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Best GPU for £150

jongo1

jongo1

jongo1

Associate
Joined
15 Jan 2012
Posts
31
Hi guys

I'm wanting to spend between £100-£150 on a new Graphics card. At the moment I'm liking the look of the 'Sapphire HD 6870 1GB GDDR5' but I'm not quite as techy as I used to be and I'd like some personal opinions.

What would you spend £150 on? :confused:
#
My system specs are below:

Operating System---MS Windows 7 Home Premium with Service Pack 1, 64-bit (OEM)
Motherboard--------Gigabyte XKT-1155 Z68AP-D3 Motherboard (Rev 1.0)
Hard Drive---------SEAGATE Barracuda 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - 500 GB (ST500DM002)
Memory-------------Corsair 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz Low Profile Vengeance Memory Kit CL9 1.5V
CPU----------------Intel Sandybridge i5-2500K Unlocked Core i5 Quad-Core Processor (3.30GHz, 6MB Cache, Socket 1155)
PSU----------------Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 600W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply
Case---------------Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black
DVDRW--------------LiteOn IHAS124-19 24x Internal DVDRW Black Bulk SATA – Software Included
Data Cable---------Wired--Up 1 SATA Power Adapter Cable and 1 SATA Data Cable


Thanks :)

[EDIT] Budget can stretch as far as the 560ti if it's really worth the extra cash.

P.S. I haven't oc'd my CPU yet but will the stock fan be adequate for gaming at medium/high settings @ 1080p?
 
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jongo1 said:
[EDIT] Budget can stretch as far as the 560ti if it's really worth the extra cash.

P.S. I haven't oc'd my CPU yet but will the stock fan be adequate for gaming at medium/high settings @ 1080p?
Click to expand...

The cheapest 560ti, oc it to hell and back is 100% the way to go, it will far surpass the 6870, as stated above, a highly clocked 560ti will throw punches with stock 570/6970 in quite a few titles.

Or, if you can find a 2Gb one for very little extra over the 1Gb, then you will have a stunning card for the money.

The stock intel fan will be up for the job as you haven't oc'd the cpu, it will even handle some cpu oc'ing too at the expense of noise.
 
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Borsch said:
I'd get a 6950 2gb over 560ti purely because of its extra VRAM and chance to unlock it into 6970.
Click to expand...

That's quite a bit extra.
It's pointless spending extra money for that - most cards cant be unlocked now, and the VRAM will make no difference to most games played at 1080 for a while yet (if in a rare game where it matters, just drop AA and you probably won't notice the visual difference).

Note that Crysis 1 & 2 regularly use more than 1GB of VRAM, with no noticeable impact on cards that only had 1GB. It's the in-thing at the moment to push for higher VRAMs, but it makes no sense to spend more money just for that, for most people.
 
MeMeMeMe said:
the VRAM will make no difference to most games played at 1080 for a while yet (if in a rare game where it matters, just drop AA and you probably won't notice the visual difference).

Note that Crysis 1 & 2 regularly use more than 1GB of VRAM, with no noticeable impact on cards that only had 1GB. It's the in-thing at the moment to push for higher VRAMs, but it makes no sense to spend more money just for that, for most people.
Click to expand...

From your point of view regarding vram requirements, a 1gb that can't play the rare game at higher settings due to vram limitations only needs lower settings to play.

Fair enough, you are happy with dropping settings a touch, there is nothing wrong with that at all.

But, there is the other side of the argument where others want to play the rare games at slightly higher settings(which at the cost of ~£20 makes a huge amount of sense).

If you play on 40-60"1080p HDTV's you want as much AA as you can get.

Skyrim high res pack and some, not much, small mods are now using >1.5gb.

If I listened to most here last year, I would be sitting on dual 1GB 6950/560's probably looking at an expensive upgrade and the hassle of selling cards rather than keeping my 2Gb 6950 CrossFire setup and would not be very happy at all for the poor advice given by most!

1 year on, more and more games are utilising more than 1GB vram@1080p, it doesn't fill the buffer to look pretty, it's there to help stop stuttering that can't be seen in any benchmark.
 
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MeMeMeMe said:
That's quite a bit extra.
It's pointless spending extra money for that - most cards cant be unlocked now, and the VRAM will make no difference to most games played at 1080 for a while yet (if in a rare game where it matters, just drop AA and you probably won't notice the visual difference).

Note that Crysis 1 & 2 regularly use more than 1GB of VRAM, with no noticeable impact on cards that only had 1GB. It's the in-thing at the moment to push for higher VRAMs, but it makes no sense to spend more money just for that, for most people.
Click to expand...

Bought mine after christmas and it unlocked first time. This is no guarantee though. Playing bf3 on mostly medium and some high settings I use max of about 850mb VRAM at 1080p but mostly get 60+ fps. The 2gb of VRAM is for ultra settings and potential new games just in case for me.
 
How does the 'ASUS GTX 560 Ti' fair to the likes of the Zotac, MSI and OCUK makes?

Seen a few of these ASUS 560's 2nd hand, which may be where I'm heading due to my budget, will see though...
 
Gone with Asus in the end... standard model, will o/c myself, hopefully I'll be able to get 100+ mhz like some of the pre-oc'd models
 
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tommybhoy said:
If I listened to most here last year, I would be sitting on dual 1GB 6950/560's probably looking at an expensive upgrade and the hassle of selling cards rather than keeping my 2Gb 6950 CrossFire setup and would not be very happy at all for the poor advice given by most!

1 year on, more and more games are utilising more than 1GB vram@1080p, it doesn't fill the buffer to look pretty, it's there to help stop stuttering that can't be seen in any benchmark.
Click to expand...

Same for me...I was considering getting a 2nd 560TI and a couple of guys said "it will let you play BF3 with all ultra". After reading several forums, sadly this is not the case.

I am glad I went with my gut instinct and didn't. I would also be looking at a very expensive gfx card upgrade.
 
Ive been playing BF3 on a single ASUS 560ti cuII on full setting for a while now. It worked at the pre-clocked 900mhz just fine. Clocked to 1ghz / 4500 mem, I just cant justify a second GPU yet.

BF3 seems to work much better on multi-thread CPUs, maybe thats why some people are getting better results with this card.
 
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