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

[bildo123]

On the R7 265 "Essentially, this is an overclocked Radeon HD 7850". Why would you pay $150 for a two year old video card with a slight OC that was practically $150 a year and a half ago?

 

[JPNpower]

@ta152h
I think the same thing when anyone mentions Microcenter. From what I've seen, if you live near one you can usually get about a $40 discount, but you end up paying $30 in taxes. Yet, most of the people posting here never mention the taxes.

Yeah but at Microcenter, you get to choose which box to buy and you have a physical person to yell at when bad stuff happens. Not much I guess, but something.

 

[JPNpower]

On the R7 265 "Essentially, this is an overclocked Radeon HD 7850". Why would you pay $150 for a two year old video card with a slight OC that was practically $150 a year and a half ago?

Because most of us care more about performance only rather than newness.

 

[SessouXFX]

With the 880 on it's way, this is quite possibly the worse time to buy a GPU....

 

[rantoc]

I agree about the quality and choice of cards though. It would be nice to list not just the cheapest version, but one that doesn't have half the reviews on Newegg complaining of DOA RMA stuff.

I agree with that however the cheapest cards usually sell in big quantity's and say you sell 10.000 of one cheap card brand and 1.000 of the quality brand and its 0.1% faulty of each (many new brands who work hard to get into the game don't lower quality but rather expect a profit hit while building a reasonable sized fanboy squad, later to raise the price ofc). Lets say that each customer who gets a DOA card post a review, the low price brand will have 10 negative reviews while the expensive will have just 1 making it appear vastly superior when looking at the reviews only.

Sadly its hard to get the whole picture as few companies list their sale numbers the reviews are based on so in reality its very hard to accomplish the above.

 

[Aegean BM]

<b>Honorable Mention</b> for <b>Fastest Card Without A Power Input</b>

Love it. Please keep this special category as a regular.

 

[fezz4734]

Great article but where is Gtx 770 and where does it compare? Also someone just said the new cards are going to be coming out so should I wait to build my pc in hopes the gtx 770 I want to buy will go down in price?

 

[Taintedskittles]

Just use Tom's best GPU charts as a general reference for performance rather than the Gospel. Use PcPartPicker to check price's in North America. Because you can get each of these cards $40-100 less. If you compare online retailers.

 

[EasyLover]

On the second last page (Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart) of this article, there is no mentioning of AMD card(s) vs 780Ti, Titan Black. Really?

 

[Saimbhatti]

Nice information. All these graphic cards are excellent for people who are gamer, graphic designer.

 

[dmc1]

With things changing all the time, where does my computer stand now as far as quality and performance? I purchased a HP Pavillion w/ AMD Elite Quad-Core A8 6500 accelerated processor , with Radeon 8570D HD Graphic.....? Did I buy junk? I try to listen to you guys and share with computer people in stores, but you can seem like a minno in a sharks tank, sometimes to sales people...... And could someone tell me what 'Turbo' is.....the processor has 3.5ghz of speed, but can get 5.3 with 'Turbo'?

 

[RedJaron]

With things changing all the time, where does my computer stand now as far as quality and performance? I purchased a HP Pavillion w/ AMD Elite Quad-Core A8 6500 accelerated processor , with Radeon 8570D HD Graphic.....? Did I buy junk? I try to listen to you guys and share with computer people in stores, but you can seem like a minno in a sharks tank, sometimes to sales people...... And could someone tell me what 'Turbo' is.....the processor has 3.5ghz of speed, but can get 5.3 with 'Turbo'?

Low-end or entry-level tech isn't necessarily junk if it's not used for anything terribly demanding. In terms of an everyday use machine that does some light gaming, the A8 will be ok. You might be able to play simpler games on lower details, but you won't get good performance on bigger titles, even at minimum detail settings.

And Turbo is a CPU feature that allows a core or two to spin up to higher than normal clocks for short time if it's not running too hot. If you rip a CD, the CPU can spin up to get that job handled faster if you're not doing anything else. If you're playing games or doing some number crunching, most of the cores will already be running and the chip will hit a thermal ceiling that limits how fast the cores can run.

 

[SessouXFX]

When you get the chance, learn how to build your own. You'll certainly come out ahead next time around. There's all sorts of websites that shows how to build your own PC...

 

[Fr33Th1nk3r]

r9 280 230 dollars in the us. in canada, that same 280 costs 355 dollars. I'm so tired of this BS

 

[SessouXFX]

r9 280 230 dollars in the us. in canada, that same 280 costs 355 dollars. I'm so tired of this BS

Different value in currency, it's always been that way. But don't' worry, with the U.S. government printing off money like it's toilet paper, we'll soon see equal value...because, you know, it's not right for the US to have money that's valued more than other countries. Pesos for everybody!

 

[bdiddytampa]

r9 280 230 dollars in the us. in canada, that same 280 costs 355 dollars. I'm so tired of this BS

Different value in currency, it's always been that way. But don't' worry, with the U.S. government printing off money like it's toilet paper, we'll soon see equal value...because, you know, it's not right for the US to have money that's valued more than other countries. Pesos for everybody!

Canadian dollar is worth pretty much the same as USD, about $0.90 I think. My guess is taxes are the reason for the difference.

 

[Fr33Th1nk3r]

r9 280 230 dollars in the us. in canada, that same 280 costs 355 dollars. I'm so tired of this BS

Different value in currency, it's always been that way. But don't' worry, with the U.S. government printing off money like it's toilet paper, we'll soon see equal value...because, you know, it's not right for the US to have money that's valued more than other countries. Pesos for everybody!

Canadian dollar is worth pretty much the same as USD, about $0.90 I think. My guess is taxes are the reason for the difference.

Yeah well they also jack it up for profit on top of that. They gouge on purpose and use taxes as an excuse. If I order from an american site i get import duties from the canadian gov't. Sometimes I'll order something and get it sent to my mom's house in Louisiana, and get her to toss it in there when she sends me Community coffee and zatarans stuff.

 

[markbanang]

I would like to add my voice to the requests for more integrated graphics options in the list.

Many current generation laptops have Intel HD4600 or HD5000 series graphics, and it would be useful to know where they sit in the Hierarchy Chart compared to the HD 4000.

Similarly, it can be difficult to find AMD APU's. For instance, where do the A10-7800 Kaveri chips sit in terms of graphics performance compared to the HD 7660D associated with the A10-5800K?

 

[ZeroNightmare]

I was just about to buy the Sapphire Radeon R9 270 for $164 but now I find that the price went up to $180. Do you know if the price is only going to go up or should I wait for the price to get back down?

 

[Fr33Th1nk3r]

I was just about to buy the Sapphire Radeon R9 270 for $164 but now I find that the price went up to $180. Do you know if the price is only going to go up or should I wait for the price to get back down?

There's sales on all the time, but you can check out pcpartpicker.com
quarterly sales, holiday sales, etc

 

[EasyLover]

You can wait for Sale/Promos. Keep on checking the NewEgg/Amazon for this purpose.

 

[Richard Wolf VI]

Where are the benchmarks for the GT 730? I can't find any comparisons to the AMD R7 240/250 cards.

 

[Vince Paul]

Thanks for this article. It told me what I needed.

 

[SessouXFX]

Well, this came up earlier this past week, just wanted to post it, since nobody mentioned it: Word is, don't expect the GTX 980 to surpass the 780 Ti. It will beat the 780, but not the 780 Ti.

I guess it's to be expected after all. it's not as if they had a die shrink or anything special. But still, let the price slashing commence!

 

[Memnarchon]

Well, this came up earlier this past week, just wanted to post it, since nobody mentioned it: Word is, don't expect the GTX 980 to surpass the 780 Ti. It will beat the 780, but not the 780 Ti.

I guess it's to be expected after all. it's not as if they had a die shrink or anything special. But still, let the price slashing commence!

You need to reread the articles more carefully. The graphs showing GTX980 11% faster than GTX780ti.

But to be honest, I was expecting (and most of us I think) more performance since they even skipped a number (8xx), they should provide performance enough to gap this jump.
(Like GTX280 skipped GTX1xx, GTX480 skipped GTX3xx and both of them had at least enough performance like the previous gen dual GPU graphics card.)