Black Friday Graphics Card for my Son's Christmas Present? $300 or less Budget - need help please

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-Jim-

-Jim-

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Gents,

I built my son an entry level Gamer Box for Christmas a couple years back based on Black Friday purchasing.

Currently Installed:
Asus P8Z68-V LE Motherboard
Intel i5 2500K CPU 3.3 Ghz
16 Gigs Corsair Vengance 1600 Quad Kit DDR3 Ram
Corsair 550VX PSU (41 Ampere +12V rail )
Gigabyte GTX 660 Ti
1 GB Seagate SATA 3, 7200 RPM Hard Drive
120 Gig OCZ Vertex 3 SSD (For Intel Smart Response Technology)

Recently I installed a couple 120 mm Cooling Fans, and a Cooler Master Seidon 120V Aluminum Radiator 120mm Fan Rifle Bearing CPU Water Cooling Kit as I was thinking the CPU may need a bit of Overclocking to keep up with today's new Games. He has been experiencing some issues where the existing stock CPU Fan and Video Card Fan would ramp up under load and then the unit would Blue Screen. (Ouch!)

We tried a bit of Tweaking and Fan control using the on board tools in Bios and Asus Fan Xpert2 but that didn't resolve the issue. It was 2 years since the first image with lots of Games put on and off so; I decided to reimage from an original Ghost, along with Bios & Windows 7 upgrades, new driver, etc. Still no joy => the occasional Blue Screen still persists (even though he says it's much less frequent.) So now I'm thinking it's hardware. I did a Chkdsk on the Seagate last weekend ,and it found and repaired a few minor files, but still he has the odd (every 3rd day) Blue Screen. My next checks / test will be for Memory and stress the CPU. I may even swap out the PSU as I've got a spare Corsair TX750. (I bought Windows 8 but haven't installed it. My son isn't keen on it and I haven't heard it improves Gaming much. So I doubt we'll go there.)

Anyway, (sorry for the long preamble) it may boil down to a new Video Card. Last year we bought him the Gigabyte GTX 660 Ti replacing the Gigabyte GTX 560 originally installed. And we (my wife * I) were thinking a new 760 (770?) may be a good gift anyway. Although I'm concerned the Motherboard is PCI Express 2.0 and that may limit the Card's performance as it's not 3.0 => comments please.

So if we go with a new single video card (the motherboard is not SLI capable - only CrossfireX), and considering my son plays games at 1920 X 1080 on a single (non-3D) monitor, can you advise what would be a good fit for less than $300?

Thanks for the assist.

Regards,

Jim

 
Solution
D
That's still a very solid gaming system. You should look at the GTX 770 and R9 280X or HD 7970. The 280X and 7970 are the same card just rebadged. The voltage limit has been raised in the 280X though so with a 550w power supply an HD 7970 or GTX 770 is a better choice.

PCI-E 2.0 vs 3.0 will not limit any of those cards.

A GTX 760 ( roughly a GTX 670 in performance ) would not be a huge upgrade to his GTX 660 Ti. The 7970 or GTX 770 would be much better.

Have you monitored his temps? Sounds like an overheating problem. It could also be a failing power supply.
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Beezy

Beezy

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for gaming on one 1080p monitor the 660 is already pretty good, but to see a real difference, youd want to go with a 770 over a 760. he might not even feel the jump unless he was to run multiple monitors or use it for workstation autoCAD type programs (3d stuff).

so you tried using the on board VGA to see if it really is the GPU? as in, you still BSOD when using onboard VGA or you only BSOD when plugged into the GPU?
 
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That's still a very solid gaming system. You should look at the GTX 770 and R9 280X or HD 7970. The 280X and 7970 are the same card just rebadged. The voltage limit has been raised in the 280X though so with a 550w power supply an HD 7970 or GTX 770 is a better choice.

PCI-E 2.0 vs 3.0 will not limit any of those cards.

A GTX 760 ( roughly a GTX 670 in performance ) would not be a huge upgrade to his GTX 660 Ti. The 7970 or GTX 770 would be much better.

Have you monitored his temps? Sounds like an overheating problem. It could also be a failing power supply.
 
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-Jim-

-Jim-

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Thanks for the inputs Gents. I'm thinking (hoping) it might be the PSU as well => and not the CPU or MB => but I haven't had time to go through the rigor of eliminating pieces and bits. He just described how it last Blue Screened on Monday. He's just booted it (room temp) and went to surf the web. It froze and then Blue Screened. There's certainly no load / thermal stress doing that.

Maybe I'll find a deal on a PSU as well as a Video Card. We are partial to nVidia it seems so I guess I'll be hunting a GTX 770. I heard EVGA makes a decent one with 2 Gigs on the Card. I wonder if there's a review here comparing all the 770s out there...

 
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EVGA makes excellent cards. I have used EVGA cards in my personal computers since the 6800GT so about 5 or 6 cards in a row soon to be one more as I'm pulling the trigger on an EVGA GTX 780 Friday.

The ACX coolers are excellent and come on several different GTX 770 cards at different clock speeds. Just get the best ACX card you can afford and it should still allow him quite a bit of overclocking potential.

http://www.evga.com/products/ProductList.aspx?type=0&family=GeForce+700+Series+Family&chipset=GTX+770
 
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a1blaster

a1blaster

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but not worth the 350$
 
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-Jim-

-Jim-

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The idea is to make sure his Box can play anything he throws at it for another year. And besides, Santa needs to come to our house...Of course it doesn't hurt that Dad gets to put his "old" Gigabyte GTX 660 Ti in his Rig. I think I've narrowed the field to an EVGA (which I used exclusively until their warranty became Ho Hum like everyone else) and the Gigabyte Windforce (which runs a little quieter in the comparison review I just read.) Of course the Price on Black Friday may turn my head again. Right now I can grab the Gigabyte for $319 at my local NCIX store.
 
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Well there you go then. The Gigabyte looks like a good deal. I use Gigabyte motherboards and they are always first class.

but not worth the 350$
Click to expand...

That depends on a lot of factors. Obviously to the OP it is. ;)
 
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-Jim-

-Jim-

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Hi Gents,

I didn't see a better deal anywhere so I grabbed the Gigabyte for $319 at my local NCIX store. (I was shocked there were no Big Sales on these Cards. I wonder why they didn't want to move a bunch for Christmas. Actually there were very few real "gotta buy now" type deals I saw.

I did buy an Antec HGG-750M PSU ($60 net after rebates on a $150 List price) as I tested my son's Rig for 5 hours using Aida64 Extreme, and everything was rock solid. It then went 2 days before it Blue Screened again at Start-up. :( I just put it in tonight so we'll see how his Rig runs.
 
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High end components almost never go on sale, especially graphics cards. I got a great deal on a 500GB Samsung 840 Evo for less than $300 and I bought an EVGA GTX 780 Superclocked for $499. I was happy to save $50 on the SSD and $10 on the card. With the Steam and Origin sales I now can play video games 24/7 for the next 2 years and not be caught up! ( I wish! )

The Antec HCG series are excellent units. That was a good deal.
 
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-Jim-

-Jim-

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I spent a long time (5 days) updating, testing, and eliminating all the various pieces and bits before narrowing it down to the Gigabyte GTX 660 Ti video card. The rig would Blue Screen every other day at Boot, and sometimes when it was restarted during the day. The majority of the logs reported issues related to the Video Card. So I started the RMA process.

Gigabyte's "technical" folks seem to have English as a second language reading from cue cards, as their replies made little sense. What I did notice from their web site was there was a Firmware upgrade for GTX 660 Ti, so I tried it and it seems to have solved the problem. (I did it right after a firmware upgrade for the OCZ Vertex 3 SSD so I can't be 100% certain. But 99.99% is good enough for me.) It's been 12 days since the upgrade and zero blue screens.

So it looks like Dad will get a working GTX 660 Ti on Boxing Day when Santa puts a Gigabyte Windforce GTX 770 under the tree.
 
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