Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Latrobe on September 28, 2013, 09:48:03 AM
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I've been looking to get a new graphics card for a little while now. Since I finally have a little spending money on me I've spent a good amount of time looking at different cards.
I currently have an EVGA GTX 550 ti. I've been kind of leaning towards the EVGA GTX 660 ti since it's just within my current price range ($300-350), and it looks like it would be a very nice upgrade. Should I go ahead and get this card or will it become outdated before I get any serious use out of it? Should I hold off until I can buy a more expensive and better card?
I've only ever used nvidia cards and I know Radeon makes some fine cards too. If I vaguely remember, I think I heard someone say that nvidia cards are more geared for graphics and looks while Radeon was geared towards better performance. No idea if this is true. Is there any significant difference in their cards?
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I have the 660 due to Masherbrum. I love the card. However i dont think I have the TI one
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I know absolutely nothing about current Nvidia cards, the last I had was a second hand GeForce 2 MX. At that time Ati had far better graphics but Nvidia was faster. I must admit that the picture quality really was from down below after a Voodoo3 3000. Guillemot, who was the manufacturer for my Hercules Prophet II used to give a little better picture quality than pure Nvidia drivers. Since then I've been using Ati/Amd. Regarding more current models Ati used to have more power for used watt, making video cards and entire computers run cooler and quieter without sacrificing playability. I was told that the Fermi architecture by Nvidia and of course everything after that was at least narrowing the wattage gap. My belief has been until these days that Nvidia was more concerned into speed than quality, you are the first person to say the opposite. Rumour also tells that games often are better optimized for Nvidia than Amd. Can't tell about AH, but at least HT himself used to have an Amd card in his rig some time (years already??? :old:) ago. Anyway, all this is just speculation. I'm sure you'll be getting more enthusiastic answers concerning both brands...
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nvidia does some things better than amd and vice versa. it's hit or miss. i think nvidia still renders shadows better than ati/amd...there were some other graphics functions as well but i can't remember of the top of my head. if you're going with an nvidia, grab yourself a gtx760 2gb. you will get the graphics power you need and save some cash.
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morfiend helped me find a nice video card. :aok :cheers:
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morfiend helped me find a nice video card. :aok :cheers:
What'd ya get?
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I'll be ordering an EVGA GeForce GTX 760 4GB Memory very soon. :)
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I'll be ordering an EVGA GeForce GTX 760 4GB Memory very soon. :)
Nice! Let me know about the improvements you experience.
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I go by Tom's Hardware ratings for best card for the money in different price ranges:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107.html
At the $250 level, it also recommends the Nvidia GTX 760.
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AMD is coming out with a new series of cards "soon" which should lower the price on everything. If you can wait a few months, its a good time to wait.
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if you have power supply for it, go as high as you can in the food chain.
I was limited by my Power supply and decided for the 7870, the one I wanted 680 had higher power requirements(1,5 years ago).
I run AH @ 1920*1080 with always 60fps vsync on, full distance view, and I have one notch to the left in the advanced bump up level.
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AMD is coming out with a new series of cards "soon" which should lower the price on everything. If you can wait a few months, its a good time to wait.
Following this logic, im still waiting for the next few months to upgrade my old 5830 :lol
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Following this logic, im still waiting for the next few months to upgrade my old 5830 :lol
So, to follow up on this. I think I was right. Waiting would have been a good idea... did the OP wait or be impatient, like he who I've quoted?
Prices have dropped a ton, new products are out which are way faster for the dollar. Learn to follow the cycles, or take the advice from people who do.
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The cycles are impossible to predict now. The nVidia 780's were 700$ when they first came out, and that wasn't very long ago, late spring early summer. They are now as cheap as 450$ for the exact same card, and the new 780 TI is in the mid 600's and is even faster than the 780. This exact time last year I bought 2 of the fastest cards I could get, and the fastest single card (Titan) for a brief time as well. The 680's were nearly 1200$ total for both, now they are almost impossible to find only a year after debuting as the fastest SLI solution out there, and they are well under 400$.
This isn't even going into the AMD line of cards. The back and forth of the last few months has been great for prices and those of us on the customer end of things. I don't think anyone predicted that when the AMD new cards came out a couple months back that it would force nVidia to slash the price of its flagship cards by over one third.
All you can do now is just buy the best you can afford and be happy with it. If you're lucky you may catch the wave at the perfect time, and be buying when a huge price drop occurs, like with the 780's recently for example. But that's what it is, luck, as I didn't see a single site the day before the price slashes happened predicting it. Tom's HW guide is pretty much the best game in town for finding the cost/performance ratio for any price range. Trying to keep up and have the best card all the time is a full time job almost now. I sold the 680's from one machine and went to a single 780. Now the 780 TI is out, but I'm not falling for it again, and I'll just keep my 680sli and 780 machines the way they are for the next year or so.
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I bought my 780 about 2 weeks before the prices were dropped. My luck is awesome. :)
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I bought my 780 about 2 weeks before the prices were dropped. My luck is awesome. :)
So did I but luckily bought it from B&H video which has price protection garuntees. In others words if your product drops in price within a month of purchase they refund you the difference. The 780GTX is probably below $500 now. I say buy that. You wont be sorry.