Best Graphics Cards For The Money: October 2014

[Math Geek]

I am very disappointed in this article. Usually I agree with a lot of the conclusions, but I can't this time.
The gtx 970 and the r9 390 both retail for around $300 right now. There is no reason a gtx 970 should be recommended above the r9 390 if you are being objective about price to performance.
Heck, the r9 390 should be the recommended card over the gtx 980.

that's pretty much how i feel about it. the reviews have shown it matches the 970 at lower resolutions and beats it easily at higher resolutions. for the same money this sure seems like a check in the win box to me.

i know folks love to talk about the power usage but when looking at high performance cars, no one really looks at mpg. if a car is faster, then it's faster. and the 390 is faster from all i have seen. the honorable mention of the 970 for it's power usage is fine as it surely is a factor in some cases. but for all out performance, not giving the 390 the nod is pretty much false info.

but the article does not really call one better than the other. it is presented as a tie which is a pretty cheap way to avoid declaring the 390 the winner and the 970 as an afterthought. guess they don't want to upset the nvidia followers or something......

 

[andy_Man]

For all the AMD saviors/spazzes trying to split hairs, most the Nvidia products are more efficient, run cooler, SLI works, receive and have received timely driver updates, and have healthy overclock headroom for those that wish to. As a matter of fact the upper end Nvidia products have plenty of factory warrantied overclocked models to choose from. Enough already.

It's best graphics card for the money, which most will argue is about performance not power efficiency.

 

[cub_fanatic]

I was hoping to upgrade my Radeon 6950 with something in the $250 range. Is there really nothing worth mentioning between $190 and $320? Really!?!?

I guess a ~$320 card is what I'll be buying. The GTX 970 is the clear winner for me just for the difference in power consumption. It's 27% lower than my current 6950 47% lower than the competing R9 390.

It would be nice if Nvidia releases a 960ti and if AMD releases a 380x to fill that gap. A 960ti with the same shader power as the current 960 but with 3GB or 4GB VRAM stock and a better 256-bit bus would be an interesting card. A 380x with the same 2,048 shaders as the 280x but with double the VRAM to 6GB and higher core and memory clocks would also make an interesting $250 card.

Right now, though, you can get an R9 290 for around $240-$260 which is smack in the middle of that price difference. It is essentially an R9 390 with 4GB and lower clocks. You won't notice much of a difference between the two in 1080p. It still has the power efficiency of the 390, though, since they are both Hawaii cards. They are basically like the Hummer H2 of PC parts. It really has no competition in that $240 price range at the moment. The only Nvidia card selling for that much at the moment are the higher end non-reference GTX 960's with 4GB. Even if Nvidia makes a 960ti and AMD makes a 380x in the way I described above, the 4GB 290 will probably still edge them out.

 

[CptBarbossa]

For all the AMD saviors/spazzes trying to split hairs, most the Nvidia products are more efficient, run cooler, SLI works, receive and have received timely driver updates, and have healthy overclock headroom for those that wish to. As a matter of fact the upper end Nvidia products have plenty of factory warrantied overclocked models to choose from. Enough already.

Its not splitting hairs. Performance/dollar the 380 beats 960, 390 beats 970, and 390x beats 980. The whole article as about price/performance. Its not about performance per watt, its not about performance per degree Celsius, or performance per per sli/crossfire configuration. We are simply calling out Toms to do what they claim to be doing - make recommendations on price/performance.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

The whole "AMD runs hot" thing I have found to be overblown. My MSI R9 390 never goes over 70C on 40-45% fan speed under full load. I have found it to be a very cool processor. If a proper cooling system comes on the card and your case has decent airflow, then AMD does not run hot. I have seen Nvidia cards run hot, believe me! It's worth noting that the companies likely put better cooling systems into AMD cards than Nvidia cards since they require more electricity and heat.

As for electricity, in the United States the most expensive state for electricity is Hawaii. Electricity costs 33 cents per kilowatt hour. Let's think about this. That means if your computer draws in 400W of power, and say with 80% efficiency that would be 500W of reactive power, you'd have to use your computer for 2 hours to be charged 33 cents on your electricity bill. Say you game 5 hours a day. That is 82.5 cents a day on the electricity bill from the computer.

Say your Nvidia machine draws in 300W of power, and 375W of reactive power under 80% efficiency. You'd have to use your computer 2.67 hours to be charged 33 cents. Therefore it would cost you 61.8 cents a day of gaming. The difference is 20.7 more cents per day for the AMD machine.

That would mean every month you would save $6.31 by going Nvidia. So, is it worth it to go AMD is the question? For one thing, I described the worst case scenario above. Most people do not game 5 hours a day with their computer under full load. Let's say someone games 2 hours a day. That would be $2.52 savings a month. In many states, electricity is much cheaper than Hawaii, and can be around 12 cents per kilowatt hour. That would be $0.92 saved per month then by going Nvidia, which results in about saving $10 per year over AMD.

You can see the huge difference here. I think it is worthy to consider electricity costs as well as how much you game when comparing if you should go AMD or Nvidia. If you're a kid whose parents pay the bill, why would you even care about efficiency! Heck go AMD!

 

[Brian_R170]

The whole "AMD runs hot" thing I have found to be overblown. My MSI R9 390 never goes over 70C on 40-45% fan speed under full load. I have found it to be a very cool processor. If a proper cooling system comes on the card and your case has decent airflow, then AMD does not run hot. I have seen Nvidia cards run hot, believe me! It's worth noting that the companies likely put better cooling systems into AMD cards than Nvidia cards since they require more electricity and heat.

As for electricity, in the United States the most expensive state for electricity is Hawaii. Electricity costs 33 cents per kilowatt hour. Let's think about this. That means if your computer draws in 400W of power, and say with 80% efficiency that would be 500W of reactive power, you'd have to use your computer for 2 hours to be charged 33 cents on your electricity bill. Say you game 5 hours a day. That is 82.5 cents a day on the electricity bill from the computer.

Say your Nvidia machine draws in 300W of power, and 375W of reactive power under 80% efficiency. You'd have to use your computer 2.67 hours to be charged 33 cents. Therefore it would cost you 61.8 cents a day of gaming. The difference is 20.7 more cents per day for the AMD machine.

That would mean every month you would save $6.31 by going Nvidia. So, is it worth it to go AMD is the question? For one thing, I described the worst case scenario above. Most people do not game 5 hours a day with their computer under full load. Let's say someone games 2 hours a day. That would be $2.52 savings a month. In many states, electricity is much cheaper than Hawaii, and can be around 12 cents per kilowatt hour. That would be $0.92 saved per month then by going Nvidia, which results in about saving $10 per year over AMD.

You can see the huge difference here. I think it is worthy to consider electricity costs as well as how much you game when comparing if you should go AMD or Nvidia. If you're a kid whose parents pay the bill, why would you even care about efficiency! Heck go AMD!

I did a rough estimate and got $20/year at 4 hrs/day, but I live in a hot climate where the A/C runs 8 months out of the year and is constantly removing excess heat from my house. I don't have the details on the efficiency of my A/C system, but I would wager that it costs at least as much to remove the heat as it does to create it, and probably significantly more.

 

[dfg555]

I'd prefer a 390X over a 980. Cheaper, performs similar and larger VRAM. Sure it sucks a lot of power but that doesn't really bother me at all. Heat on the other hand is subjective, but in general the 390X should be about 2-4C hotter in an open test bench.

 

[Pchandra]

Picked up a Sapphire R9 295X2 last year in Black Friday sale at $720, awesome on 4K, no issues / complaints what so ever

 

[xaephod]

You are back!!! I missed you so much!!!!

/hugs

 

[DVJ Rick Kraft]

GTX 950 is noticeably absent from the table. Guessing it's the same level as the GTX 295, 480, 570, 660's?

 

[littleleo]

I was hoping to upgrade my Radeon 6950 with something in the $250 range. Is there really nothing worth mentioning between $190 and $320? Really!?!?

I guess a ~$320 card is what I'll be buying. The GTX 970 is the clear winner for me just for the difference in power consumption. It's 27% lower than my current 6950 47% lower than the competing R9 390.

I just saw the GTX 970 FTW+ ACZ2.0+ with back plate & Game for $310 after rebate.

Correction $304 after rebate

 

[bigwoofer]

THANK YOU for this October update Just made my day!!!

 

[vertexx]

A couple of awesome deals on Newegg:

1. EVGA GeForce GTX980 Classified - $445 today only with 4% promo and $40 rebate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487084

2. EVGA GeForce GTX980 TI SC+ ACX 2.0 (with backplate) - $599.99 after $30 rebate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487142

These are not showing on pcpartpicker.com due to having to add to cart to see the price.

 

[mikenygmail]

Why are all AMD APU's and associated GPU's missing from hierarchy chart?
Why have all previous "Best Graphics Cards for the Money" articles been deleted?

?????

 

[mikenygmail]

Why are all AMD APUs missing from hierarchy chart?
Why have all previous Best Graphics Cards for the Money articles been deleted?

?!?!?!?!?

 

[mikenygmail]

i'd also like to see the amd apu's ranked as well. i know it says r5/7 igp but i'm sure it is not quite as good as a discrete r5/7. it's hard to find benchmarks for the apu's but there is bound to be enough info to get them into the list. if the intel igp's can be there so should the apu's

AMD APU's *were* there, but now they are gone. Also, every previous article has been deleted so you can't find where AMD APU's were all listed above intel's integrated graphics on the rightmost column.

 

[littleleo]

Why are all AMD APUs missing from hierarchy chart?
Why have all previous Best Graphics Cards for the Money articles been deleted?

?!?!?!?!?

Déjà vu

 

[mikenygmail]

Why are all AMD APUs missing from hierarchy chart?
Why have all previous Best Graphics Cards for the Money articles been deleted?

?!?!?!?!?

Déjà vu

Intard/Nvidiot Déjà vu, perhaps. (not you)
How much money was involved here, any guesses people?

 

[littleleo]

It would be helpful to see how the AMD APUs GPUs compare to discrete GPUs and Intel integrated video. Anyone know a website that has a good comparison?

 

[cub_fanatic]

It would be helpful to see how the AMD APUs GPUs compare to discrete GPUs and Intel integrated video. Anyone know a website that has a good comparison?

When it comes to APU and Intel HD/Iris iGPU performance, I like notebookcheck. But, since they are a laptop site, they mostly compare to mobile cards although there are some desktop GPUs thrown in the mix for reference.

Here is an example of one of their pages on the Iris Pro 6200: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Iris-Pro-Graphics-6200.125593.0.html

And one on the R7 found in the A10-7850k APU (512 shaders): http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-R7-512-Cores-Kaveri-Desktop.112875.0.html

I like the detail they go into. They cover everything from the full detailed specs, a brief description of the architecture, synthetic benchmarks, comparisons to similar cards and game frame rates in several different settings and resolutions. The nice thing about it is that all these games and synthetic tests are the same when you go look at a different card to compare it to. Plus, on every page on the right, there is a complete list of cards listed in order of overall performance and put into different classes. It is a very good reference if you are shopping for an iGPU.

 

[logainofhades]

I believe the 7850k is somewhere around an HD 7750, performance wise.

 

[RedJaron]

I believe the 7850k is somewhere around an HD 7750, performance wise.

According to these reviews ( 7850K, R7 250X that includes updates 7750 numbers ) the APU is still considerably behind. It struggles to maintain 30 fps at 1080p low detail whereas the 7750 can usually get medium details or better.

 

[cub_fanatic]

I believe the 7850k is somewhere around an HD 7750, performance wise.

According to these reviews ( 7850K, R7 250X that includes updates 7750 numbers ) the APU is still considerably behind. It struggles to maintain 30 fps at 1080p low detail whereas the 7750 can usually get medium details or better.

Are you looking at the 384 shader R7 that is found in the A10-7700k which is about the same as a desktop R7 250 or the 512 shader R7 in the A10-7850k which, like the other poster pointed out, is about the same as an HD 7750?

 

[RedJaron]

Are you looking at the 384 shader R7 that is found in the A10-7700k which is about the same as a desktop R7 250 or the 512 shader R7 in the A10-7850k which, like the other poster pointed out, is about the same as an HD 7750?

I'm looking at the right parts. The 7700 is even farther behind. The 7800 and 7850K both may have 512 shaders ( like the 7750 ), but that's not the whole story. Compare the benchmarks. The 7750 can run most games faster at 1080p and medium details than the 7850K can manage at even low settings.

Admittedly, the 7750 is tested on an i5 whereas the 7850K is left to its own less efficient cores, so it's not a perfect comparison. However, the iGPU runs 10% slower than the 7750 ( you can try to OC this to make up the difference ). But you can't OC system DDR3 RAM to give you 128-bit GDDR5 bandwidth, which is what the dGPU has.

Shader count alone means bupkis if you don't have the pipe to feed it.

 

[SviaA]

Performance&price wise, the AMD 370 is a winner for me. I think I will buy this card with 2 GB to run games at 720p. That should be enough for me.
The price at Amazon is pretty good, since I saw on pc24 much higher prices. Although, Amazon doesn't include VAT, so that should be on par between the sites.