best bang for your buck card out right now

[hoofhearted4]

so there are a bunch of solid cards out right now, 660Ti, 670, 7870, 7950, etc.

 

ive tried looking up reviews and benchmarks, but im getting a lot of conflicting results. so im curious what you guys here know. what card out right now is the best bang for your buck at stock. if necessary, which specific card as there are some out there with factory OC and whatnot....then also which one is the best B/B (bang per buck) when considering OC as well. i just want to differentiate the two because some people dont OC.

 

ive seen the 660Ti being labeled as the best B/B card out there. then others say 670 is worth the $100 because it doesnt have the limited buss lane which i guess matters when doing AA or using a bunch of mods? then again others mention the 7000 series cards being the best B/B because of their OC ability and i guess new drivers that just hit really helped? then still others have said the 600 series cards can stay withing ~5% of the 7000 series cards when they OC as well. just too many people saying too many things. ive seen conflicting charts and reviews and whatnot too.

 

hope to find some answers and some people who know more then me because im baffled. personal experience is nice to mention but dont simply say whatever your card is is the best (Thor im looking at you buddy :thumbsup: :happy:) . links and proof and the like would be nice. i wont be building my PC for another ~6 months, but this info will probably still be relevant because i dont foresee any new cards coming out by then.

Edited August 31, 2012 by hoofhearted4

[Vecna6667]

Right now, I would say the Radeon HD 7850 to Geforce GTX 660TI price range give the best bang for your buck. The Radeon HD 7850 is the low end with GeForce GTX 580 performance at $220 apprx. The GeForce GTX 660Ti is the high end at $310 apprx. The Radeon HD 7870 is that spot the 6950 was in during last year. Priced at a point that is not too appealing because the 7850 is not that much slower yet the 660Ti is that much better. The GeForce GTX 670 is another great card because it is not much slower than the GTX 680 and is $100 cheaper than the 680. Plus some of the factory overclocked models(namely the Asus Direct CU II) are even faster than the reference 680s. The Radeon HD 7970 is in the toughest spot price wise but its high overclockability and properly installed drivers(I'm still shocked as to how many people still forget to completely remove all traces of the previous video drivers. If you've never had issues with installing the new drivers over the old, your lucky. I've not been that fortunate even with nVidia's drivers.) it can compete with the 680. The Radeon HD 7950 should only be taken if you plan to do a lot of GPU computing(OpenCL) and you couldn't afford a 7970.

[Rennn]

A 560ti is a great deal, as is a 660 or a 660ti. 670s perform better, but the price jumps considerably ofc. I don't know about AMD cards; I'm not familiar with the architecture.

[Aegrus]

A 560, 560 TI, or 660 would all be great choices. All three can max most games at good frame rates. If I had to pick just one, however, I'd go for an EVGA 560. One's on sale right now on Amazon for $130. http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-GTX560-Graphics-01G-P3-1464-KR/dp/B007TMXFE0/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1346487513&sr=8-4&keywords=560

 

It'll get about 50 fps in battlefield 3 on ultra, at 1080p. About 55 fps on ultra in Crysis at 1080p.

 

. . .wha. . .holy. . .really? I may have to buy that now. I had no idea they were so cheap. I was expecting about $200-$250. :tongue:

[Iv000]

From my small experience with ATI cards, I have found out that the x850 or x870 cards are the best in price/performance.

I had a 4850 firstly which was absolutely great for it's price, 6870 now. I'm also assuming it's not getting enough power from my current PSU, but either way it's amazing for the price I paid.

 

Didn't do much research on the 7xxx series, but my best guess would be a 7870.

 

No idea about Nvidia cards. People say 670 is amazing.

[Rennn]

There are a lot of good cards to choose from for relatively low prices now.

[Thor.]

The best bang for the buck right now would the 7950's. especially recommend this model http://forums.nexusmods.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/teehee.gif

 

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125414&Tpk=gigabyte%207950

 

300$

[Dan3345]

How much are you willing to spend?

 

I would avoid the AMD cards.. A friend of mine bought a 7970 to compare to my 680, and my 680 at a lower overclock is outperforming it on latest drivers for both cards.

 

7000 series have a higher memory bus, but Nvidia's bus speed is dynamic and changeable. So much to a point that on too high of an overclock the memory speed in itself can cause the GPU to bottleneck. Think of it like a highway going too fast that there simply isn't enough data to fill the highway because obviously, its moving faster than data can come in. My 680 EVGA was easy to overclock to 1.25ghz and a memory OC of 6.5ghz. But I paid $530 for it, still it says something for the quality of the 6 series as a whole. I would extremely recommend it. The 670 is deffinitely worth the price. And I know I will take some slack for saying this, but watch any video, look at any in game benchmarks and you will see in most cases the 6 series comes out on top. The only cases in which it does not are in artificial tests. Benchmarking and things like furmark and heavebench are artificial. They are designed to push the GPU to its limits and use every bit of resources it can. With that in mind, they are incredibly efficient so it only makes sense you would see abnormal scores from them.

 

However the problem for the 7000 series is that while you may get high benchmarking scores, in the real world of PC gaming for the everyday user the 600 series wins out almost always. Not sure what exactly to pin this on, but seeing as how I am new to nvidia as a whole I have noticed one large distinction between AMD and Nvidia. Drivers. Nvidia puts out new beta drivers every week it seems, and each time I have never noticed a detriment to my games, only added features or performance.

 

Add this to the fact that one video card from Nvidia can run 3+1 Monitors straight out of this box and have all the latest graphical features like Adaptive Vsync, and TXAA, and you got a pretty good deal. So if you can't get the 680 because its out of your price range I would really suggest go for the 670 or the 660ti. They perform well and you get Nvidia's support, which alone makes me want to keep them. Even if nvidia's card were slower then AMD's I would keep Nvidia over the fact that they actually work hard on their drivers, and try and keep up on incoming big name titles before they are released. Remember when AMD said they were working on a driver update for skyrim two weeks before it came out? That driver update came out a week later, nvidia had theirs out for skyrim a week before the game released. Recently as well Nvidia added support for Borderlands 2 which doesn't release until the 18'th.

 

This is all coming from a guy who had two 6950's in crossfire for over a year. I now know how bad they (AMD) are with driver support. And I now look at it this way. What is the point of even spending $200 on a video card that doesn't get any support?

Edited September 2, 2012 by Dan3345

[Aegrus]

Pretty much, 7xxx series cards can be overclocked higher than most Nvidia cards, but 6xx series cards are faster at lower overclocks. Seeing as most people aren't going to push their overclock to the limit, 6xx series cards will get better performance. However, 6xx series cards also run considerably hotter than 7xxx series cards. There isn't much of a power difference between the lines, though 6xx series cards use slightly less.

 

If you're going to overclock a 6xx series card and you don't have great cooling in your pc, I recommend a Gigabyte model. They usually have a lot more, and larger, fans in their video cards.

Edited September 2, 2012 by Aegrus

[FMod]

7950 followed by 660Ti and 670 followed by half of everything else followed by 680 and 7970 followed by the other half of everything else.

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