Best PCIe Card For ~£90:
Radeon HD 7770
Good 1920x1200 performance in most games, some with lowered detail
| Radeon HD 7770 | |
|---|---|
| Codename: | Cape Verde |
| Process: | 28 nm |
| Unified Shaders: | 640 |
| Texture Units: | 40 |
| ROPs: | 16 |
| Memory Bus: | 128-bit |
| Core Speed MHz: | 1,000 |
| Memory Speed MHz: | 1,125 (4,500 effective) |
| DirectX/Shader Model: | DX 11.1/SM 5.0 |
| Max TDP: | 80 W |
The Radeon HD 7770 can now be found for £90, which is significantly less than the over-ambitious price AMD wanted for the card when it launched.
Almost as powerful as the end-of-lifed Radeon HD 6850, this newer board uses only half the power to get its job done. Now that we see a price we like (and now that the 6850s are pretty much gone), the Radeon HD 7770 receives a full recommendation.
Read our full review of AMD's Radeon HD 7770 for more information on the card and its accompanying architecture.
Best PCIe Card For £115:
GeForce GTX 650 Ti
Good 1920x1200 performance in most games, some with lowered detail
| GeForce GTX 650 Ti | |
|---|---|
| Codename: | GK106 |
| Process: | 28 nm |
| Unified Shaders: | 768 |
| Texture Units: | 64 |
| ROPs: | 16 |
| Memory Bus: | 128-bit |
| Core Speed MHz: | 925 |
| Memory Speed MHz: | 1,350 (5,400 effective) |
| DirectX/Shader Model: | DX 11/SM 5 |
| Max TDP: | 110 W |
Nvidia's GeForce GTX 650 Ti is the best £130 card out there. It performs in the same league as the Radeon HD 6870 and GeForce GTX 560 at medium detail settings, but gives up some of its advantage when moderate anti-aliasing is applied due to a memory bandwidth bottleneck. Nevertheless, there is no competition in the price range able to touch it.
The GeForce GTX 650 Ti is slower than AMD's Radeon HD 7850 1 GB. However, we've seen that solution's price climb in the U.S., giving Nvidia's more affordable option some space to make its value proposition.
Read our full review of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 650 Ti for more information on the card and its accompanying architecture.
Best PCIe Card For ~£125:
Radeon HD 7850 1 GB
Excellent 1920x1200 performance, Good 2560x1600 performance in most games with lowered detail
| Radeon HD 7850 | |
|---|---|
| Codename: | Pitcairn |
| Process: | 28 nm |
| Unified Shaders: | 1,024 |
| Texture Units: | 64 |
| ROPs: | 32 |
| Memory Bus: | 256-bit |
| Core Speed MHz: | 860 |
| Memory Speed MHz: | 1,200 (4,800 effective) |
| DirectX/Shader Model: | DX 11.1/SM 5 |
| Max TDP: | 130 W |
The Radeon HD 7850 1 GB is one of our price/performance favorites, so long as it's more than a few pounds cheaper than the 2 GB version. It's significantly more powerful than Nvidia's GeForce GTX 650 Ti, and you don't run into a problem with just 1 GB of graphics memory unless you push aggressive levels of anti-aliasing at high resolutions (usually above 1920x1080).
Read our full review of AMD's Radeon HD 7800 series for more information on the card and its accompanying architecture.
Create a new thread in the UK Article comments forum about this subject
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0 Hideblazorthon , 22 March 2013 06:11Is it just me, or did a lot of comments that were even from the current article get cleared?
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0 Hidehizodge , 22 March 2013 17:26Is there an echo in here?