Best Graphics Cards For The Money: October 2011

[gxpbecker]

Radeon to keep AMD afloat until stronger CPUs arise... again... lol sigh

 

[julianbautista87]

nice article. Nvidia should lower its prices to match AMD in the middle and low segment.

 

[kyuuketsuki]

The people here are weird. My comment pointing out the obvious contradiction in releasing an article that's all about why there's absolutely no advantage to getting the 2GB version of the 6950 over the 1GB version and then immediately releasing another article where it recommends the 6950 2GB at a $30 premium over the 1GB. If there's no advantage, why would you recommend spending an extra $30 on it?

I'm not saying anything negative about the card. I own one for chrissakes.

 

[kyuuketsuki]

Argh, really need an edit button. I meant to say, my comment got rated down.

 

[julianbautista87]

[citation][nom]Kyuuketsuki[/nom]The people here are weird. My comment pointing out the obvious contradiction in releasing an article that's all about why there's absolutely no advantage to getting the 2GB version of the 6950 over the 1GB version and then immediately releasing another article where it recommends the 6950 2GB at a $30 premium over the 1GB. If there's no advantage, why would you recommend spending an extra $30 on it?I'm not saying anything negative about the card. I own one for chrissakes.[/citation]


It's because for 30 dollars you get better performance in high resolutions, especially when using 3 monitors. But at the same time, for standard resolutions, it's basically the same, almost no game at 1080p needs more than 1GB of memory.

 

[caamsa]

Unless you are building a new system or have a really old card there is no point in upgrading your video card. I have two 4850's running in crossfire, more than enough for me. Wife's computer GTS-250 and my daughter's computer a 9600GT I got for free from BFG for trading in a 7800GS video card over a year ago. All of those cards are still great cards and an upgrade won't get you much of a boost unless you wanna spend in the 200 dollar range, which I will never do again. 7950 GT for $270.00 ack! Epic fail. If you want a cheap card check out craigslist. I picked up a 5750 over a year ago for $60.00 so there are deal out there you just need to hunt for them.

 

[theconsolegamer]

No mention of the GTX 550ti in the $100 price range nor of them in SLI in the $200 price range......

Is this due to AMD doing not so great with BD?

 

[stingstang]

[citation][nom]vaughn2k[/nom]My HD5770 is still there! 10 straight months![/citation]
HD5770/4870. Equal in performance minus DX11 support. Going on 3 years now, and still don't...really need an upgrade.

 

[Guest]

Why do they continue to mention the ability to firmware update the 2gb radeon hd 6950 to a 6970, I have searched for months for any of the 2gb cards that still have this ability and have not found a single one that will do this, it seems that manufacturers have stopped basing their cards exactly off of the reference card.

 

[bmyton]

Can we PLEASE set concrete price points for the "Best Of" articles? When the difference between competitive cards is $10 it makes a pretty big difference if you move the targets every month. As it stands right now I have to wonder if you guys are just picking prices to match cards that you like...

$50
$75
$100
$150
$200
$250
$350
$500
$750

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]bmyton[/nom]Can we PLEASE set concrete price points for the "Best Of" articles?... ...As it stands right now I have to wonder if you guys are just picking prices to match cards that you like.[/citation]

unfortunately, the market dictates price points, not us.

As such, we work within those confines to find the best deals for the money. We try to maintain at least a $20 spread between recommendations, but if you want clean $25 spacing you're going to have to convince the manufacturers and retailers to set their pricing that way.

 

[fb39ca4]

R.I.P GTX 460 768MB. I really should buy one before they are all gone for SLI.

 

[fb39ca4]

lol at how u have the TNT and Rage 128 on the list at the end.

 

[tsnor]

[citation][nom]Kyuuketsuki[/nom]For clarification: zero advantage relative to a single 6950 1GB.[/citation]

yup, thoguht same thing. funny. "Best PCIe Card For ~$265:
Radeon HD 6950 2 GB"

 

[ezareth]

I just picked up two Sapphire 6970 2GB cards for $300 each under separate promos from Newegg and Amazon to replace my 4870X2. I got tired of waiting for AMD to release their 7000 series cards with so many amazing graphic-hungry games coming out.

I play in 2560X1600 on my 30 inch monitor and the 4870X2 just wasn't cutting it on anything above medium settings in modern games. I don't understand why 2X6950s were mentioned for $530 for 2560X1600 yet 2X6970 for $600 which beats the 6950s, the 6990 and the GTX590.

 

[ezareth]

^ was not mentioned

 

[dontcrosthestreams]

i use one 6950 2gb with s small overclock and it runs 5040x1050 just fine, thats with a 955 be at 3.8

 

[ezareth]

The reason I'm assuming it works fine is because you're using textures for 1680X1050 on each monitor. 2560X1600 has a much more complex textures even though it is 20% less pixels (4096000 vs. 5292000).

Either way there is no way a single 6950 2GB overclocked can run modern games at max settings. I've been able to run every game with no lag with the settings scaled back or AA turned off but for instance in Witcher 2 with ultra settings turned on the game ran extremely choppy. Now it runs as smooth as butter with the 6970s in crossfire. In Dirt 3 Benchmark with 100% max settings and 8AA turned on I'm still only getting 20FPS.

(For comparison I have a X58 with 6GB Triple channel memory and Core-I7 920 and 120GB ForceGT SSD)

 

[dontcrosthestreams]

its not on max settings, lol its 5040 due to just one of the screens is 1680, the others are 1920....im saving up for a 2nd card and 3rd 1920

 

[ezareth]

1680X1050*3 = 5040X1050. You can have two 1920X1080 monitors but you're still using lower quality textures and a non-optimal resolution for your 1920 monitors. At lower settings a modern card can do pretty wall in almost any resolution, the reason you need an SLI/Xfire setup for 2560X1600 is if you want to run ultra textures, 4X+ AA and everything turned on.

 

[karab]

The 6950 is a faster card for basically the same amount of money depending on what and where you buy. I'm not sure why people are confused about that.

 

[JDFan]

[citation][nom]Cleeve[/nom]unfortunately, the market dictates price points, not us.As such, we work within those confines to find the best deals for the money. We try to maintain at least a $20 spread between recommendations, but if you want clean $25 spacing you're going to have to convince the manufacturers and retailers to set their pricing that way.[/citation]

No -- you should dictate the Pricing levels by keeping them consistent and if a card is $5 more then it needs to compete with the next higher pricing level instead of the lower level instead of constantly changing the price level keep them consistent and just let the cards that are above a certain price point have to compete with the cards that are in the next higher price point -- You can easily keep the price points the same and just let the cards current pricing determine which level they are competing at instead of constantly adjusting the price levels to match a certain card performance level !

 

[JDFan]

For a bit more explanation of last post -- IF a 5770 costs $99 then it competes with other cards that are under $100 -- if it costs $110 then it competes with cards between $100 and $125 (if the levels are $25) or $100 to $150 (if the levels are $50) instead of changing your recommendations to best card at $99 or best card at $110 !

 

[srgess]

what about the asus maximus 2 , the fastest graphic card atm only 3000$

 

[flclkun]

interesting that the 560 ti gets no mention anywhere. With all that extra cash laying around over at Tom's i would be surprised to see the next article: 'This just in! Bulldozer is recommended over all intel CPU's!!!!!'