 

[Novuake]

You can actually do SLI with different cards BUT they both have to run at the weaker card's specs.

No, you can only SLI if the memory config remains the same, for example although the GTX660ti and GTX760 is very similar in performance, they can not be SLId due to the memory interface difference(192/256bit).

 

[Weak1ings]

You can actually do SLI with different cards BUT they both have to run at the weaker card's specs.

No, you can only SLI if the memory config remains the same, for example although the GTX660ti and GTX760 is very similar in performance, they can not be SLId due to the memory interface difference(192/256bit).

Thanks for stating that, new fact for me!
If you do however, have both. I would recommend trying SLI before adding another GPU.

 

[JOSHSKORN]

When will GT3e/Intel Iris Pro 5200 graphics be included in this hierarchy? Kind of curious how it sizes up against discrete graphics cards.

 

[cats_Paw]

So many rebrands and price moves. Im gonna stay on my Nvidia 560 Ti till they actually get a improvemnt worth spending money on.
I bout it for 192 Euro. For that Price now, I get ... Let me check so i dont lie:

Nvidia GTX 660 or AMD 7870.
Its around 20 % improvment (I base that on Metro 2033 and 3dGuru, due to the fact I care first about the most taxing games, later on others, as the minimal fps and therefore "unplayable" are the first i take in consideration).

For paying again 100% of the price, i Dont expect a 100% better performance, but at least 50% sounds about right.

 

[Mike Stewart]

they finally got it thru their thick skulls !,,, that a 7970ghz is lightyears away from a 780 infact it is even slower than 770 and 680OC and only now after 4 months they putt 7970ghz in the same LOGICAL tier as the 770 and 680 where it truly belongs,,and they also got rid of the regular 7970 because they realised its much slower than a 680,and to put it in the same tier with 670 and 760 it was too painful for them because 670 and 760 are within 2-3 fps compare to 7970...so whoever makes this Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart is not only a TRUE amd radeons supporter (fanboy) or he gets an aditional salary from amd just to be that amd radeon supporter.....shame on you tomshardware !!! SHAME !

 

[tttttc]

the link for 290X is actually for 290, making me almost buy one at $415.86...

 

[Novuake]

they finally got it thru their thick skulls !,,, that a 7970ghz is lightyears away from a 780 infact it is even slower than 770 and 680OC and only now after 4 months they putt 7970ghz in the same LOGICAL tier as the 770 and 680 where it truly belongs,,and they also got rid of the regular 7970 because they realised its much slower than a 680,and to put it in the same tier with 670 and 760 it was too painful for them because 670 and 760 are within 2-3 fps compare to 7970...so whoever makes this Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart is not only a TRUE amd radeons supporter (fanboy) or he gets an aditional salary from amd just to be that amd radeon supporter.....shame on you tomshardware !!! SHAME !

I would not hash on fanboys if I were you...

 

[dosmastr]

where is the 7850 and 7870 radeons?

 

[dosmastr]

oops found them sorry

 

[Sakkura]

the link for 290X is actually for 290, making me almost buy one at $415.86...

Yeah I noticed that too, they 290 and 290X being the exact same price. Seems like a lot of sites are having trouble telling the difference between 290 and 290X. Maybe they should have used two letters like Nvidia does with Ti.

 

[spentshells]

Come on toms fix the commenting system, I do not want to read comments from last year.

 

[Sid Jeong]

I don't understand why gtx 770 is even in the list. It's beat by r9 280x in many games, and in some games it only has 3~5 fps advantage over r9 280x. How does that worth $30~$40 more than r9 280x?

 

[ManicMonkOnMac]

where is the gtx 280 in all this(not the ti)??

 

[groundhogdaze]

Good article to read to help one decide what to buy on black friday. I ended getting the radeon 7950 at newegg for $132.

 

[gm0n3y]

It seems like we just keep seeing small incremental improvements. I'm going to continue to hold off until we get a big leap. If not, then I guess we'll just be able to keep a GPU for ~3 years before having a worthwhile upgrade. My 20 month old 7870 (which was only ~$320 new I think) is still considered "Serious Upper Mainstream Performance".