Replacement grahics card under £350

[007geezer]

My current rig is as follows, am looking to upgrade my graphics card, purely because I have some spare cash after Christmas and want to improve my setup. Please suggest a replacement graphics card up to £350

Operating System
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core i5 3570K @ 3.40GHz 38 °C
Ivy Bridge 22nm Technology
RAM
16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 666MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. P8Z77-V PRO (LGA1155) 28 °C
Graphics
MX279 (1920x1080@60Hz)
Intel HD Graphics 4000 (ASUStek Computer Inc)
2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (Gigabyte) 29 °C
Storage
119GB SanDisk SDSSDP128G (SSD)
1863GB Seagate ST2000DM001-1CH164 (SATA) 28 °C
Optical Drives
ASUS DRW-24B5ST
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

 

[jrodga2k5]

One of two choices really...

R9 290 or GTX 780

Depending on what you prefer you can't go wrong with either.

With the 290 the fan can be rather loud but you shouldn't have that issue with the GTX 780.

Both perform fairly similarly across the board but both have their own features like Mantle for R9 series cards (api to be available soon in B4) and PhysX in Nvidia cards.

For the GTX 780...slightly over budget @ £359 but great cooler on the MSI

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-209-MS

I do now own an R9 290 and while the fan is not over offensive to the ears you can hear it while gaming should it be allowed to ramp up (and yes you want it to so it doesn't throttle). If you are a headphone gamer then not an issue. However the 3rd part equivalent cooler of the above for it comes in @ £379

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-239-MS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1752

 

[007geezer]

Looking at those two cards now, many thanks for the suggestions

 

[jrodga2k5]

Looking at those two cards now, many thanks for the suggestions

No problem mate, it's a toss up really. I ended up going for the R9 290 when making my decision as I got it for £312 and then minus cash back and selling BF4 it came in around £280 for me. But I WOULD definitely recommend a different cooler, I'm attaching an Accelero Hybrid onto mines this week to combat it.

I linked the MSI gaming edition of both cards for you to look at. Plus check out all the reviews online where they're pitted against each other. Paying attention to the real world gaming benchmarks especially

Guru 3D R9 290 review below but will show it against the GTX 780

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/radeon_r9_290_review_benchmarks,1.html

 

[007geezer]

heading towards the GTX 780 but will need to check it will actually fit in my rig as its quite a large size. Thanks again for the help

 

[jrodga2k5]

heading towards the GTX 780 but will need to check it will actually fit in my rig as its quite a large size. Thanks again for the help

No problem, hopefully it all works out