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

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What happened to the resolution summary from the old article format? "Plays most games at 1920x1080p with reduced settings", etc?
 
How the hell were you still living with an FX 5200 though? I hated my FX 5700 Ultra by the time I replaced it, and that was in the system before the one I had before my current one. Or maybe the one before that.
 
I don't understand how the Nvidia 670M and AMD 4870M can be in the same tier. If you look at the performance for these two chips on:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-670M.72197.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5870.23073.0.html

You can see that the Nvidia GPU is significantly more powerful.

And should it really come as a surprise given you're comparing a 2 billion transistor GPU (670M) to a 1 billion transistors one (5870M)?
 

The 5850 is a little better than the 6850, which is about equal to the 7770 (maybe even slightly better).
 
whoa is the 5570 really two tiers higher than GT 630?, its a lot cheaper here in my place...that card should be good enough for 1280x720 right?
 
[citation][nom]mineralwater[/nom]whoa is the 5570 really two tiers higher than GT 630?, its a lot cheaper here in my place...that card should be good enough for 1280x720 right?[/citation]

Radeon 5570 GDDR5 is two tiers above the GT 630 GDDR5. Radeon 5570 DDR3 is two tiers above the GT 630 DDR3. For each card, there is a one tier difference between the GDDR5 and the DDR3 model, so the Radeon 5570 DDR3 is one tier above the GT 630 GDDR5 and the GT 630 GDDR5 is one tier above the GT 630 DDR3.
 
Yea but is it good enough for 1280x720, med settings gaming?, this article recommends the 6670 ddr3 for 100$ below, but the 5570 ddr3 is in the same tier and its a lot cheaper here(45$), so I guess that's my card right?
 
I wish you wouldn't keep calling it the 7870 LE. It's actually either a 7870 XT or 7870 Myst Edition. The LE tag is only applied to the Tahiti GPU.

It's quite a compelling card at the moment though, especially if you're going to overclock.
 
The HD6670 GDDR5 version would be the weakest card I'd suggest for games. It does well with older titles such as the original Guild Wars, but at 1600x900 GW2 needs to be mostly low-medium and can still be jittery (but is "sufferable").

I don't think the 5570 ddr3 should be in the same tier as the 6670 ddr3. That range of card is where incremental improvements can be extremely noticeable.
 
[citation][nom]Sakkura[/nom]I wish you wouldn't keep calling it the 7870 LE. It's actually either a 7870 XT or 7870 Myst Edition. The LE tag is only applied to the Tahiti GPU.It's quite a compelling card at the moment though, especially if you're going to overclock.[/citation]
I thought it WAS a Tahiti GPU. In any case, I find nothing compelling about it whatsoever. It's hot, loud, and really sucks down the juice (more even than the HD7950). If you need this level of performance, get a HD7950, not this excuse.
 
[citation][nom]Onus[/nom]I thought it WAS a Tahiti GPU. In any case, I find nothing compelling about it whatsoever. It's hot, loud, and really sucks down the juice (more even than the HD7950). If you need this level of performance, get a HD7950, not this excuse.[/citation]

The Radeon 7870 XT has a cut-down Tahiti GPU with crap binning (that's the cause for it being so power-hungry and generating so much heat). The Powercolor model is kinda loud and hot, but that's just because it has a weak cooler. The Sapphire model runs cool and quiet. The Powercolor model is also a mere $240 ($210 on sale) which puts it almost in the realm of the Radeon 7850 2GB for pricing, yet it performs about as well as a Radeon 7950 (800MHz), so it has huge value despite its cooling shortcomings. Sapphire's model is $260 ($240 on sale) and that puts it in the pricing range of the Radeon 7870, an inferior-performing card. The power consumption is a trade-off for big performance for the money.

The Radeon 7950 is considerably more expensive at $290-$340 for most models, granted they're mostly faster Boost Edition cards or 900MHz factory overclock models that beat the 7870 XT in performance.
 
[citation][nom]Onus[/nom]I thought it WAS a Tahiti GPU. In any case, I find nothing compelling about it whatsoever. It's hot, loud, and really sucks down the juice (more even than the HD7950). If you need this level of performance, get a HD7950, not this excuse.[/citation]

The thing I find compelling is that iit is like $60+ cheaper for basically the same performance (especially at extreme settings). Also if you get a card with not reference coolers like the sapphire it is really quiet.
 
"You might not need the extra gigabyte of memory that spending $20 more buys you. But, in the event that you want to run a higher resolution than 1920x1080, increase detail quality, or apply some anti-aliasing, it could be what keeps your performance scaling as expected, rather than falling off a cliff.
Click to expand...
You know, it's very easy to push well beyond 1GB of VRAM usage modding out games like Skyrim with high resolution texture packs. Those HRT's make a huge difference in visuals.
 
[citation][nom]sicom[/nom]You know, it's very easy to push well beyond 1GB of VRAM usage modding out games like Skyrim with high resolution texture packs. Those HRT's make a huge difference in visuals.[/citation]

It depends on the situation. That's probably part of Tom's point in how they worded what they said- you might need it, but you might not. There are many situations where it is helpful, but there are also many where it is not.
 
It would be wonderful if these features also included a bang-for-the-buck rating - one that crossed all the price divisions and singled out the card or cards that provides the best performance for the price. It would be great, too, if this list included historical greats. It would be interesting to see how the bang-for-the-buck rating of an 8800gt or 6800gs compares against a GTX660 or 7970.
 

The 7870 XT has a Tahiti LE GPU. The 7950 has a Tahiti PRO GPU. The 7970 has a Tahiti XT GPU. It's the same GPU in various states of repair. Usually, the LE would translate into a -30, in this case a 7930. But for some reason they decided to lump it in with the 7870. Calling it the 7870 LE just makes it sounds like a cut-down Pitcairn GPU, which would be something between the 7850 and the 7770. It simply adds to the confusion that AMD and its partners have already created with this peculiar naming.
 
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