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

[Mike Stewart]

Hey tom where's 250X in Hierarchy Chart ????

 

[littleleo]

No one mines BTC with a graphics card any more. Miners are generating Litecoins, not Bitcoins.
I don't think AMD is setting the prices, or profiting from the high prices; their distributors and retailers are. I'm sure AMD is churning them out as fast as they can.

Your correct no one uses VGA cards to mine Bitcoins its the LiteCoin miners that are creating the shortages. AMD partners have a limited number of chips to make their cards from so for one to increase another would have to decrease since they are all allocated. What is happening is the price is reaching the point where even the LiteCoin miners aren't seeing the ROI on spending so much for these cards. As they sit on the shelves long and long their prices will drop to help them move. It may be awhile before they ever reach the MSRP level again. The high price on the R9 cards is causing the Geforce 760s and higher to look the good bargain now some shortages are developing in those cards too.

 

[Muckster]

No one mines BTC with a graphics card any more. Miners are generating Litecoins, not Bitcoins.
I don't think AMD is setting the prices, or profiting from the high prices; their distributors and retailers are. I'm sure AMD is churning them out as fast as they can.

Your correct no one uses VGA cards to mine Bitcoins its the LiteCoin miners that are creating the shortages. AMD partners have a limited number of chips to make their cards from so for one to increase another would have to decrease since they are all allocated. What is happening is the price is reaching the point where even the LiteCoin miners aren't seeing the ROI on spending so much for these cards. As they sit on the shelves long and long their prices will drop to help them move. It may be awhile before they ever reach the MSRP level again. The high price on the R9 cards is causing the Geforce 760s and higher to look the good bargain now some shortages are developing in those cards too.

I'm not so sure they are just sitting on the shelves. Some cards are hard to find. I haven't seen ANY depreciation in price, in fact some prices I was watching have gone up in the last two weeks (r9 290s). Forget about MSRP, I'd just like to see them stop rising in price. lol.

 

[vertexx]

I bought an R9 280X right before Christmas for $350. I've been mining with it on the side when I'm not gaming. With $350 now in the bank from Mining, I'm going to sell it on eBay for $350 (yes they're going for that) and then buy an R9 290x for $700. Right now, I'm really liking the new Powercolor. It has a great review on Techpowerup.

So that's going to be essentially $350 net for this R9 290X - then will mine with that and use it to fund another upgrade.

Now that's what I call a Best GPU for the $$ purchase...

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Yeah, but power costs...

 

[vertexx]

My incremental power cost is 8 cents per KwH, so the $350 is net of power costs.

IMO, the R9 280X is finally now over-priced, even if you count the mining, but the R9 290X is still a bargain, which is why I'm upgrading.

Especially since I game at 1440p, the R9 290X trades blows with the 780ti at that resolution.

 

[Muckster]

I bought an R9 280X right before Christmas for $350. I've been mining with it on the side when I'm not gaming. With $350 now in the bank from Mining, I'm going to sell it on eBay for $350 (yes they're going for that) and then buy an R9 290x for $700. Right now, I'm really liking the new Powercolor. It has a great review on Techpowerup.

So that's going to be essentially $350 net for this R9 290X - then will mine with that and use it to fund another upgrade.

Now that's what I call a Best GPU for the $$ purchase...

I've been watching these R9 290 Sapphire tri-x cards. They are much quieter and cooler than the stock R9 290 and are mildly overclocked. Not an "X" but worth a look:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7601/sapphire-radeon-r9-290-review-our-first-custom-cooled-290

 

[jk47_99]

Love the changes to the comments, I can actually read the latest comments now! And the R9 290X is still THE card to buy in the rest of the world, hope the prices get back down to earth in the US soon. The 750ti also has a recent hash to power rate which explains why it is over priced as well.

 

[Sakkura]

Love the changes to the comments, I can actually read the latest comments now! And the R9 290X is still THE card to buy in the rest of the world, hope the prices get back down to earth in the US soon. The 750ti also has a recent hash to power rate which explains why it is over priced as well.

Nah, the R9 290 is better value than the R9 290X. I can get a non-reference 290 for $450 before VAT (reference is $410-ish), the 290X is at $575 (reference at $520).

 

[Raheel Hasan]

where is r7 265?

 

[logainofhades]

Hard telling, I have yet to see one on newegg or pcpartpicker.

 

[Rx__]

Great article! One suggestion for non-gamers.We use 27" or higher Dual Monitors for simulations, Movie viewing, video editing, and programming Databases. Typically Intel 4th Gen, SSD on C Drive and dual OS.The latest 27" IPS (edge to edge pixel) are just stunning.We generally anticipate the IPS manufacturing technology to provide over 30" IPS 3D (using polarized glasses) in 2014. If someone could take the same general article and add columns for Dual Moinitor and a column for 3D, it would be perfect!Thanks!

 

[Someone Somewhere]

They pretty much all support dual monitors and 3D. Won't perform as fast, though.

 

[Sakkura]

Hard telling, I have yet to see one on newegg or pcpartpicker.

I've seen them in a few online stores here in Denmark, but they're not in stock yet and no word on when they will be.

 

[Sakkura]

They moved the production to Fredericia though.

 

[de5_Roy]

I just received my xfx hd 7850 in the mail and was surprised to see printed across the top of the card r7 7850. I thought the 7850 was closer to the r9 series ?

7850 was rebadged as r7 265.

 

[logainofhades]

The 265 is faster than a 7850, iirc.

 

[bassbeast]

Two months in a row not a single AMD card recommended over the $120 range. Not even an honorable mention. Even the "assorted multi-card configurations" is only referring to Nvidia SLI options.

Soooo...you blame AMD for the fact that the Litecoin miners have jacked up their prices? AMD makes good cards that can be used for GPGPU jobs as well as gaming and..well capitalism lives on supply and demand and its pretty obvious that litecoin miners demand more AMD.

 

[de5_Roy]

one r7 265 aka radeon 7850 showed up on newegg today..
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202096
...and it's out of stock..

 

[beerdette]

Why aren't the new Kaveri integrated graphics updated on the performance chart?

 

[logainofhades]

Why aren't the new Kaveri integrated graphics updated on the performance chart?

Just for reference, a 7850k's IGP is about even with an R7 240.

 

[Onus]

I'd like to know where the HD8330 (included in the A4-5000 APU) falls. Notebookcheck says it is similar to Intel's HD4000. The APU has a TDP of 15W.

 

[Jaroslav Jandek]

A4-5000 was tested by Tom's HW, see for yourself: AMD's Kabini.
A friend was complaining recently that his Gateway (A4-5000) notebook is running Starcraft 2 slower than his son's ASUS T100 (Z3740 tablet). Might have just been gfx settings / resolution, but it's something that was interesting (considering that A4-5000 > B960 in Tom's benchmarks)...

 

[logainofhades]

Starcraft 2 hates AMD.

 

[beerdette]

Why aren't the new Kaveri integrated graphics updated on the performance chart?

Just for reference, a 7850k's IGP is about even with an R7 240.

I thought it was suppose to be closer to the R7 250, but I would like to know where the rest of those integrated gpu fall. It's not like they haven't had the chips and done a benchmark on them.