New Graphics Card for £250 MAX

Gman_29

Honorable
May 3, 2013
13
0
10,510
Hi Guys

I'm looking for a bit of advice on what Gfx card to opt for in the next couple of months. My budget is no more than £250 so at the moment i'm looking at 660ti/7950 territory, but with the Nvidia 700 series coming this month does anyone think that the gtx670's will come down in price enough to meet my budget?

I'm currently running:

i5-3470@stock 3.2 (no plans to overclock as Mboard isn't up to it)
Asrock H77 Pro4-M
8GB Crucial Ballistix DDR3 @1600MHZ C8
MSI GTX560 Twin Frozer II 1GB
XFX 650w Modular PSU
WD 1TB HDD
120GB OCZ Vertex 3 SSD
Areocool XPredator-1

I want to be able to play most new titles at high-ultra settings @ 1920x1080 with 40+ fps.
I've read that the 660ti's are crippled at high resolutions and settings in some titles because of their limited memory bandwidth (192bit), so if the 670s don't fall in price i'm inclined to opt for the HD7950. However i've also read that many brands of the 7950s suffer from loud cooling fans and high temperatures, so i'm basically stuck :).... HELP!

Any assistance would be appreciated.
 
Solution
I'd go for it.
Go on.
You know you want to.
Let go of your wallet and give in the the Myst side, boy.
I find your lack of Myst ownership...Disturbing.
May the Myst...no I can't type that!
Happy 4th to all you Star Wars fans out there!

And on a slightly more serious note: Do n't forget the Distance Selling Regulations, (google for more details), if you do n't like it you can return it within 7 days, EVEN IF IT IS PERFECT! Just be nice and keep the packaging in good order, though, no shredding the box in your excitement O.K. 😉?


Thanks for the reply,

I stated in my first post that i am using an i5-3470, so Intel (unless AMD have started Playing games!)

I'll check those cards out, thanks.
 


Eh, what he said may be true on paper, but your CPU is powerful enough that it won't bottleneck anything except the most powerful multi-card configurations.

My money would be on the HD 7950, BTW. It out-performs the 660 TI, and the extra games are a nice bonus.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/geforce-gtx-660-ti-benchmark-review,review-32505-3.html
 


From the benches they seem fairly close, trading blows in different titles. I do think that the HD7950 does have an advantage in terms of longevity though with its 3GB of GDDR5 @384bit compared to the 660ti's 2GB @192bit

I am a little concerned about AMD's poor driver and crossfire performance history(should i ever wish to double up) Anyone have any experience with AMD driver support and Crossfire?
 
I have a FX-8120 with a Sapphire HD 7950(Crossfire) and a FX-8350 with a Sapphire HD 7970(Crossfire) and a i5 3570K with a Gigabyte GTX 670(SLI) and from my experience all three of my rigs can handle anything I have played. All of my rigs are setup for Eyefinity/Surround at 5760x1080. I have had AMD/ATI cards since the Sapphire 3850(AGP) and have yet to run into any driver problems with any of my cards. As far as I can tell AMD solved there driver problems quite some time back.

I have seen problems with my GTX 670 cards and the latest beta drivers with some games such as Trine 2 but rolling back to the latest stable solved that. Any way as far as AMD goes there have not been any real driver problems for years with there cards. As for Crossfire/SLI unless you are going for gaming on more than one monitor I really do not see the need for a Crossfire/SLI setup anyway because a single 7950/7970 or GTX 670 can handle gaming up to 1080p with a single card just fine. I only went Crossfire/SLI on my rigs because I have all of my systems setup on 3 Asus 27" monitors.
 
@bryonnhowley
Thanks for the reply. Its good to hear that AMDs driver issues maybe aren't as bad as many have said they are, admittedly i have a MSI laptop with a 5870m in it and its never given me any greif, but i wasn't sure if this carried over to the desktop drivers.
i only mentioned possibly adding a second card as a future option when games could be more demanding, but it isn't something that is going to influence my final decision much.

So dismissing the brand differences let me slightly rephrase my original question - Should i hold out for possible price drops after the release of NVidia's 700 series or just buy a HD7950 now?
 
Wait and you'll wait forever.
Or 'there's always something better just around the corner.'
As the user of an XFX DD 7950 I'll advise you that cooler can be almost as noisy as the stock ones-although they're not as hot running.
You give a budget in Pounds so I'll give you s a few UK links to go shopping with 😉 : Overclockers, Aria, Misco, Novatech, Dabs, CCL, Scan, Ebuyer and Amazon.
 


My question was aimed more at saving money than getting new tech but i suppose your right all the same.

I'm regularly on all the sites you've listed, Dabs, Scan and Aria are all selling the XFX HD7950 for around £220 which is nicely within my budget. Are the fans on this card noisy from the get go or only when they get over 50% speed?
 


Thanks for your post, I had looked at the sapphire HD7870XT previously which I can pick up for around £200, but with my budget being able to stretch a little further I figured I'd just spend the extra £20-30 and just get a HD7950.
 
@ Gman_29: Can't speak from personal experience other than that of my own card (XFX 7950 DD) but it gets quite noticeable when playing more demanding games (Metro 2033, Max Payne3 etc) so if you're after quiet I'd advise you to look elsewhere.
There's not a great deal of difference in performance between the 7870XT (Tahiti LE) cards and full blown 7950s-it's the same base silicon after all, just a little cut down-but the Myst Edition is, again noisy under load and they're getting harder and harder to find.
One point on noise: When I say noticeable I mean it's about as loud as my front Antec Tricool 120 m.m. fan on high (I keep it on medium), I work odd hours so my system is geared towards being very quiet.
This has some decent reviews:

http://www.ebuyer.com/341494-powercolor-hd-7950-pcs-edition-3gb-dvi-hdmi-dual-mini-displayport-pci-e-ax7950-3gbd5-2dhpp
 
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7950-review-benchmark,3207-12.html

@Coozie7. I just checked out the video's in the link above, comparing the noise levels of 6 HD7950 cards and like you suggested the Powercolour PCS Edition is very quiet in comparison to the reference card. Similarly the Asus DirectCUII version is also very quiet (though between £20-£40 more expensive than the Powercolour)

I found myself looking at the HD7870 Tahiti cards again, as the last two replys have mentioned them. I was already aware that performance was similar to stock HD7950s but as Coozie7 mentioned availability can be a little up and down. Anyway turns out Aria is selling the PowerColour Myst Edition for £175 delivered! I checked a good few reviews across multiple sites, both from expert reviewers and owners and most agree that despite the Myst card having a single fan neither temps nor noise are ever so high as to take away from the cards performance.

£50 cheaper than the cheapest HD7950 i can find and almost as quick.... I may have found my card😀

What do you guys think?
 
I'd go for it.
Go on.
You know you want to.
Let go of your wallet and give in the the Myst side, boy.
I find your lack of Myst ownership...Disturbing.
May the Myst...no I can't type that!
Happy 4th to all you Star Wars fans out there!

And on a slightly more serious note: Do n't forget the Distance Selling Regulations, (google for more details), if you do n't like it you can return it within 7 days, EVEN IF IT IS PERFECT! Just be nice and keep the packaging in good order, though, no shredding the box in your excitement O.K. 😉?
 
Solution


Soooo... buy it then? 😀



I never throw anything away mate, i think i still have the motherbaord box from a build 5 years ago, full of useful cables, screws etc. :)

Well thats that settled then, thanks to everyone who commented - Coozie7 you get the nod, thanks mate.