Help me find a good video card

Thanatos

Thanatos

Active Member
I'm in the market for a video card that is preferably under $150. I've had my eyes on this one, would it work for me?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121642

Here's my specs:
Windows 7 64-bit
AMD Athlon II X4 645
8.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 656MHz (9-9-9-24)
ASUS M4A88T-V EVO/USB3
2 monitors, one is HDMI, 1920x1080@60Hz, and one is VGA at 1440x900@60Hz
SATA 1tb WD HDD

I probably wont be playing many very new games, but I'd probably play Bioshock Infinite and Battlefield 3. I currently have a Visiontek Radeon HD 6450, and it can hardly play BFBC2 and Bioshock 2. And it definitely can't play skyrim on anything more than minimum settings. So what do you recommend?
 
What 500W psu do you have? Also, can you go used? You can get a 6950 or 560 Ti on Hard Forum pretty easily for under $150.
 
If you go for a boost the performance will be better, but for 1080p it might not be the best idea sinc ethat's a 1gb card, BF3 will max my vram at 1440x900 and i have 1280mb.

Just look at the reviews and decide what you think is best suited for you, but preferrably 2gbs vram. I think there is a gtx 660 and 7870 or something on sale right now for under 200 if you can pull it
 
Given that the 7770 is cheaper than the 650 Ti, I'd recommend a 7770. The 7790 is also in your budget, but 7790s seems to be 1GB (it'd be nice to get a 2GB card).

I believe Anandtech don't update their benchmarks with the latest drivers either, and AMD released new drivers (13.4) very recently, which may improve the 7770 in benchmarks (the performance difference between the 7770 and the 650 Ti is very close anyway).

And what exact 500W PSU do you have? Depending on what it is, that may need upgrading too.
 
spirit said:
Given that the 7770 is cheaper than the 650 Ti, I'd recommend a 7770. The 7790 is also in your budget, but 7790s seems to be 1GB (it'd be nice to get a 2GB card).

I believe Anandtech don't update their benchmarks with the latest drivers either, and AMD released new drivers (13.4) very recently, which may improve the 7770 in benchmarks (the performance difference between the 7770 and the 650 Ti is very close anyway).

And what exact 500W PSU do you have? Depending on what it is, that may need upgrading too.
Click to expand...

That was the 2013 which has only been up for a month or 2 so the drivers are fairly recent
 
The 650 is about the same as a 560ti in all ways unless you need computational duties performed on the GPU (e.g. rendering 3D video - not the same as games).

So if you need it you would know, so I would buy Aastii's 560ti here. The 560 is actually faster in games. Just uses a bit more power. Both DX11.

Spend the remainder of your budget on a cheap SSD like this, all up you'll have a much much much faster PC all round, same approx. budget, better gaming. Sell or give away the 6450. I usually keep at least one known good gpu as a spare.

Just my 2 cents.
 
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I was under the impression that I'd need 2 gigs of VRAM? And that one doesn't have an hdmi output. Besides, I'd much rather buy new than used. Also, if it needs more power, could my 500 watt Antec Earthwatts PSu handle it?
 
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Your PSU will be fine with a 560ti.

A 2GB is not a must, didn't you say you're a casual gamer? the 560 will pull pretty well for you @ 1080p. You're not going to get a good performing card with more than 1GB+ vram for $150 in my eyes.

Why do you specifically need HDMI?

You could easily pick up a cheap DVI cable with the money saved, or just get a DVI to HDMI adatper, bear in mind that you will loose the capability of audio.
 
Some games benefit with 2GB VRAM such as skyrim etc.

Certainly these days, 2GB is the min in new cards of note.

1.5GB will work fine too but will be bottled at any higher resolutions.
 
That's true, and I have seen that it's faster. But I have a very strict $200 limit and I'd rather have bioshock infinite, tomb raider, and FC3 blood dragon than that metro game. I'm pretty sure I'll be satisfied with the 7850, as long as I can get around 30 fps on most new games, like Bioshock infinite. It'll be a heck of a lot better than my 6450, that's for sure.
 
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