Best PCI Express (PCIe) Card For £60:
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 still sad that the Radeon HD 5670 was discontinued. 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.
Best PCIe Card For ~£80: None
The Radeon HD 5770 (also available re-badged as the Radeon HD 6770) used to be an easy recommendation at £80. But its price recently jumped in the USA, so we've decided to drop our approval of it.
Honourable Mention:
Radeon HD 7750
Good 1920x1200 performance in most games, some with lowered detail
| Radeon HD 7750 | |
|---|---|
| Codename: | Cape Verde |
| Process: | 28 nm |
| Universal Shaders: | 512 |
| Texture Units: | 32 |
| ROPs: | 16 |
| Memory Bus: | 128-bit |
| Core Speed MHz: | 800 |
| Memory Speed MHz: | 1125 (4500 effective) |
| DirectX/Shader Model: | DX 11.1/SM 5.0 |
| Max TDP: | 55 W |
At £80, AMD's Radeon HD 6770 actually outperforms the company's newer Radeon HD 7750. The only problem is that its old card uses twice as much power in the process. The Radeon HD 7750 is the fastest graphics card you can get right now that doesn't require an auxiliary power input; it draws all that it needs from a 16-lane PCIe slot.
If you're upgrading an older machine with a power supply limitation in mind, this point warrants an honourable mention.
Read our full review of AMD's Radeon HD 7750 for more information on the card and its accompanying architecture.
Scan have a huge number of 670s, a large number of 680s and a few 690's still in stock.
"Soooo hard to find!"
UK e-tailers will have 20% VAT on, which makes them more expensive but yeah... rip-off Britain and all that.
Also, I've always been dubious as to the accuracy of 'great at 1920x1080' etc, due to huge variance in how demanding specific games are (say Modern Warfare vs Metro 2033) but if you're going to insist on doing it, maybe it's time to step up to resolutions beyond 2560x1600 (i.e. multi-display setups). We're now reaching 'great at 2560x1600' at at the start of the 3rd of 4 of pages. So the entire second half of the roundup!