Whats a good graphics card for bf3 for $100-$200?

[Maxwh2o]

I am building a new gaming pc and cant decide on a graphics card. I will mainly be playing bf3, cod, and editing.

 

[natthewu]

If you can spend 50$ more get a 7850 and overclock the **** out of it. I can't wait till i get mine thursday, but Finals start friday >.<. I heard bf3 favors nvidia but the 7850 still wins against a 570, plus you would be spending more on the electric bill because of power consumption.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1702752&CatId=3669
this comes with bf3 for free and is 195, probably the best deal under 200 especially if you just want high-very high

 

[i7470]

natthewu is right. or you can go with an OC editions of HD 7770 which will be near 140 range. i recently got my hd 7770 and it can play bf3 with ultra settings at 1080p. but more and more games are coming optimized with nvidia and looks great with their physics engine. no need to mention the performance of their cuda cores too. Nvidia has a far better driver support which enables your graphics cards to render newer games better. believe me i had a 9600gt and it could render mass effect 3 at ultra settings with their new driver release 301.42 while radeon has a awful driver support, they always has some problems with their all their drivers. i went for it because i had no other choice with the price range at my place. radeon used to give better frame rates but now overall nvidia started to blow away the opposition. its really a hard choice between these two. but im so far satisfied with my hd 7770 and were hugely satisfied with 9600gt in the past. if you decided to go for nvidia then its better to buy EVGA cards as they gives lifetime warranty and fantastic customer service. they are nvidia exclusive. in case of radeon go with gigabyte as they offer durability,far better cooling at stress loads and good value for money over all.

 

[natthewu]

I said 7850 not 7770 but the 7850 is one of the best price to performance, because at 200$ there's no difference compared to 100$ but if you spend 50-60 more then there is a big difference.

 

[i7470]

i agree with natthewu on 7850 about price to performance. but i still recommend Nvidia 560Ti because of their cuda and physx technologies started to blow the opposition away. for example im using ati and having problems with games that has physx like mass effect 3 and batman arkham city. games and multimedia applications are nowadays coming optimized for nvidia and started to look fantastic. and also with their 3D technology Nvidia is leading on all fronts now. ati may give you a few frame rates on same level cards but looks lifeless on physx optimized games and 3D. the only thing ati holds advantage is their eyefinity technology but nvidia started to catch some ground on that with their latest cards. ati is having a lot of problems with their HD3D also. so at the moment and for the near future Nvidia has a clear edge overall. nvidia has got alomost 40% increase in performance in many games compared to its previous driver versions and constantly working to improve further while ati hardly gives attention to improve their drivers. a lot of ati customers including myself is furious with their ignorance towards driver issues. so i recommend you to go with EVGA Nvidia 560Ti, if possible go with a factory over clocked edition. dont forget to buy EVGA as they gives a lifetime warranty if im not wrong.

 

[natthewu]

only some models have a lifetime warranty I think just the AR ones, and those are 570's. 7850 is newer and have will have more matured drivers, plus overclocking is better, almost half the totla wattage of a 560 ti at 135 Watts only. Physx is actually quite useless, and even if you needed it, you can buy a cheap one with like 20 CUDA cores i think. CUDA is not really necessary unless you're sure you know what it helps for. If you only know that it's good for programming, then it's useless to you.

 

[Sunius]

Best card for you would be GTX 480:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130759

It's faster than HD 7850, $50 cheaper and overclocks like a champ. You will be looking at running Battlefield 3 at ultra settings with it.

The only downside is has is power consumption. Have at least 600 watt quality power supply for it .

 

[i7470]

no still the ati drivers have issues with even the latest version12.4 and their legacy driver support even more awful. ie once your card gets older the driver support gets worse while Nvidia still produces improved drivers for my previous card which is 4 years old. time and again im having scaling issues and stuttering and have my audio channel inverted on hdmi and other artifacts thing in my latest ati card. so i strongly recommend Nvidia cards as you are interested in editing also. im saying this of my experience with both cards. its better to pay slightly more on power bills than to get frustrated with your drivers and display for long. as we speak nvidia may be improving their drivers so they could save some power on idle, who knows.