Whats the best midrange videocard

Unknown

I'm not that knowledgeable on videocards. Haven't been following the gpu advancement since the 8800gt was out and at that time I couldn't afford it. I want to get back into pc gaming I lost interest since the graphic cards I always had were less then decent and the games weren't by any means impressive looking regardless of the rest of the specs on my machine.

I just want to get something that'll blow me away when I see it in action. I'm in a process of building a new system and I don't want to skimp on the machine just want something that'll hold me over for the next 5 years. Was looking into getting an asus desktop since it was 32gb i7 gtx550 but realized it'll be cheaper and can get better specs if I build on my own.

I want to spend at the very most $325 on a video card. But wouldn't mind saving a few bucks and buying something $230 - $280 range. I was set on getting something in the 660 series ti oc but I read somewhere that the difference in performance in the 660ti is not that noticeable to the 660 OC in real gameplay not benchmarks. Now I'm leaning towards gigabit 660oc. After reading more articles it says the 7870 is better. So now I don't what to get.

Specs of my build
i5 3750k
32gb 4 x 8gb 1600
2 tb sata 3 64mb
asus p8z77
coolermaster haf912
psu 600w
considering a gigabit 660oc 2gb

lsud00d

I'd recommend getting a beefier PSU.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my 560ti, given it was much more expensive 1.5 years ago. The 660ti is easily OC'd...definitely a solid card to go with. However, there are many different variations of this so it depends on which ones you are looking at.

I go with ASUS/Nvidia for my vid cards FWIW.

Legacy User

really beefier? I figured 600w would be sufficient.

QHalo

It depends on the card really.

http://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/GeForce-GTX-660Ti.pdf

System Power Supply
Minimum 500 W or greater system power supply

lsud00d

dmarcisco wrote: »

really beefier? I figured 600w would be sufficient.

The last thing you want to do is under-power your system, and at the price point 750w-900w shouldn't be an issue and should be the minimum PSU you put in your build

Legacy User

Thats a good point. So the 660ti OC is best bet in that price range correct?

SteveLord

Why 32GB of memory? Please tell me for something besides gaming. Otherwise, a waste of hardware and money since games do not use up much currently. 8GB is the sweet spot since its still cheap at that amount. The cash saved could go towards an SSD for your OS+a favorite game or two.

See Tom's for a good breakdown of video card price ranges. Best Graphics Cards For The Money: January 2013 : Best Graphics Cards For The Money, January Updates You should start with what monitor you have/plan to buy and the native resolution it runs at.

ptilsen

600W is plenty. I have yet to see a non-SLI/crossfire system actually utilize anything much bigger than 600W, maybe 650W. What's more important than the wattage is getting a quality PSU. That being said, the difference between a quality ~600W and a quality ~700W is maybe $30 or $40, so it's not the end of the world if you get something a little extra.

The 660 ti seems like a solid enough pick from what I've seen. As far as which one, I tend to go with whatever has the best rating with lots of buys on Newegg. For example, this is going to be extremely solid based on lots of positive reviews and few negative ones. By comparison, I would conclude from the reviews on this that while it's an okay card, it has at least double the early failure rate of the former. Reviews are going to tell you minutia about the card and how well it stacks up against others performance is, but ratings are IMO the best way to distinguish how "good" a card is compared to same-or-similar-model cards from other vendors.

I don't pick sides on the AMD/Nvidia thing, either. The 660 ti seems like a good card at a good price point from the comparisons I've seen. I've owned about 50/50 Radeon/GeForce over the last ten years. It's just a matter of who has a better product out.

The best news is that whatever you pick is probably going to last you a long time. I'm still using a Radeon HD 5870 (circa late 2009), and every time I think about upgrading, it comes down to needing to spend almost $300 to get a meaningful upgrade, and "meaningful," in this case, means going from high-but-not-max-settings in the most recent games to max settings. The GPU market has slowed way down compared to the 2000s, and I don't see that trend reversing. CPUs are the same way, so I'm betting this system as a whole will last you at least three years, if not five.

Edit: I agree that 32GB is overkill if you're primarily gaming, but so is an i7. I can justify both if you want to do some serious lab environments, but you'll need an SSD or two to take advantage of that kind of hardware anyway. I have 16GB, and I ended up needing over 100GB worth of SSD space to even come close to utilizing it labbing. I would definitely drop some other pieces down and get a 256GB or 512GB SSD as your main storage. You will not regret the switch to SSD.

Legacy User

Not just for gaming. I'll be using it for many things such as video editing, watching bluray movies, using it for my c# and c++ builds for class and personal projects. I'm been going back and forth whether or not I'll see a performance difference going from 16gb to 32gb.

Legacy User

SteveLord wrote: »

See Tom's for a good breakdown of video card price ranges. Best Graphics Cards For The Money: January 2013 : Best Graphics Cards For The Money, January Updates You should start with what monitor you have/plan to buy and the native resolution it runs at.

I looked at that website the other day wasn't sure if it was a good recommendation because it seemed like it was AMD bias as all most of the cards it had in the list was AMD. Also, do the AMD cards do the same type of physx as the nvidea cards those little extras add to the ambiance.

ptilsen

PhysX is basically a non-factor.

I really don't think you'll see any use from 32GB over 16GB for anything but virtual labs. Software won't compile faster; video won't encode faster; movies certainly won't be anymore watchable.

The benchmarks I've seen really show the HD 7950 and GeForce 660 ti to be about on-par. HD 7950 seems to yield a bit higher framerates, on average, but a couple big-name articles showed framerate inconsistency and micro-stutter (here is a good breakdown). If it were me, I would probably be grabbing a 660 ti based on the combination of reviews and ratings, but I think you'll be content either way.

Legacy User

ptilsen wrote: »

I have 16GB, and I ended up needing over 100GB worth of SSD space to even come close to utilizing it labbing. I would definitely drop some other pieces down and get a 256GB or 512GB SSD as your main storage. You will not regret the switch to SSD.

Would a SSD drive really make a difference? Would it be beneficial to get a 128gb to just run the OS?

QHalo

Please don't take this the wrong way. If you're asking that question you've been missing out. SSD's are amazing. Do yourself a solid and get one. I promise no regrets will be made.

Legacy User

My brother keeps telling me to do it. I'm more of a believe it when I see it type of person. Do you use yours for your primary storage? The ones with bigger hard drive are way too expensive and it doesn't seem to practical. Seems like it's good for running your OS what else would you run off of it? Yes I've been missing out haven't upgraded in a few years except for a laptop running i3. I know its time for me to update.

Edit: Is your avatar from marvel vs capcom?

QHalo

Yep, I love Sentinels. I have two in my laptop, one for the OS and one for running my vSphere lab. The lab drive is slightly larger but only because I'm running nested VMs within nested ESXi hosts and two NetApp Simulators. I run all my programs off the OS drive with the exception of VMware Workstation. If you can swing it pickup a 256GB model, otherwise a 128GB is plenty for most people. I'm running Crucial M4's, 128GB and 512GB in my laptop.

If I was buying them now, I would snag one of these.

SAMSUNG MZ-7PD128BW - Newegg.com

ptilsen

Put everything but big files (video) on an SSD and be done with it. It is absolutely worth it. Go down to 8GB of RAM and an i3 before you skip the SSD. The SSD might not give you higher framerates in games, but it makes virtually every other task and computer usage in general so much better. The games themselves will certainly launch five times as fast, at a minimum, and there won't be any storage-induced loading delays or stuttering.

I would recommend shelling out for something larger than 200GB so you don't have to worry about space. Again, more if you'll need it for VMs. I had a 256GB, finally started to get close to running out, so I got a 512GB and a laptop (it just so happens I needed a laptop) and put the 256GB in my laptop. It has been more than enough for all my games and files on each. I only have HDDs for backups, software media, and video files now.

I also run Crucial M4s, by the way. Very good drive for the price. There are faster, but not at that price point.

SteveLord

The site lists more AMD cards because they have more to choose from. Nvidia has less options with their current lineup. I go with whatever has the best bang for buck. I currently use a 560 Ti 2GB. Nvidia is favored by Adobe's editing products and benefits from increased performance. Otherwise with games, either is fine.

On the subject, I also recommend you RAID 0 two drives for a scratch disk.

For SSDs, Samsung is the hottest brand right now. Speed/reliability and price. Crucial M4s are good, but Samsung is giving them a run for their money. And I have a few Samsungs and Crucials between home and work computers.

Legacy User

I found this one on amazon Amazon.com: Crucial m4 256GB 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT256M4SSD2: Electronics
its a crucial m4 256gb 2.5 ssd sata 6gb/s would you know if its any good?

QHalo

Those are same drives I have in my laptop just different sizes. The Samsung Pros are the fastest drives right now, but the Crucial's still amazing and would be right behind the new Sammy Pros. I would agree with ptilsen as well. Get a 256GB or bigger. My 128 C drive is filling up and with 32GB of RAM in my laptop, I basically just turned off the page file because it would eat 1/4 of my drive.

SteveLord

256. 512 is not yet at an ideal price point. Probably next year as last year the 128 was the best.

lsud00d

I've been meaning to up my OS drive in my desktop but right now it's a Crucial M4 64gb SSD. I have had *0* issues with the drive. I have read very mixed reviews about the Samsungs and other SSD manufacturers in general so be very aware of the common disparity between price and quality.

But yes, definitely get an SSD

Legacy User

What pc games you guys playing?

ptilsen

Starcraft II, Fallout: New Vegas, Eve Online, and Civ 5:G&K are my current mainstays, roughly in that order. Diablo 3, Mass Effect 3 were on that list recently and may return. All are installed on my 512GB drive, and if not for the SC2 beta and other random stuff, my 256GB could fit all of them.

Of those, all but New Vegas play at max settings at 1920x1080 on my three-plus-year-old HD 5870. A newer card would handle these at max settings and higher resolution (not that I'm one to shell out for a higher-res monitor).

lsud00d

LoL, CS:S, PS2, Tribes, TF2, Smite...mainly FPS's and MOBA's

I bought a slew of the Civ series and expansion from the last Steam sale but still haven't played any of them

QHalo

You playing Smite? So am I. In game name is same as my forum name.

lsud00d

Cool, I'll add you next time I log on...I started in beta but sloped off and haven't touched it in awhile. I believe my name is similar to my name here so you'll know when it's me

Legacy User

ptilsen wrote: »

Starcraft II, Fallout: New Vegas, Eve Online, and Civ 5:G&K are my current mainstays, roughly in that order. .

I'm big into Age of mythology i can lose a good 5 hours playing that.

N2IT

I have the chime in! What are the best adventure games out there now. I have been really craving a good adventure game perferably dragons, knights, etc!

Thanks

lsud00d

N2IT my roommates love Skyrim. I think Fable III might be similar but I haven't played it personally.

If you like other subject matter, Diablo III was a lot of fun even though it was broken so much in the beginning...also if you like MMO's, Guild Wars 2 might be up your alley. Just be careful with any MMO...it can be worse than crack

Legacy User

Whats a good RTS?

lsud00d

Starcraft 2, Command and Conquer, Company of Heroes...there's a few in each subject genre, depending on what you like.