Best Graphics Cards for the Money April 2013

NubyCanuby_OFC · Post by **NubyCanuby_OFC** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 1:04 am

Tom's hardware has their monthly best gaming graphics cards for the money:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gam ... ,3107.html

They also have graphics cards performance charts:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/grap ... rds,1.html

AnandTech has a GPU benchmark database:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU12/372

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 1:10 am

I have to say, for an enthusiast, it's hard to ignore the HD6850/GTX460.

theophilusmousse · Post by **theophilusmousse** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 5:05 pm

I gotta say, according to their Hierarchy chart, my 4850 x2 is holding up remarkably well.

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 5:27 pm

Yeah, there really isn't anything you can't play.

Shadow250 · Post by **Shadow250** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 7:55 pm

thats weird it says the gtx 460 and ati 5770 are the same but i get much better performance with the gtx 460.

b-man1 · Post by **b-man1** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 8:22 pm

4850 forever.

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 8:26 pm

Shadow250 wrote:thats weird it says the gtx 460 and ati 5770 are the same but i get much better performance with the gtx 460.

They're talking about the GTS 450, not the GTX 460.

eGoCeNTRoNiX · Post by **eGoCeNTRoNiX** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 8:45 pm

Shadow250 wrote:thats weird it says the gtx 460 and ati 5770 are the same but i get much better performance with the gtx 460.

Yah, I was gonna say, I'm disappointed that my XFire 5770s aren't out performing you, but hey, give me a year and I'll grab a couple new cards and go from there.

eGo

GuardianAsher · Post by **GuardianAsher** » Tue Jan 11, 2011 12:58 am

The 4870 I picked up from wvjohn soundly stomped the 4850 I used to have, and it seems to do pretty much everything I want it to do. My next upgrade will be a new motherboard to replace this Dell POS I have, then maybe an ATI 6000 series card... but for right now, I'm happy. And I bet I'm not getting nearly the performance I should be getting out of the card with the motherboard I have.

NubyCanuby_OFC · Post by **NubyCanuby_OFC** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 7:03 pm

Here is the link for Tom's Hardware 2011 gaming graphics chart, it lets you compare different graphics card benchmarks on the same chart:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2011 ... s,123.html

NubyCanuby_OFC · Post by **NubyCanuby_OFC** » Sun Jan 08, 2012 5:50 pm

The AMD 7970 will be available for sale on January 09.
Looks to me like it will be about 40% faster then the AMD 6970.
It's way too expensive for me at $550.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Jan 08, 2012 6:59 pm

They were discussing the 7970 on PCper.com (my bible for all things hardware nowadays), and according to their testing it will definitely be the fastest single GPU card available at this time.

The other interesting thing is that USUALLY a GPU manufacturer releases low-end cards first because the initial run of a new chip (especially one in a smaller process like this one) usually has a high number of defective chips in early batches. So they usually release low end cards with crippled GPUs initially and then scale up to the high end cards as the process improves.

In this case AMD went right to a high end card FIRST which seems to indicate that they are getting very high quality out of their initial chip runs which is extremely promising if they are confident enough to release a high-end card right out of the gate. If so, we should see some mid-range ($250 - $300) 7000 series cards very soon that are rock solid, and in large quantities.

I've been itching to upgrade recently so I'm waiting with anticipation.

wvjohn · Post by **wvjohn** » Sun Jan 08, 2012 9:06 pm

my 6870 will last me until I get a giantly huge monitor - with an I5 at 3.15 everything plays just fine on a 22 monitor

NubyCanuby_OFC · Post by **NubyCanuby_OFC** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 7:41 pm

[H]ard|OCP has a review of an overclocked 7970 against an overclocked GTX580. It's 60% faster then the GTX 580 in their 6 in-game benchmarks.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/01/ ... nce_review

A 1.260GHz GPU clock speed and 6.9GHz memory speed, is a really impressive overclock for a video card with a stock cooler. Especially with 384 bit memory.