Best Graphics Cards For The Money: May 2014

[humbug]

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-graphics-card-review,review-32899-6.html

Best PCI Express (PCIe) Card For £60:
GeForce GT 640
since its price dropped a little, we're shifting our entry-level recommendation to Nvidia's GeForce GT 640. The card comes armed with enough graphics processing horsepower to drive a majority of modern games at 720p (and even 1080p in some titles). This is a good starting point for gamers on a tight budget.

Best PCI Express (PCIe) Card For ~£70:
Radeon HD 7770/Radeon R7 250X
AMD's Radeon HD 7770, recently re-branded as the Radeon R7 250X, can now be found for around £90. It offers playable frame rates at high-def resolutions in all but the most demanding games. And it sports a fairly fantastic price/performance ratio in the lower-mainstream segment. With that said, if you can afford the extra £10 for the Radeon R7 260X, the step up is worthwhile.

Best PCI Express (PCIe) Card For £90:
Radeon R7 260X
With Nvidia's new GeForce GTX 750 Ti selling for a little more than last month, the Radeon R7 260X grabs our top recommendation for under £100. This card is equivalent to an overclocked Radeon HD 7790 with AMD's TrueAudio feature enabled, and it's quite capable of playing most games at 1080p using medium-quality detail settings.

Honourable Mention
GeForce GTX 750 Ti
While the Radeon R7 260X offers similar performance for considerably less money, gamers who want to upgrade an entry-level PC with a low-output power supply may consider the GeForce GTX 750 Ti, which is rated at 60 W (a little more than half of the 260X's 115 W). Nvidia suggests you use at least a 300 W power supply with this card. That's a very low bar to set for owners of low-end machines. You don't even need a six-pin auxiliary connector. The GTX 750 Ti doesn't earn a full recommendation for value, but it just may be the best option for gamers upgrading old or small form factor systems.

Best PCIe Card For ~£115:
Radeon R7 265
The Radeon R7 265 offers significantly higher frame rates than the Radeon R7 260X and GeForce GTX 750 Ti for a small price premium. Essentially, this is an overclocked Radeon HD 7850 that delivers performance competitive with Nvidia's GeForce GTX 660. As such, it deserves a recommendation at the £115 price point.

Best PCIe Card For ~£130:
Radeon R9 270
AMD's Radeon R9 270 offers performance equal to the Radeon HD 7870 it replaces, which is a little better than Nvidia's GeForce GTX 660. At £130, this card earns our sole recommendation. It's a serious gaming board capable of playable frame rates at relatively high resolutions.

Best PCIe Card For ~£190:
GeForce GTX 760
Upon its release, the GeForce GTX 760 introduced GeForce GTX 670- and Radeon HD 7950-class speed at a sub-£200 price point, displacing the Tahiti-based Radeon HD 7870 LE with even more performance for the money. As a result, this GK104-powered card is one of our favorite recommendations for frame rate-hungry gamers.

Best PCIe Card For ~£230:
Radeon R9 280X
AMD essentially took its Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, shaved 50 MHz from the peak clock rate, and rebranded the board as a Radeon R9 280X. The good news this month is that the 280X's price has slipped, making it an easy recommendation for a card that powers through 1920x1080 and is usually playable at 2560x1440 with taxing detail settings enabled.

Best PCIe Card For ~£260:
GeForce GTX 770
The GeForce GTX 770 might be a newer model, but it's basically a GK104-powered GeForce GTX 680 with higher clock rates, improved cooling, and a lower price tag. We're not big fans of re-branding existing hardware with fresh nomenclature, but the GeForce GTX 770 earns our respect for delivering very high performance at a reasonable price point (in this case, £270). With the Radeon R9 280X suffering under a huge price hike, Nvidia's GeForce GTX 770 owns this space with no competition.

Best PCI Express (PCIe) Card For ~£350:
Radeon R9 290
The Radeon R9 290 employs AMD's Hawaii GPU with four of its 44 Compute Units disabled, yielding a board with 2560 shaders and 160 texture units. The back-end persists, including a 512-bit aggregate memory bus and 64 ROPS. What you're left with is a very capable high-end gaming card for significantly less money than the 290X. A loud reference cooler might have you considering Nvidia's GeForce GTX 780 for a few pounds more. However, the 290 makes good sense outfitted with a third-party heat sink and fan.

Honourable Mention:
Radeon R9 290X
AMD's Radeon R9 290X set a high bar for single-GPU performance when it launched, earning our Tom's Hardware Elite award in the process. Although Nvidia leap-frogged it with the GeForce GTX 780 Ti, the Hawaii-powered board is no slouch. At under £400 it's significantly cheaper than Nvidia's GeForce GTX 780 Ti, and while we weren't impressed with the reference cooler, it's much easier to live with now that quieter aftermarket cooling options are available.

GeForce GTX 780 Ti
Nvidia's GeForce GTX 780 Ti is the fastest single-GPU graphics card available. Introduced shortly after AMD's Radeon R9 290X, the flagship GeForce features a fully-enabled GK110 GPU with all 2880 of its CUDA cores enabled and backed by 1750 MHz GDDR5 graphics RAM. The 780 Ti only includes 3 GB of on-board memory and is hobbled in FP64 math; however, it's unquestionably faster than the GeForce GTX Titan in games. The relatively high cost might prevent it from being a value leader, but we're giving the GeForce GTX 780 Ti an honorable mention for its blazing-fast performance.

Honourable Mention:
Radeon R9 295X2
AMD doesn't have the best track record when it comes to reference-class thermal solutions, but the company made the right decision in pairing its dual-GPU flagship with a closed-loop liquid cooler. Armed with a staggering 5632 shaders operating at a slightly higher frequency than the Radeon R9 290X, AMD's 295X2 is the fastest graphics card that money can buy. Nvidia is expected to introduce its dual-GK110-equipped GeForce GTX Titan Z soon, but its specs fall well short of what this Radeon can do.

 

[Boomstick777]

GeForce GTX 780 Ti
Nvidia's GeForce GTX 780 Ti is the fastest single-GPU graphics card available. Introduced shortly after AMD's Radeon R9 290X, the flagship GeForce features a fully-enabled GK110 GPU with all 2880 of its CUDA cores enabled and backed by 1750 MHz GDDR5 graphics RAM. The 780 Ti only includes 3 GB of on-board memory and is hobbled in FP64 math; however, it's unquestionably faster than the GeForce GTX Titan in games. The relatively high cost might prevent it from being a value leader, but we're giving the GeForce GTX 780 Ti an honorable mention for its blazing-fast performance.

Makes me feel warm and fussy inside. I loves my Ti's..

 

[Silent_Scone]

Get three and they're even better

 

[pgi947]

Good list but its all subjective as always.

Like the 760 @ £190, it wouldn't get a look in over a 280x on offer, like wise for the 770 vs a £300 290.

I am surprised at no mention for the 280 (7950) though, still a lot of bang for buck in those.

 

[humbug]

For £190 i think the 280 is a better card than the 760, its an odd one that ^^

Makes me feel warm and fussy inside. I loves my Ti's..

I'm sure it does they are good for e-peen..

I like the sensible option of the 290, your not going to notice the 10% performance difference, but you do notice the £200 price difference

 

[ubersonic]

The THG best for money articles are good however you should always bear in mind that the UK site article is just the original US site article with the currency's converted, and so some irregularities do occur form time to time. This one looks good but I wouldn't recommend the GTX760 at the ~£190 point when the R280 non-X is there.

 

[TheRealDeal]

List is pretty stupid. As above there's no way a 760 should be on there as a 280 is a much better card as was the 7950. Whats the point in listing a gtx770 for the best card at £260 when the 280x is already in at £230. It looks like the gtx770 was put in here when 280x's were going for nearly £300 due to mining.

In fact reading what they say about the gtx 760 there reasoning seems a little dated.

 

[Marine-RX179]

I like the sensible option of the 290, your not going to notice the 10% performance difference, but you do notice the £200 price difference

For some they would notice more than just the £200 price difference i.e. missus busting their balls, wake up (half) naked outside the house, no sex for a month (if lucky)

 

[humbug]

lol ^^^^

List is pretty stupid. As above there's no way a 760 should be on there as a 280 is a much better card as was the 7950. Whats the point in listing a gtx770 for the best card at £260 when the 280x is already in at £230. It looks like the gtx770 was put in here when 280x's were going for nearly £300 due to mining.

In fact reading what they say about the gtx 760 there reasoning seems a little dated.

Yeah, post above you is probably the reason for this.

 

[bru]

For £190 i think the 280 is a better card than the 760, its an odd one that ^^



I'm sure it does they are good for e-peen..

I like the sensible option of the 290, your not going to notice the 10% performance difference, but you do notice the £200 price difference

Even though I do agree with you on the 780Ti vs the 290, why doesn't the same apply for the 760 vs the 280. the 760 is £14 cheaper and certainly less than 10% slower than the 280.

There is nothing actually wrong with the 760 other than the fact that the 670 that it replaced in reality if not in name was a better card.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Even though I do agree with you on the 780Ti vs the 290, why doesn't the same apply for the 760 vs the 280. the 760 is £14 cheaper and certainly less than 10% slower than the 280.

There is nothing actually wrong with the 760 other than the fact that the 670 that it replaced in reality if not in name was a better card.

Because the 290 has a wider memory bus and comparable memory bandwidth as well as 1GB more vram despite cheaper; GTX760 on the other hand has narrower bus size, lower memory bandwidth and has only 2GB vram. In terms of price difference, I don't know if one could really declare the GTX760 being cheaper, since both the GTX760 and the 280's price up and down with either can be cheaper at this moment and then more expensive in the next...the best one could say is that their price are similar or the same. Even if the GTX760 was £14 cheaper, most people probably don't think the £14 saving is worth taking chance on a 2GB card (which may or may not be a issue in the near future) and or the proven limitation of bus-size and memory bandwidth.

 

[humbug]

Even though I do agree with you on the 780Ti vs the 290, why doesn't the same apply for the 760 vs the 280. the 760 is £14 cheaper and certainly less than 10% slower than the 280.

There is nothing actually wrong with the 760 other than the fact that the 670 that it replaced in reality if not in name was a better card.

Cheapest 760 is £175, cheapest 280 is £190. its a close call, it could be either i guess

 

[bru]

Cheapest 760 is £175, cheapest 280 is £190. its a close call, it could be either i guess

hmm prices at the moment, obviously yes these can and probably will change, but neither card is currently on offer.

YOUR BASKET
1 x VTX3D Radeon R9 280 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £189.95
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 760 OC Gaming Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £175.99
Total : £365.94 (includes shipping : ).




damn I either misread your post, or you just ninja edited it I could have sworn you put the 280 at £180

 

[humbug]

hmm prices at the moment, obviously yes these can and probably will change, but neither card is currently on offer.

YOUR BASKET
1 x VTX3D Radeon R9 280 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £189.95
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 760 OC Gaming Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £175.99
Total : £365.94 (includes shipping : ).




damn I either misread your post, or you just ninja edited it

Sorry, yes. i miss read the price and ninja edited it. your right, i think the 760 @ sub £180 for 1080P is a good one.

 

[bru]

Because the 290 has a wider memory bus and comparable memory bandwidth as well as 1GB more vram despite cheaper; GTX760 on the other hand has narrower bus size, lower memory bandwidth and has only 2GB vram. In terms of price difference, I don't know if one could really declare the GTX760 being cheaper, since both the GTX760 and the 280's price up and down with either can be cheaper at this moment and then more expensive in the next...the best one could say is that their price are similar or the same. Even if the GTX760 was £14 cheaper, most people probably don't think the £14 saving is worth taking chance on a 2GB card (which may or may not be a issue in the near future) and or the proven limitation of bus-size and memory bandwidth.

As has been discussed to death before and in my opinion it becomes more relevant as they cards get older, these are now mid range cards they will run out of grunt long before the memory or bandwidth really comes into play in single card use.

 

[eddiew]

Well having just gotten a 760 on TWO, I'M happy to see it listed as the smart choice

 

[Marine-RX179]

As has been discussed to death before and in my opinion it becomes more relevant as they cards get older, these are now mid range cards they will run out of grunt long before the memory or bandwidth really comes into play in single card use.

And it is a justification used to death by many for the GK104 based graphic card. Personally I can never see peoples' logic in recommending paying similar money but going for the card with lower spec, even if the performance of the two cards were similar.

Had the 280 been a "GTX765" with with same 3GB vram, 384-bit memory bus, much higher memory bandwidth, slightly better GPU grunt and at pretty much the same price point as the GTX760 or at "£14 more", between the GTX760 and the GTX765, I know which people would recommend

 

[owens2000]

The THG best for money articles are good however you should always bear in mind that the UK site article is just the original US site article with the currency's converted, and so some irregularities do occur form time to time. This one looks good but I wouldn't recommend the GTX760 at the ~£190 point when the R280 non-X is there.

That explains a lot...
On one hand they say the R9 280x is the best Enthusiast card around £230 and the GTX770 for around £260 while talking about the "Radeon R9 280X suffering under a huge price hike" in the same sentence.... not exactly up to date.

Many would argue that if you did have £260 to spend the R9 280x would be the recommended card to go or for out of the two anyway.

I'm in this boat myself, choosing between the two cards and it would seem like the R9 280x is on a par performance wise withe the GTX 770, more future proof with more vram and generally about £30 cheaper.

 

[LtMatt]

I'm in this boat myself, choosing between the two cards and it would seem like the R9 280x is on a par performance wise withe the GTX 770, more future proof with more vram and generally about £30 cheaper.

Don't forget the three free games with the Gold Ticket that comes with the 280X.

 

[owens2000]

Don't forget the three free games with the Gold Ticket that comes with the 280X.

Indeed... forgot to mention that.
I think Nvidia need to be a little more savvy in the pricing of the GTX770 to compete with the R9 280x.