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How do I judge a graphics card?
- Thread starter GIBURROWS
- Start date
I personly used this website.
tomshardware
Then it all came down to comparing benchmarks to games of which i play as long as i had a steady fps on max settings on the games i play, i aimed to go for that.
The only thing i can't really figure out is the differance between the brands aka MSI, gigabyte, Sapphire ect ect.
like if they use different bits to make cooling better over sound.
tomshardware
Then it all came down to comparing benchmarks to games of which i play as long as i had a steady fps on max settings on the games i play, i aimed to go for that.
The only thing i can't really figure out is the differance between the brands aka MSI, gigabyte, Sapphire ect ect.
like if they use different bits to make cooling better over sound.
I judge a brand firstly by reviews, secondly by RMA (should anything go wrong, I don't want to wait weeks and weeks for it back) and thirdly by this good site and user feedback
how do you judge the RMA?
I thought RMA's went though the place you brought it from, aka OcUk?
(also new to this)
Even if the card is sent back to here, it is then sent to the manafacturer to be tested. EVGA have what is considered the best RMA service but check out the sticky thread at the top of this Graphics card forum to see what is good and expected time.
First step is to decide how much you would ideally like to spend.
Second step is to look at what you play the most to see if your usual games are card neutral or if they favour Nvidia/AMD architecture. I.E in my case I mostly play WoW and Diablo so for a sub £150 card I would get much better performance per £ from an Nvidia card even if its AMD counterpart was better in most games (above £150 anything would run WoW maxed out anyway so the Nvidia bonus there is void).
If your regular games are biased then buy the best card from that manufacturer you can for the amount you want to spend, reviews/benchmarks showing how cards perform at the resolution you pay at will help you figure out which one that is, if the games aren't biased then buy the best card you can for the amount you want to spend, again reviews/benchmarks will show you which.
The are of course a few other factors you might want to consider, such as warranty (quite rare for a graphics card to die but it does happen so the longer the better and preferably with a company with good service), age of the tech (a newer card will generally run cooler and use less power than an older card with equal performance), also some cards come factory overclocked (extra cost for something you can do yourself, but usually with better cooling and the ease of not having to do it yourself, this is a good boost to performance in most cases and extreme in some I.E my GTX460 was faster than a GTX470)
Second step is to look at what you play the most to see if your usual games are card neutral or if they favour Nvidia/AMD architecture. I.E in my case I mostly play WoW and Diablo so for a sub £150 card I would get much better performance per £ from an Nvidia card even if its AMD counterpart was better in most games (above £150 anything would run WoW maxed out anyway so the Nvidia bonus there is void).
If your regular games are biased then buy the best card from that manufacturer you can for the amount you want to spend, reviews/benchmarks showing how cards perform at the resolution you pay at will help you figure out which one that is, if the games aren't biased then buy the best card you can for the amount you want to spend, again reviews/benchmarks will show you which.
The are of course a few other factors you might want to consider, such as warranty (quite rare for a graphics card to die but it does happen so the longer the better and preferably with a company with good service), age of the tech (a newer card will generally run cooler and use less power than an older card with equal performance), also some cards come factory overclocked (extra cost for something you can do yourself, but usually with better cooling and the ease of not having to do it yourself, this is a good boost to performance in most cases and extreme in some I.E my GTX460 was faster than a GTX470)
Soldato
- Joined
- 6 Feb 2010
- Posts
- 14,583
I would say first determine how much you are prepared to spend, then identify which card that gives the the best bang for bucks/features for the games YOU play regardless of Nvidia or AMD (look up reviews etc). Once you decided which card you would go for, and then it's down to choosing brand based on price, quality (custom cooler and PCB etc), warranty and rma precedure and location.
Soldato
- Joined
- 6 Feb 2010
- Posts
- 14,583
Generally speaking most people wouldn't recommend going crossfire or SLI 1GB vram cards anymore as more as more and more games beginning to use more than it.
But you wanna upgrade from a 6870, your best bet is probably getting a 7950 for around £240. But of course that's assuming your CPU isn't holding the graphic card back...what CPU are you using atm?
Soldato
- Joined
- 6 Feb 2010
- Posts
- 14,583
The HT on i7 isn't gonna benefit for gaming...you would be better off going for a i5, and add the cost difference between the i5 and i7 to the budget of the graphic card instead. That would give you much more noticable better performance than i7 over i5 ever would.