Help choosing a ~$500 graphics card

bishopsboy56

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Jun 18, 2014
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Hi there guys! I'm planning on building a pc in the near future which will be used mostly for gaming and a bit of CAD (I'm going to be an engineering student) and am looking at spending ~$450/$500 on a graphics card. I'm just wondering what would be a good graphics card for that price range. I'm leaning towards going with the r9 290 with a reference cooler,or possibly going with the 290x, but I'm not sure if its worth the extra ~$100. Not entirely sure what resolution I'd game at (still gotta get a monitor) but I might go 1080p to get better framerates + so I can go longer without an upgrade. Just thought I'd ask to see what your thoughts on the matter are!
Thanks in advance,
Bishopsboy56
 



What type of gaming? Also, if you will be crunching numbers with Excel, Oracle and other engineering/statistical software, you may want to go with an Intel CPU (they are supposed to be better at serial tasks such as math calculations). However, going Intel is going to dramatically raise the price of your build. I would recommend an 4th gen i7 CPU and get an r9-270x instead! You will be able to max out mostly all games (albeit with AA and AF turned down), and still have the computational prowess of the i7 (the FX 8/9 series will still allow you to crunch those numbers faster than most of your college buddies with their "stock laptops"...lol)

However, if you want to strike a balance between gaming and school work, I would go with an i5 or AMD FX series and use extra money to get an r9-280x instead of r9-270x.

I am going this route because you are going to need an entire system (not just GPU). Many people have systems that cost $500 total (LoL)! If you are going to spend that much just on graphics, and budget is of no concern, then get an r9-290x. Either way, any graphic cards (AMD or Nvidia) that is $200 and up will play all games on full 1080p.

Side note, CAD and other math/stat software requires lots of RAM/memory! Also keep that in mind with your build.
 


I was planning on spending around $1500-$1800 for the whole computer, not including peripherals, as I want a decent computer that will last me a while before I have to upgrade. Am planning on going with 16gb ram and still not entirely sure whether to go i7 or i5, as I'm sure that the i5 will be sufficient, plus i'm tossing up whether or not to OC or not as OCing will cost another $80 at least... in addition to that, the stingy tighta$$ in me is telling me to go for the best bang for buck, in which case I'll end up spending no more than $600 on my computer :) ... gahh!! I hate making decisions like these 😛

Edit: I was planning on playing WatchDogs, BF4, DIRT3, that sort of thing...