Which graphics card to get?

[Stabby_Dave]

Im shortly to be buying a new PC and, being as how geeky and savvy most of you guys are  I would like some advice on which GPU to go for in terms of power, survivability and value for money. Im on a budget though so dont really want to go above a GTX 570 or Radeon 7850 (since the price of cards beyond these two seem increase at a steep rate). Im currently favouring the GTX560ti but im not so sure since it's already reasonably old.

As a point of reference here are the other components im going for:

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AMD Bulldozer Quad FX-4100 (3.1GHz)
Asus M5A97 Motherboard
8 GB Samsung DDR3 RAM 1333MHz
750GB Caviar Black

My overall budget is ~£700.

Cant wait to be able to play new games on a PC rather than a shitty xbox

[LordBerenger]

Get two 580's.

[Stabby_Dave]

Get two 580's.

I would but the bankers stole all my money.

[B3RS3RK]

I herd voodoo 5 is nice.

[Ninja_Khorin]

If you would have asked this last year when I was buying a comp I could give you a proper answer.

I bought 2x570s 10 months ago and they have worked well. That's all I can say.

[Patoson]

I used to have a 480. It was great, but got too hot and made a lot of noise. I recently purchased a 570 and, not only it makes less noise, but it's better. You'll run Warband between 100 and 120 fps all the time. All the other games run perfectly well too.

[Xant]

Get two GTX 690's. Only 2000 euros.

[[ptx]]

I just don't see the point in getting two cards, a single card should be able to run everything at max with good performance anyway? Also, Crossfire/SLI is way beyond his budget anyway.

[Ninja_Khorin]

It's a little frivolous spending, yes. But I hate to say I do enjoy my 15 000 troops vs. 15 000 troops in Shogun 2. It's something I wouldn't be able to do with only one card.

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Mind you, I never did recommend he gets two.

[LordBerenger]

It's a little frivolous spending, yes. But I hate to say I do enjoy my 15 000 troops vs. 15 000 troops in Shogun 2. It's something I wouldn't be able to do with only one card.

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Mind you, I never did recommend he gets two.

CLUSTERFUCK!

[Xant]

It's a little frivolous spending, yes. But I hate to say I do enjoy my 15 000 troops vs. 15 000 troops in Shogun 2. It's something I wouldn't be able to do with only one card.

You would, if it was a good one card!

[Kafein]

I play all the recent games at maximum settings with my good old Radeon HD4870. It is balanced with the [email protected] tbh

And if you don't believe me, I can assure you I'm totally serious. Getting recent and highest tier GPU never was a good idea and still isn't now. Most of the time that is where you will find the worst value for money. Getting recent low tier is worse mind you, because you won't be able to do anything with it. Just buy the most popular high tier chipset of the preceding generation and you are guaranteed to get almost the same performances at a fraction of the price.

Crossfire/SLI settings are utterly useless, except if you really need that half dozen of HD screens. But if you have the screens you probably won't have any trouble buying the cards.



As a rule of thumb, when you have performance problems in games you should always be sure it's not a CPU bottleneck first before buying anything. Because in more than 80% of the time, it is a CPU problem (and I know what I'm talking about).

[Ninja_Khorin]

You would, if it was a good one card!

Was cheaper to get two 570s than one 590 at the time and 2x570s offer more performance.

[Stabby_Dave]

Those shogun 2 battles look awesome.

[Ninja_Khorin]

CLUSTERFUCK!

Yes, AI cav vs. AI cav

Those shogun 2 battles look awesome.

They are. Sorry, didn't mean to derail your thread.

There are dozens of GPU benchmark sites that you can browse that will give you a rough estimate of how well the card will perform in comparison to others. I'd recommend checking a lot of different sites in order to get an accurate idea, since there are rumours that some sites are more biased toward nvidia and others toward AMD.

Here's an example: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html