How much should I spend on a GPU?

[Ankaruz]

I'm looking to buy a new card but am unsure what price range I should look at. I would like to stay within 200$ but about how long will cards like the GTX 960 last before they become outdated?

 

[firo40]

depends on your expectations if you can handle turning settings down and sub 60 fps itll last a few years. That being said i wouldn't recommend the 960 its limited memory bandwidth wasn't sopoused to have an effect on its preformance but in benchmarks the 760 outpreforms it in some games because its double wide memory bus. For your price range I'd recommend looking for a good 290x now that the 390x is out they should be alot cheaper or even a 280x. For the price they would last alot longer and give better preformance

 

[geofelt]

The GTX960 is a Maxwell architecture that is more modern than the R9 cards.
They are more power efficient and some say better drivers.
From a performance point of view, any $200 card is going to perform about the same as any other.
Probably hard to tell without a synthetic benchmark.
Specs don't matter, the performance is what counts.

I suggest that a balanced gaming pc will budget 2x the cost of the cpu for the graphics card.
If you upgrade, make it a significant jump or you may be disappointed.

What is your current graphics card, cpu, and make/model of psu?

 

[Ankaruz]

At the moment, I have a AMD A10-5800k with integrated graphics and a Cosair 430 Watt PSU (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139026).

 

[geofelt]

The GTX960 is the strongest upgrade you can do without needing a stronger PSU:
http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page362.htm