Best sub £200 Graphics Card

[Polymer11]

I've decided it's finally time to upgrade my old GTX 460 768mb with a budget of £200. At this price point what are my best options? Cards that I have currently found at around this price are:

- R9 380 4GB
- GTX 960 4GB
- GTX 770 4GB

Out of these which would be the best selection? Or are there others I have missed?
Thanks for any help

 

[DasHotShot]

The 380 for the simple reason it has DX 12 support and gets better FPS than the other two.

A 280x is good too but lacks dx12 support

 

[AdviserKulikov]

The GTX 770 is the strongest performing (not by a huge margin but a noticable one) the difference in price and electricity bill might make you consider a 960 instead, combined with a 960 supporting DX12, and 770 only doing DX11.

It depends on how long you will hold on to the card as well, since it will be a while before DX12 is huge.

The 380 can be more powerful, but it's quite power hungry, and AMD has not been the best with their drivers.

Nvidia also adds proprietary options to games via their gameworks API. If you want the extra features, you need an nvidia card, but I still feel icky for supporting such practices despite owning one and enjoying the flowing hair on Geralt for the witcher.

 

[whassup]

GTX 960 is the slower card among the 3 GPUs. Between the R9 380 vs GTX 770 performance is almost same. But R9 380 had DirectX 12 support. Overall R9 380 is a tad better over other 2 cards.

 

[Jonathan Cave]

buy a 2nd hand GTX 970 off ebay ~£200

 

[Calculatron]

Was your old 460 the EVGA FPB edition? I used to have that card.

All of those cards are, roughly, in the same performance bracket. While the 770 has a slight performance edge, it also is of an older architecture - so some of the benefits of DirectX12 may be limited, and, furthermore, sometimes Nvidia likes to forget about them.

I would go with either the GTX 960 or the R9 380, if only for DirectX12 that is coming out soon. Either way you go, you'll be happy. You'll be able to play all your games are near-maxed out or maxed out settings, instead of low-to-medium, at 1080p.

 

[Polymer11]

Was your old 460 the EVGA FPB edition? I used to have that card.

All of those cards are, roughly, in the same performance bracket. While the 770 has a slight performance edge, it also is of an older architecture - so some of the benefits of DirectX12 may be limited, and, furthermore, sometimes Nvidia likes to forget about them.

I would go with either the GTX 960 or the R9 380, if only for DirectX12 that is coming out soon. Either way you go, you'll be happy. You'll be able to play all your games are near-maxed out or maxed out settings, instead of low-to-medium, at 1080p.

Thanks for all the responses guys, based off what you're saying I'm heavily considering the R9 380, but AMD's driver issues and their lack of features like GFE are disheartening. As for my GTX 460 it's the Zotac Synergy Edition.

 

[AdviserKulikov]

Was your old 460 the EVGA FPB edition? I used to have that card.

All of those cards are, roughly, in the same performance bracket. While the 770 has a slight performance edge, it also is of an older architecture - so some of the benefits of DirectX12 may be limited, and, furthermore, sometimes Nvidia likes to forget about them.

I would go with either the GTX 960 or the R9 380, if only for DirectX12 that is coming out soon. Either way you go, you'll be happy. You'll be able to play all your games are near-maxed out or maxed out settings, instead of low-to-medium, at 1080p.

Thanks for all the responses guys, based off what you're saying I'm heavily considering the R9 380, but AMD's driver issues and their lack of features like GFE are disheartening. As for my GTX 460 it's the Zotac Synergy Edition.

You might get lucky on ebay or some other secondhand site and get a GTX 970 for ~200. Otherwise, the 960 is your best bet. The 380 may or may not work out well depending on AMD's future graphics support (It would be better than a 960 if they get their act together, but given their cheeky 300 series rollout I don't trust them ATM). I don't really trust AMD's graphics since they have so many different designs running around they don't have time to optimize them very well.