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Best PCIe Card: Entry-level

Best Graphics Cards For The Money: May 2012
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Best PCI Express (PCIe) Card For £60: Tie

Radeon HD 6670 DDR3

Good 1680x1050 performance in most games

Radeon HD 6670 DDR3
Codename: Turks
Process: 40 nm
Universal Shaders: 480
Texture Units: 24
ROPs: 8
Memory Bus: 128-bit
Core Speed MHz: 800
Memory Speed MHz: 800 (1600 effective)
DirectX/Shader Model: DX 11/SM 5.0
Max TDP:66 W

We're really sad to see the Radeon HD 5670 evaporating from retail. Although it's true that the Radeon HD 6670 DDR3 has a more capable GPU featuring a 25 MHz-faster core clock, four more texture units, and 80 additional shader cores, the 5670 wields more than two times the memory bandwidth thanks to its 1 GHz GDDR5 subsystem.

Nevertheless, without any significant competition, the Radeon HD 6670 DDR3 assumes our £60 recommendation.

GeForce GT 440 GDDR5

Exceptional 1680x1050 performance in most games, 1920x1200 in most games with lowered detail

GeForce GT 440 GDDR5
Codename: GF108
Process: 40 nm
Universal Shaders: 96
Texture Units: 16
ROPs: 4
Memory Bus: 128-bit
Core/Shader Speed MHz: 810 / 1620
Memory Speed MHz: 800 (3200 effective)
DirectX/Shader Model: DX 11/SM 4.0
Max TDP:65 W

Now that the GDDR5-equipped Radeon HD 5670 is all but gone, the GDDR5 flavor of the GeForce GT 440 is a viable alternative to the Radeon HD 6670 DDR3. While the GF108 GPU is weaker than AMD's Turks graphics processor, Nvidia's board sports two times as much memory bandwidth thanks to its GDDR5 memory, and that helps performance a lot.

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  • 1 Hide
    Anonymous , 10 May 2012 22:43
    In the high end section, when you have two GTX 560 in SLI, shouldn't the max TPD be 320W?
  • 2 Hide
    Anonymous , 11 May 2012 22:00
    No GTX 670 in the hierarchy?
  • 0 Hide
    asal1980 , 16 May 2012 15:29
    Finally, the GeForce GT 640 GDDR5 runs at a 950 MHz core frequency and 1250 MHz GDDR5 memory clock.
  • 0 Hide
    dave85uk , 25 May 2012 19:54
    "With the Radeon HD 6950 missing in action"

    Eh? You can still buy these... Shouldn't the Best PCIe Card For ~£170 still be the 6950?