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HELP? Graphics Card Buying advice

cukzta101

cukzta101

cukzta101

Associate
Joined
17 Feb 2011
Posts
19
Location
Wigston, Leicester
Hi Guys & Gals,

I could do with a little help choosing my new Graphics Card. I'm a casual gamer playing stuff like NFS Hot Pursuit & Mass Effect 2 (3 When it arrives). I'd like to go for an Nvidia card and was thinking of going for a KFA2 550Ti. Anyways I'm looking for something under £200 with playable frames rate at 1080 (24" Benq Monitor)

Let me know your thoughts or experiences

Cheers


Nick
 
As much as i think the 6950 is a great card for the money i have to say i probably would choose the Gigabyte GTX480 out of those mainly due to the fact that it's performance is around the same as a GTX570 yet the card includes the best vga cooler you can get enabling great overclocking potential.(it's also very quiet too.)
 
For that price you're looking at the 6950 or the 480. Both are great cards and will easily deliver great performance for the latest games and the future titles coming out soon.

Both cards are great at overclocking, the 6950 can be flashed to 6970 and overclocked giving the best bang for buck performance. The 480 is a very powerful card, also known to be quite noisy and power hungry.

I'd personally go for the 6950, it's got 2GB memory and will overclock very well and will last you a long time.
 
Sycho said:
The GTX480 posted above is £203 with the voucher code....it's well worth it and would last you a good while.(the cooler alone is £30-40.)
Click to expand...

This. I just bought one, overclocks brilliantly and runs faster and a lot quieter than my brother's Sapphire 6950 (reference board). Yes, it's £3 over budget but it's the best value card around, IMO.
 
480 all the way

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/293?vs=309 - 480 Vs 6950

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/292?vs=309 - 480 vs 6970

Also i have overclocked mine to 800mhz, and memory to 4000mhz which runs smooth as and this is the ASUS one. The gigabyte is quiter and has a lot better cooling, you could overclock it forther than mine, id go with the 480 :) as you can see from the benchmarks it is worth it.

Also take a look at this website

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

As you can see currently it is the Second fastest Single GPU Card by those benchmarks, the only card that beats it is its big brother 580, and then obviously 6990 but thats a Dual GPU card so its obviously going to take the crown! lol

480 is your best choice :)
 
grrr, I had an incredibly informative and eloquently verbose reply ready, then Firefox crashed :( Hate you Firefox...

Basically, there is a gap in Nvidia's price range between the 550 and 560. If you don't want to spend as much as £200 I would suggesst getting either a 6850, 5850 or a 6870. They are basically linear in both performance and price:

6850@£140<5850@£150<6870@£170

Depends how much you want to spend.

The main reason people are recommending cards over the £200 mark is that both the gtx480 and 6950 (which offer high-end enthusiast level performance) have come down a lot in price, giving you a lot of bang for your buck.

*edit* If you do look at the £200 cards, personally I'd go for the 6950. The GTX480's heat and power consumption put me off (500w while using Furmark!)
 
Last edited:
I've been looking at the 6870's but the 6950's do look quite tempting.

My only concern is the reference cooler on the 6950's.

I am looking at max budget of £180.
 
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