Good card for under $300?

[kbusch66]

I had a build with all the parts a few months ago and just recently have come up with the money, but when I went to check if all the parts were around the same price, the graphics card had been discontinued.

Approximate Purchase Date: Sometime within the next week or so.

Budget: Any where under $950. What I have so far amounts to $639.92

Use: I'll use it for mostly gaming (anywhere from Skyrim to SW:TOR to maybe BF3), but it is also my college computer so it will also serve that purpose.

This is the build I have on newegg without the card:

>Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKX 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

>CORSAIR Builder Series CX600 V2 600W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply

>G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL

>ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

>Intel Core i3-2120 Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz LGA 1155 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2000 BX80623I32120

>Box and CD drive

 

[ricardois]

i would certainly go with something like that:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127615

 

[diec4st]

350$ with free shipping (the extra 50$ would be worth it). It would easily run on your 600W PSU and will give you similar performance to a GTX 580. It also has more VRAM.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161404

 

[matter37]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121432

GTX 570, this one is $295 with the rebate, $315 without, and it performs better than a 7870 and a GTX 560 Ti 448 core, which is basically a dumbed down 570. This asus card also has dual fans which means you will be able to keep it cooler and possibly overclock it significantly more, I have a dual fan 560 ti and it is nice i Got my core clock up to 960 mHz from a stock of 820 mHz, and it still stays at about 70 degrees celsius, dont get a 7870, they really arent worth the money until they drop in price

 

[slicedtoad]

^+1 to either of those. (560ti 448 or 7870, wtvr u want for your budget)

additionally, my advice would be to drop whatever expensive case you have to a ~$50-60 case and make sure your cd drive is ~$20. The antec 300 and this drive brings you to $527. Then change the i3 for the 2500k and it comes to $619. Add the hyper 212+ and it comes to $657. The cooler is optional of course.

If you don't like the antec 300, look at:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147153
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119227
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146061

With a $950 budget, a case over $60 is kind of wrong.

edit:
@matter37
no the 570 is not better than the 7870....
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7870-review-benchmark,3148.html

 

[matter37]

Also, if you want to ever SLI in the future, it would be better to get the 570 because the 560 Ti 448 core edition is a limited edition card which means once they will be a lot harder to find in the future, the 570 is not a limited edition card so you should be able to find another one of them fairly easily in the future

 

[tuffluck]

Didn't he say under 300? I would suggest 7850 or wait for kepler if you want NVIDIA. 7850 can OC to 7870 levels and surpass the 570 for less $.

 

[kbusch66]

I forgot to include the OS. Windows 7 Home Premium which cuts a hundred out of the card. but I do have a box under 60 and a cheap drive. Right now cost is $739

 

[slicedtoad]

cost is $739? how?
The list you have at the top is ~530ish. with windows it's 630ish. Where is the extra $100? Or do you mean after an i5?

edit: oh are you on newegg.com? Just realised you never mentioned a site.

 

[ricardois]

Use linux for now and go with a good video card lol.

 

[kbusch66]

yeah it's on newegg and i went up to the i5, sorry for the confusion

 

[slicedtoad]

oh, ok. good.

yeah linux would be a great idea, you could have an awesome gpu and not be able to play games! lol

Unless you can up your budget, grab a regular 560ti.

If you go for rebates:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130623
If you don't go for rebates:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814134131

A 560ti will let you run everything on max @ 50-60fps except bf3 and future games (it will still run BF3 well, just not on ultra everything). You will also need to limit the AA in certain games since it only has 1GB or vram. I recommend monitoring the vram usage in games like bf3 just to make sure you're not artificially bottlenecking you rig with too much aa.

It's a very good card though and suitable for your budget.

If you want to up your budget grab a 7870 or 7850 or 560ti 448 core or a 6950 (disappearing though, so no cf in the future). They're all good, just with different pros, cons and prices. The 7xxx would be fun to oc, a lot of people love nvidia and the 6950 can be unlocked to reach 6970 performance.