Best graphics card for $150-200?

[Spartan Erik]

Hey everyone, what's the best card I can get for anywhere from $150-200, in light of Black Friday/Cyber Monday?

This will be going in a machine with an i5-3570K, 8 GB of RAM, and a 128 GB Crucial M4. Will be used to play games like Planetside 2, Battlefield 3, Natural Selection 2, CS:GO, and Blacklight Retribution.

I'm located in the US, so preferred stores include Newegg, TigerDirect, Amazon (not as much since I get charged sales tax now :\), and I don't have any problem with mail-in rebates, so technically my budget max is $220 or so

[Muhammad Farrukh]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150609

[Subhadip]

Another vote for Radeon HD 7850. Don't think the XFX DD is the best deal though. There are faster (pre-overclocked) 7850 2GBs for under $200.

[remixedcat]

I got that same CPU! It's nice.

and for the GPU I would go with the Nvidia GF 650Ti. I got it for 160 at microcenter. Very nice mid-range card for the money. I can max out skyrim at 1080p pretty easy. The GPU peaked at 35-42C on an outside part. It was around 30-40fps outside and 50 inside.... not too bad. I had most settings on ultra with the AA, etc turned up as well.

[Spartan Erik]

Would a 650ti be better than a 560ti? That's the card my brother had, until it broke (physically)

I know the 550ti was severely gimped compared to the 560ti

[LaP]

Hum you can get a 660 oc or a 7870 in the 150-200$ price range.

http://www.ncix.com/...US&promoid=1030

http://www.ncix.com/...ar&promoid=1030

You have a good machine. If your max budget is 200$ i don't see why you would buy a 7850 or a 650.

[Muhammad Farrukh]

I agree ^^

If you can get the budget to rise a bit, 7870 or 660 would run awesome with that PC. Should be good for resolutions up to 1080p for most games

[migo]

7850 2GB, obviously if you can get a GTX 660 or 7870 in that price range it would be better, but I'd say that's really uncommon, and might not be an option based on how you're going to shop.

[PGHammer]

Would a 650ti be better than a 560ti? That's the card my brother had, until it broke (physically)

I know the 550ti was severely gimped compared to the 560ti

Where the 550Ti was gimped compared to the 560Ti was in two areas - bandwidth and CUDA core/ROP count. Both are areas where even the "gimped" GTX550Ti trumps the non-Ti GTX650.

Think - the GTX550Ti is a cut-down GTX560Ti; naturally it would be gimped compared to the more-expensive relation. (The same is true comparing the GTX650 to the GTX660 - either non-Ti vs. non-Ti OR Ti vs.Ti.)

By rights the GTX550Ti should be compared to the GTX650 non-Ti - they are priced identically pretty much for the same memory loadouts, and have similar power requirements; however, the Fermi part has higher bandwidth than the Kepler part (192-bit memory bus for Fermi vs. 128-bit for Kepler).

Given identical RAM configurations, bandwidth needs of your games should rightly determine which you should buy (especially since, as I pointed out, GTX550Ti is directly price-comparable to GTX650 non-Ti).

The same is, of course, true on the AMD side of GPU Street (HD7770 vs. HD7850 or even HD7850 vs. HD7870) - in the case of the former, the HD7770 has a bandwidth disadvantage compared to HD7850; however, it makes up for it with both lower power requirements and a lower price - the latter two are identical in terms of bandwidth, but dissimilar in terms of power draw and (again) price; still there is a smaller gap there between HD7850 and HD7870 compared to HD7770 vs. HD7850.

HD7770 competes with both the GTX650 non-Ti and GTX550Ti in terms of price and RAM loadout (except that 2GB loadouts of HD7770 are not common among AMD AIBs, while both GTX550Ti and GTX650 non-Ti have a plethora of 2GB iterations from nVidia AIBs) - If you are looking in that $100USD-$200USD (single GPU) price range and don't have loyalty to a particular GPU AIB or even AMD vs. nVidia in general, it can be rather difficult choosing a card.

Normally, I stick with AMD (and ATI before that) - I have NEVER purchased an nVidia GPU for my own use. However, the higher bandwidth of the GTX550Ti - at either the same price, or even a bit cheaper, compared to the HD7770 - has me rethinking that.

[Spartan Erik]

Phew man, new reply to an old post! A 660 went on sale for $180, I grabbed that for my brother instead; should've updated the thread haha

Sorry!