Best Graphics Cards For The Money: October 2014 (Archive)

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When I built my first PC this monthly guide was great and very accurate, however recently it's been misleading at best. The r9 290 should have been in your under $300 recommendation. Here is a link for an Asus for 240 bucks. At that price point there is no way you should get a 960 or 280 instead of the 290.

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-video-card-r9290dc2oc4gd5.
 
No doubt sales and promo codes are great, but they're not permanent. You can't expect the writers to stay absolutely current on every deal across multiple online retailers. These lists are only updated once a month, and most Newegg promos only last a few days, maybe a week.
 


The R9 270 can be had cheaper than $160. Basically they cherrypick higher prices than most people will end up paying.
 
Thanks for the review, I haven't installed a graphics card before and am trying figure out what makes useful "mid" range card... Alas, it looks like a number of these (under 200) are already sold out :-(
And...
Can anyone tell me what gives with the between currency pricing? I am currently trying to build a PC in Germany and am often astounded (and annoyed) at the huge pricing difference between the dollar and the Euro.
E.g. The EVGA 01G-P3-3731-KR - NVIDIA GT 730 comes in at $69.99 and a whopping €152.73 (and the Dollar is about 0.95 of the Euro so its actually about $160.00). I know this isn't down to taxes/duty.

Thanks again for the review 🙂
 
The article mentioned issues with Titan X / GM200 in SLI, but didn't describe what they are. this is the first I have heard of that. Does anyone know what they are referencing and/or have a link to the topic?
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its has been a tradition, that Toms never fully disclosed information about Titan series
(well, for the first Titan its was full cover, I'll give that)
take a look back for a while, where there isnt any review for Titan Z? its dual GPU..

because nvidia wont allow toms to make a review for titan z because of 3k price tag...and the performance almost same as r9 295x for half price..
what a joke..
 

You're looking at a model that happens to be overpriced in Germany. Just look at GT 730s in general. Here is one available for 64€ with free shipping. Converting to US dollars and subtracting VAT, it's $57. Cheapest GT 730 in the US is $54. So prices are practically the same once you account for VAT.
 
I would not use any AMD card if it were free EVEN THE R9 292 X2. I have wasted so much of my life in 2013 with no support / and/or supports by idiots who lie to me at AMD. At times the support line did not pickup or call back for over a month. And, when they did, they put on "experts" who told me lies about the product and did not know what to do.

NOT FOR FREE, AMD, AND NOT FOR FREE WITH CASH PAYMENT OF THE COST OF THE CARD!
 
Is 970 an overkill in any game if my monitor only supports up to 1080p?
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no. if you want to run the better games at their intended higher settings than you will need at least a "4"GB 970. with low ingame settings or lower resolutions a 970 may be slight overkill.
 
Looking to spend $200 or so on a new card to last a while. Moderate gaming, photo editing with lightroom and photoshop.

Anybody have opinions on buying a current gen mid-range card like the GTX 960 or R9 280... vs buying a previous gen high-range card like the GTX 770 or 780?
 
Looking to spend $200 or so on a new card to last a while. Moderate gaming, photo editing with lightroom and photoshop.

Anybody have opinions on buying a current gen mid-range card like the GTX 960 or R9 280... vs buying a previous gen high-range card like the GTX 770 or 780?
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I would hold out for now. AMD's R9 3XX series cards are just around the corner and there will most likely be price cuts on AMD's and NVIDIA's older cards once they do come out. There might also be an 8GB GTX 970 in the future, so I don't think right now is the best time to go out and buy a graphics card...
 

had decided to wait for the ?pascal? cards that might be 6 or 8GB but no word on if they will be released or when. found an openbox 8GB PCS+ 290X for $350 and am very happy with it. sold my 4Gb 770 for $275 with no problem and am glad. i had been trying everything in 1440>1080p DSR and was getting "insufficient vram" warnings in the middle of playing random games and Shadow of Mordor crashing with the ultra textures setting.
never another problem after i installed the 290X. not a huge performance improvement @ 1080p because i'm limited to 60hz\fps, fps has climbed between 5-10 up to 60 with higher AA settings. but with AMD's VSR it runs much better @ 1440>1080p, also getting ~60fps in everything. with PowerColor's PCS+ cooler it has never passed 60° and usually sits right around 57° while gaming. idles around 37°.
 
14 months nothing has changed in the range under 160USD. The 750ti is already that old. I bought a 7770 18 months ago, cheaper than you can find today...

Seems like Nvidia and AMD are both in deep sleep mode...
 


The reason for that is simple- TSMC and GloFo are both stuck at 28nm (well TSMC has a 20nm process out but it's low power and only useful for phone / tablet parts).

The Radeon 300 cards will be the same, a range of tweaked cards with what appears to be a new headliner, still using the 28nm process (although it looks as if we may see HBM memory on the top card which could be a big deal). Still the low and mid range won't change imo.

Come 2016, Samsungs' 14nm process will be widely available (from both Samsung and Glofo) and both AMD and nVidia have some serious new cards planned as they'll have more transistors to play with again for the first time in a long time. That is when we should see a new top to bottom product line from both. Even Intel is having a hard time with it's latest processes- it's getting harder and harder to shrink transistors further.
 
I have found a Gtx 960 that is 4gb vram does that change anything from what stated in the article? If so how?
 


Additional Vram doesn't make a card faster- it just prevents it running out. The issue is that a 960 doesn't have enough shader power or memory bandwidth to game above 1920 x 1080p, so I can't see the additional 2gb of vram being much help for that card.
 
Is 970 an overkill in any game if my monitor only supports up to 1080p?
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It depends on the way you build your PC. If you are thinking long term and are building a system that will last for a good four to five years, then no. Buying a 970 with a monitor that caps are 1080 is planning about 2½ years ahead for when the price of 4k monitors drop to sub-$150 prices around Black Friday 2017.

Some would rather not drop $200 or so today on a GTX960 or lower card only to have to spend another $200 or more again in two years to buy a 4k-ready card. Buying the 4k-ready card now mean not being stuck with that lower-end card two years from now once the 4k-ready card is purchased.
 


I have a gtx 660 and two 1280*1080 monitors, is it worth it to upgrade to the gtx 960? My card only has 2gb vram and the new card would have 4gb.
 
Are you planning on gaming across both screens? That would put the split right in the middle of your view, something most people would consider almost unplayable.

VRAM comes into play when using higher res textures and higher anti-aliasing settings ( especially at higher resolutions. ) The performance increase you'd see in a 960 over the 660 is not because of VRAM, but because the 960 is simply a better GPU. As said already, in most situations the 960 GPU runs out of power before the 2GB VRAM becomes an issue.
 


I just play on one screen. What do you mean by:GPU runs out of power before the 2GB VRAM becomes an issue?
 

I mean that the 960 doesn't have enough processing power to utilize 4GB VRAM in most situations. Different aspects of rendering video games tax different parts of the GPU. You have processing power, memory bandwidth, and VRAM capacity. Using a higher detail setting in nearly every aspect will require more processing. Meanwhile the biggest hits to VRAM are hi-res textures and high AA settings. So, in order to max out the 4GB VRAM, you'd need to run a game with ultra-res textures, high anisotropic filtering, high AA settings, and most likely at a higher than 1920x1080 resolution. However, all those things tax the processing power as well. So the settings required to use the 4GB VRAM would reduce the framerates to unplayable levels.

Now drop that to 2GB VRAM and you hit a better balance. Right around the time the VRAM is taxed to its limits, the processing power is too. If you're only playing at 1280x1080 ( you sure it's not 1280x1024? ) a normal 2GB 960 is more than enough.
 
why does toms hardware suggest reference cards over non reference? I always read that non reference cards perform cooler and faster.
 
The first review for new GPUs is usually the reference version because that's what NVidia and AMD have on hand to send. Afterwards third-party boards will get reviewed as well. But the reference boards are where they talk about the new specs and basic performance.
 
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