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Best PCIe Card: High-end

Best Graphics Cards For The Money: May 2013
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Best PCIe Card For ~£330:

Radeon HD 7970

Great 2560x1600 performance

Radeon HD 7970
Codename: Tahiti
Process: 28 nm
Unified Shaders: 2,048
Texture Units: 128
ROPs: 32
Memory Bus: 384-bit
Core Speed MHz: 925
Memory Speed MHz: 1,375 (5,500 effective)
DirectX/Shader Model: DX 11.1/SM 5
Max TDP:
250 W

AMD's Radeon HD 7970 is the only top-tier card we recommend for the price. You might be able to find a Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition card selling in the £340 range. If you do, that'd be a good buy too. But, at the £350 most GHz Edition models are currently selling for, we'd skip them. As they stand, the standard Radeon HD 7970s are quite overclockable, meaning you can coax much of the performance difference out of the cheaper card anyway.

There's not much reason to pay an extra for a similar-performing GeForce GTX 680 unless the Nvidia card's 55 W-lower thermal ceiling is necessary in your small form factor enclosure. In that case, spending more for better efficiency might make sense.

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

Honourable Mentions:
Assorted Multi-Card Configurations

The Radeon HD 7970 delivers such strong performance that we find it hard to recommend higher-performing (but sometimes-inconsistent) multi-card configurations for more money. 

We'll call out some other promising options, though, mostly for folks with one of these cards already installed: two GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost 2 GB cards in SLI, two Radeon HD 7870 LEs in CrossFire, two GeForce GTX 670s in SLI, and finally, two Radeon HD 7970s in CrossFire.

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  • 0 Hide
    bemused_fred , 22 May 2013 06:47
    OK, this is about the 6th month in a row that us commenters have been pointing out that a HD 6670 GDDR5 version exists, and for only slightly more than the DDR3 version:
    https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=HD+6670+GDDR5&aq=f&oq=HD+6670+GDDR5&aqs=chrome.0.57j0l3j62l2.3282j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=HD+6670+GDDR5&source=univ&tbm=shop&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=m1ucUdnPF8_H7Ab40oHIDQ&ved=0CDMQsxg&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.46751780,d.ZGU&fp=8571d4800423c838&biw=1280&bih=923
    Any chance of getting at least an honourable mention for it?
  • 0 Hide
    sam_p_lay , 22 May 2013 11:09
    I don't think Don reads comments. And since when was 5 minutes before a new series launch 'the best time to buy'? I'd say that's the worst time to buy. At least he did mention GTX700.
  • 0 Hide
    jungle71 , 22 May 2013 12:33
    i got the 650 ti, real good and cheap too
  • 0 Hide
    aje21 , 22 May 2013 13:49
    Why is the Intel column missing the newer graphics models, and even HD2500 isn't there (though HD4000 is).
  • 0 Hide
    damian86 , 21 June 2013 00:59
    Am I the only one around here who thinks Geforce 7 are more expensive than when series 6 came out, if you compare the very high end ones such as 780 or 770 you will still spend either 340 or 500 quid. But if you decide to go for a lower range you don't get a reasonably fast card?

    So is it me doing a bad research or this year graphics cards are much more expensive than last time?
  • 0 Hide
    damian86 , 21 June 2013 01:01
    Am I the only one around here who thinks Geforce 7 are more expensive than when series 6 came out, if you compare the very high end ones such as 780 or 770 you will still spend either 340 or 500 quid. But if you decide to go for a lower range you don't get a reasonably fast card?

    So is it me doing a bad research or this year graphics cards are much more expensive than last time?
  • 0 Hide
    damian86 , 21 June 2013 01:03
    Am I the only one around here who thinks Geforce 7 are more expensive than when series 6 came out, if you compare the very high end ones such as 780 or 770 you will still spend either 340 or 500 quid. But if you decide to go for a lower range you don't get a reasonably fast card? So is it me doing a bad research or this year graphics cards are much more expensive than last time?