Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in

Best PCIe Card: High-end and Beyond

Best Graphics Cards For The Money: October 2012
By

Best PCIe Card For ~£350:

Radeon HD 7970

Great 2560x1600 performance

Radeon HD 7970
Codename: Tahiti
Process: 28 nm
Universal Shaders: 2048
Texture Units: 128
ROPs: 32
Memory Bus: 384-bit
Core Speed MHz: 925
Memory Speed MHz: 1375 (5500 effective)
DirectX/Shader Model: DX 11.1/SM 5
Max TDP:
250 W

AMD's altered the Radeon HD 7970's value proposition significantly by dropping its price to around £350. Now it's only a little more expensive than the GeForce GTX 670, which isn't as fast. Also, we also don't think that paying an extra £50 or more for a GeForce GTX 680 makes much sense when its performance is similar.

You might be able to find a Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition card selling in the £350 range, and if you do, it might make a good buy. But for the pricemost GHz Edition cards are currently selling for, we'd skip them. As they stand, the Radeon HD 7970s are already pretty overclockable, meaning you can coax much of that performance from a cheaper card anyway.

Read our full preview of AMD's Radeon HD 7970 for more information on the card and its accompanying architecture.

Honourable Mentions over £350:
Assorted Multi-Card Configurations

The Radeon HD 7970 delivers such impressive performance at £350 that we find it hard to recommend higher-performing (but sometimes-inconsistent) multi-card configurations for more money. We'll call out some of the most promising options, though, mostly for folks with one of these cards already installed: two Radeon HD 7850 2GB cards in CrossFire, two Radeon HD 7870s in CrossFire, and finally, two Radeon HD 7970s in CrossFire.

Best PCIe Card For ~£800:
GeForce GTX 690

Excellent 2560x1600 performance

GeForce GTX 690
Codename: 2 x GK104
Process: 28 nm
Universal Shaders: 3072 (2 x 1536)
Texture Units: 256 (2 x 128)
ROPs: 64 (2 x 32)
Memory Bus: 256-bit
Core Speed MHz: 915
Memory Speed MHz: 1502 (6008 effective)
DirectX/Shader Model: DX 11/SM 5
Max TDP:
300 W

Nvidia's GeForce GTX 690 is the fastest graphics card in the world. It's essentially two GeForce GTX 680 cards on a single PCB, with a slightly lower core clock and a 300 W TDP. The company sets this card's MSRP right around £800, which is two times higher than a single GeForce GTX 680. That's not a bad deal if you were planning to go with a pair of GTX 680s in SLI anyway. The card can now be found for around £800-£850 without too much trouble.

For all intents and purposes, AMD appears to have dropped plans for a dual-GPU Radeon HD 7990 to compete with this card, so it looks like Nvidia will keep the single fastest card title this generation.

Read our full review of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 690 for more information on the card and its accompanying architecture.

Ask a Category Expert

Create a new thread in the UK Article comments forum about this subject

Example: Notebook, Android, SSD hard drive

Display all 8 comments.
This thread is closed for comments
  • 1 Hide
    TuffLittleUnit , 23 October 2012 02:54
    Bizarre ... so according to Tom's there's no role for the GTX670? I'm no fanboy - I've happily swapped between red and green depending who has the strongest offering but this feels like a strange position to take when a GTX670 is available from Scan etc starting at £280 and the HD7970 is over £30 more (i.e. more than 10% cost and it doesn't consistently offer a proportional performance gain)
  • 1 Hide
    bemused_fred , 23 October 2012 12:53
    Seconded. The gtx 670 is still cheaper than the HD 7970 and still packs a hefty bang for its buck. Heck, if you're gaming in 1080p rather than high resolutions, it meets or beats the 7970 in all games. It's a bit confusing.
  • 1 Hide
    sam_p_lay , 23 October 2012 18:39
    Same here. I still don't think the price increase of the GTX670 over the GTX660 is worth it for the performance gain, but it's certainly the bang-for-buck model of its price range.
  • 1 Hide
    someoneelse , 24 October 2012 16:52
    Yay - my chance to be pedantic

    Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart -

    You've got GTX 295, 480, 570, listed twice - one line after another.
  • 0 Hide
    jakjawagon , 26 October 2012 05:23
    So three days later, just not going to fix the duplicate entries on the chart? We going to have to wait another month to know what's going on?
  • 0 Hide
    sam_p_lay , 26 October 2012 05:31
    jakjawagonSo three days later, just not going to fix the duplicate entries on the chart? We going to have to wait another month to know what's going on?


    I think only some of the THG authors actually read the comments on their articles. I think these 'best for the money' roundups attract a lot of criticism so maybe Don doesn't bother with the comments. If there's specific performance differences you want to know about though, just say and I'll try to help.
  • 0 Hide
    brianthesnail , 30 October 2012 23:57
    its good to see the HD7750 in the entry level charts.. with its miniscule 55w tdp and 4500mhz effective memory clock ( due to the gddr5 memory ) this is the touch of genius from AMD ... and with prices starting at £65 this should be the card of choice for end users with intergrated graphic solutions who want to experience superior performance without any psu upgrade
    allthough AMD recommends a 450w psu i would feel safe running the HD7750 with a branded 300w psu or a budget 400w ... and with no 6pin connector required older psu,s may suffice
    in terms of performance i expect this to be able to run games such as crysis 2 and far cry 2 at medium detail settings at 1680x1050 ....
    its a shame no nvidia cards are showing in the entry level range ... !
  • -1 Hide
    Deathstalker1 , 31 October 2012 03:29
    670 get's no love here ( must be an amd fan)