Best Graphics Cards For The Money: January 2012

[shmann]

the HDMI port has weird scaling issues. The image was smaller than my monitors available realestate. The only solution I found was to adjust a scaling slider in the catalyst control panel. This might appear to fix the problem for most people, however the display is still not actually doing native 1:1 to my monitor's pixels. This results in the image being slightly fuzzy and showing artifacts.
From what I learned researching this, I don't have a bad card, this is just how the newer ATI cards work. And again, the image is fine, crisp and scaled correctly through DVI, but not HDMI. A deal breaker for me since I need to run multiple monitors.

Also, the catalyst control panel is crap, just like I remember from 10 years ago. The driver installer is crap and threw multiple scary sounding errors while installing. After hours of trying to troubleshoot the installer I eventually read you just have to ignore the errors but everything installs correctly...
Bottom line: Having a little better horsepower per dollar vs another card isn't nearly as important as having the card and it's supporting software be of high quality and actually work.

I'm sorry you had such a bad time with it. I recently moved to the R9 270, and it's been smooth sailing for me. The only change I needed to make was to turn off the scaling altogether and change the pixel colors to RGB standard

 

[InvalidError]

Bottom line: Having a little better horsepower per dollar vs another card isn't nearly as important as having the card and it's supporting software be of high quality and actually work.

I do not remember having issues installing or updating AMD/ATI drivers on my PCs in a very long time and I do not have issues running multiple displays over HDMI, DVI and DisplayPort aside from windows sometimes shuffling between displays when I turn both displays off and on, which is mildly annoying.

 

[deppman]

Come on Tom's, we know this article has been inaccurate ever since the introduction of the gtx 970/980 boards one week after this article's publication. In other words, the article has been wrong for 3/4 of its existance. You could have at least put a discaimer at the top stating the release of the 980/970 changed your results, "more details in our next report".

In any event, can you please update - its been over a month?

 

[InvalidError]

In any event, can you please update - its been over a month?

The GPU chart is a quarterly thing so it is not going to get updated for another two months.

Sucks for Nvidia but they missed the deadline by a couple of weeks on this one.

 

[cub_fanatic]

Sucks for Nvidia but they missed the deadline by a couple of weeks on this one.

I'm sure Nvidia and their 9.2 billion dollar market cap is all broken up about missing out on Tom's quarterly report on best GPUs for the money.

 

[Eisie]

When will the GTX 780 6GB card best tested and listed on these pages?? I'm curious to see that card bench-marked against the GTX 780 TI 3GB.


***UPDATE****
Everyone told me NO video game these days (Except modded Skyrim) would come close to using 3gb of VRAM, which im finding is complete BS. I play BF4 on 1080p monitor (ultra everything settings), using my my GTX780-6GB card and it constantly is hitting almost 4gb of VRAM and almost never dropps below 100fps... So even though the GTX780ti is a little faster, it lacks in needed VRAM.. So which one is "better" ??

 

[Jeffrey H]

Sucks for Nvidia but they missed the deadline by a couple of weeks on this one.

I'm sure Nvidia and their 9.2 billion dollar market cap is all broken up about missing out on Tom's quarterly report on best GPUs for the money.

Then again one thing that is missing is people having to afford the Video Cards in the PC Market, but still able to get Video Cards that Play DVD and Blu-ray Videos on an HDTV, I know I do that with my system, but the fact is that Reviews are nice here, it is just that some reviews are needed if Building a New PC requires having to get the right Video Card that won't be "Over Priced".

 

[cub_fanatic]

Sucks for Nvidia but they missed the deadline by a couple of weeks on this one.

I'm sure Nvidia and their 9.2 billion dollar market cap is all broken up about missing out on Tom's quarterly report on best GPUs for the money.

Then again one thing that is missing is people having to afford the Video Cards in the PC Market, but still able to get Video Cards that Play DVD and Blu-ray Videos on an HDTV, I know I do that with my system, but the fact is that Reviews are nice here, it is just that some reviews are needed if Building a New PC requires having to get the right Video Card that won't be "Over Priced".

I'm not exactly sure I understood that but, FYI, almost every single integrated on-die or on-board GPU made in the last 5 years or so should be enough for 1080p HDTV, DVD and BD playback. In fact, many of the latest ones are even fully capable of UHDTV resolutions including 4K as well as 3D playback as long as your motherboard has HDMI 1.4 or Display Port. HDTV playback is almost a standard feature now in integrated GPUs and especially so in discrete cards. In fact, even the most basic entry-level discrete GPUs currently on the market are overkill for 1080p video playback. You'd have to have a rig built way back in the mid to late 20-oughts or before to have to worry about its ability to play back "regular" HDTV content. If you don't want an overpriced GPU whose main purpose is to deliver HD video to your TV then get any of the APUs from AMD or any of the CPUs that Intel offers with the (hint) HD Graphics iGPU on die. And if the PC's sole purpose is video and it is not used for anything but HTPC, there are even better options than a power hungry, loud, and physically large desktop PC. Check out the single board ultra mini PCs like the Raspberry Pi and the many clones inspired by it. There are also many embedded mini-ITX ultra low power boards that use CPUs which are typically found in low power laptops, tablets or phones like the Tegra, Atom, Bay-Trail, etc. All of these extremely low TDP chips are very capable of playing 1080p video.

 

[akula2]

Performance wise, Asus and EVGA's reference coolers are identical. Their non-reference coolers differ only very slightly and you would never notice a difference in real world use except maybe a slightly better overclock or slightly better temps from one or the other. Typically, Asus has a better VRM system so you might see slightly better overclocks with their cards. When it comes to warranty and service if anything happens to go wrong, you are probably better off going with EVGA. I had an Asus GPU that went bad and they send it to a 3rd party repair center. It took me over 3 months and having to send my card back to them 3 times until I finally got a working one back. I have never owned a (modern) EVGA GPU but from what I have read, they have excellent customer service almost on the level of Corsair's.

I use dozens of GPUs from Asus and EVGA. Trust me, their performances differ on some parameters and on pricing in the real world applications (non-gaming).

It appears Asus 980 STRIX slightly better than EVGA 980 SC model. I've a new requirement in a new batch of Z97 builds, which I planned to do the holiday season along with ten X99 extreme builds. And, no news from Nvidia on the Maxwell based Titan Black II (if there will be one!), Quadro and Tesla cards. It seems I must wait for a few more weeks...

BTW, will there be 980Ti? If yes, going for 980s is somewhat hasty in my case.