Which Graphics Card Would Suit My Rig Best?


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Okay so I've finally decided to get round to building a new rig, I've had this Pentium machine for a while now and, while it's served me well, I feel like it's finally time to upgrade :P I'm not building anything too fancy, I'm saving up for a trip to Japan but as it stands just now this build will still blow my old machine out of the water. The only thing I wanted advice on was the graphics card, I currently have a 6770 which just isn't good enough anymore but I didn't want to go and buy a really good graphics card only for it to be wasted because of the processor bottlenecking it. Also any suggestions about the components are welcome :)

 

Processor:

http://www.ebuyer.com/393559-intel-core-i5-3350p-3-10ghz-skt1155-6mb-cache-boxed-bx80637153350p

 

RAM

http://www.ebuyer.com/389201-corsair-16gb-ddr3-1600mhz-vengeance-performance-memory-cmz16gx3m2a1600c10r

 

Mobo

http://www.ebuyer.com/522625-msi-lga1155-intel-b75-4-ddr3-gbe-lan-usb3-0-atx-motherboard-b75a-g43-gaming

 

Case/PSU

http://www.ebuyer.com/442235-coolermaster-p100-and-thunder-700w-psu-bundle-rc-p100k-kwa700-tr

 

I'm just taking the SSD and HDD from my old computer. I'm willing to spend ?200 max on the graphics card but if it's cheaper that would be great.

 

Thanks in advance :)

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If I had ?200 to spend, I'd go with an nvidia GTX 760.

 

nvidia is better in my opinion (I'm not a fanboy) but if you want to go with AMD, then the R9 270X is the one you want. If I were you I'd compare game fps benchmarks and decided if you want that physx from nvidia :)

 

Luckily GPUs aren't as much of a hassle as CPUs are. You'll generally find a few i3s a few i5s and a few i7s and you're looking at the price and the specs and thinking "there's not even a difference what do I buy? there must be something different about them" - Which there probably is, but not something you'd notice in gaming performance.

 

Honestly I play generally low demanding games and max those out. As for the likes of BF3 I need most things on low and I'm running an AMD 7750, but it still looks amazing. 

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If I had ?200 to spend, I'd go with an nvidia GTX 760.

 

nvidia is better in my opinion (I'm not a fanboy) but if you want to go with AMD, then the R9 270X is the one you want. If I were you I'd compare game fps benchmarks and decided if you want that physx from nvidia :)

 

Luckily GPUs aren't as much of a hassle as CPUs are. You'll generally find a few i3s a few i5s and a few i7s and you're looking at the price and the specs and thinking "there's not even a difference what do I buy? there must be something different about them" - Which there probably is, but not something you'd notice in gaming performance.

 

Honestly I play generally low demanding games and max those out. As for the likes of BF3 I need most things on low and I'm running an AMD 7750, but it still looks amazing. 

Thanks for the suggestion, spent a while comparing cards on GPUBoss, definitely getting a GTX 760, specifically the Asus one, it seems to be the best from what I've seen. I'll be ordering everything when I get paid on Friday, can't wait!

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Why is a 6770 no longer sufficient? Are you using resolutions higher than full hd?

Not yet but I'm thinking about getting a 2560x1600 monitor when I get my tax rebate. Plus I'm a bit dubious as to whether it could run games like Battlefield 4 at decent settings on it at a nice FPS.

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Not yet but I'm thinking about getting a 2560x1600 monitor when I get my tax rebate. Plus I'm a bit dubious as to whether it could run games like Battlefield 4 at decent settings on it at a nice FPS.

"Battlefield 4" and "nice FPS" don't go very well together, even with a 760.

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"Battlefield 4" and "nice FPS" don't go very well together, even with a 760.

My friend plays it on high settings on a 7870 and it's smooth. By "Nice FPS" I mean that it runs smoothly, I'm not looking 80+ FPS on every game like some people, 30+ does me just fine :P

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I have the MSI TwinFrozr Gaming Edition GTX760, I chose it at the time based on TechPowerUp and other site reviews and benchmarks which showed it being the best value for money next to the very ever so slightly better performing EVGA, the lower noise levels and power usage enticed me and so I bought it.

 

It only cost me ?210 (They're ?189.59 on Scan.co.uk right now in the Today Only deals page as of this moment) when it came out and I can't fault the card at all, runs very low fan levels unless you wish to crank the speed up, most I've seen is 60% fan speed which isn't loud at all and never gets hotter than 65 degrees (I'm coin mining right now at 99% GPU usage and still isn't going higher than 65 degrees, that goes for any game on any settings too and I've even overclocked it to 145% power level, +160 Core Clock and +800 Memory Clock.

 

I much prefer NVIDIA over AMD, not to knock AMD because they make good products as well, I've just never had too big a problem with NVIDIA, the drivers work flawlessly, cards are amazing especially the newer generations. That's just my experience and opinion of course. There are reasons to go into both camps and right now I'm still leaning towards NVIDIA despite Mantle and TrueAudio being on the horizon, who knows if Mantle will stay as AMD-only or be truly open to all, I'm hoping the latter.

 

Whether you go for the MSI or the ASUS version (there isn't much between the cards at all, just style and looks for the most part), the GTX 760 truly is a beast of a card for what is to me, very little money for the performance.

 

- Alera

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I have the MSI TwinFrozr Gaming Edition GTX760, I chose it at the time based on TechPowerUp and other site reviews and benchmarks which showed it being the best value for money next to the very ever so slightly better performing EVGA, the lower noise levels and power usage enticed me and so I bought it.

 

It only cost me ?210 (They're ?189.59 on Scan.co.uk right now in the Today Only deals page as of this moment) when it came out and I can't fault the card at all, runs very low fan levels unless you wish to crank the speed up, most I've seen is 60% fan speed which isn't loud at all and never gets hotter than 65 degrees (I'm coin mining right now at 99% GPU usage and still isn't going higher than 65 degrees, that goes for any game on any settings too and I've even overclocked it to 145% power level, +160 Core Clock and +800 Memory Clock.

 

I much prefer NVIDIA over AMD, not to knock AMD because they make good products as well, I've just never had too big a problem with NVIDIA, the drivers work flawlessly, cards are amazing especially the newer generations. That's just my experience and opinion of course. There are reasons to go into both camps and right now I'm still leaning towards NVIDIA despite Mantle and TrueAudio being on the horizon, who knows if Mantle will stay as AMD-only or be truly open to all, I'm hoping the latter.

 

Whether you go for the MSI or the ASUS version (there isn't much between the cards at all, just style and looks for the most part), the GTX 760 truly is a beast of a card for what is to me, very little money for the performance.

 

- Alera

Huh, after looking around comparisons the consensus does seem to be that the MSI version is the best plus it's only 187.14 on eBuyer just now, thanks for the heads up! 

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Huh, after looking around comparisons the consensus does seem to be that the MSI version is the best plus it's only 187.14 on eBuyer just now, thanks for the heads up! 

 

You found it even cheaper than I did! :D

 

Well, I'm glad to have helped and I'm sure you'll be happy with it!

 

 

 

EDIT: As a side note, one of the above posts is correct. It's great to be able to whack all the settings up and still achieve a great framerate but you'll quickly learn that the visual fidelity for the performance cost isn't worth it if you want butter smooth 60 FPS on the most demanding games out there (Think Metro Last Light, Star Citizen, Crysis 3 etc). Personally I don't mind 30+ FPS even though I can see the difference between them, just something to think about for all the gamers out there with any card.

 

More is sometimes not that much better.

 

- Alera

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