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. Now it's a little as £30 more expensive than the GeForce GTX 670, which isn't as fast. Also, we also don't think that paying extra 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 money most 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. 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 £800 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.
The 7750 (at £80) is recommended, yet at £80, the comparable GTX650 is priced too close to the 7770?
And then you have the 1GB 7850 at £140 and the 2GB model at £150, and state there's a £20 price gap between them?
The QA on the article is poor as the intro states "Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 670 is slightly cheaper at £310, putting some much-needed space between itself and the Radeon HD 7970. Now this GeForce card reclaims a full recommendation in our list" but I can't find any such recommendation.
you can still find a few GDDR5 versions of the HD6670 however you generally pay a premium for these ( around £65 to £70 ) .. however for that you could buy the HD7750 which is much superior and has around the same power requirements ....
until nvidia can release a card that can take on the HD6670 it will remain the entry level choice for budget gamers .....
however since nvidia and AMD have different methods of calculating their shader/stream processors this is were its harder to compare.. as a rule theres 3 shader processors to every one nvidia shader processor ( cuda core ) so with 96 cuda cores ( x 3 = 288 ) this in theory makes the HD6670 ( with its 480 stream processors ) the winner,but not by much
in terms of power both cards have low power usage with the HD6670 drawing a maximum of 61w at load compared to the GT630 with 65w.. and this allows both cards to run without any 6pin pci-e power connectors ( they can draw enough power from the 75w pci-express x16 bus )
so it looks like the GT630 is a worthy opponent and with physx and cuda support this may give it the edge ....
that said the HD6670 is still prefered by many budget gamers and with the guys at toms hardware recommending it every month its going to be hard to replace at the entry level
personally for the small outlay the HD7750 is the better choice with low power requirements and excellent performance .... and within 6 months it should replace the HD6670 as the entry level card of choice ( when prices drop )
And NO 7990 (6gb)... he says, disappointed as hes just bought one....
I await Decembers chart for it...hopefully...
All the best Brett
Rinoplasti