Looking for a "Well Rounded" graphics card

[kokines]

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: This week.

BUDGET RANGE: $350 After Rebates

USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: Gaming, Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, Home entertainment

CURRENT GPU AND POWER SUPPLY: 750W Antec

OTHER RELEVANT SYSTEM SPECS: i7 2600k, ASrock P67 Professional, Nvidia 560TI, 16Gb Corsair Vengeance and NZXT phantom case

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: Amazon, Newegg, TigerDirect

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: USA

PARTS PREFERENCES: Really open to anything.

OVERCLOCKING: Maybe

SLI OR CROSSFIRE: Maybe

MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1920x1280

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: I am in the process of doing a new build in which if recommended I could switch to an AMD based system...

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Any other Adobe products ?..... if CS5/6 is in the list, I'd recommend nVidia only because of the CUDA acceleration. If not, the 660 Ti and 7950 would be in ya budget range.

As it is, I'd recommend one of the following (gaming stats below based upon Guru3D 2012 test suite w/ ANNO 1404 removed as it wasn't tested on all cards):

670 DCII Cu costs $420 and gets 879 fps which works out to $0.48 per frame
7970 DCII costs $415 and gets 795 fps which works out to $0.52 per frame
7950 costs $330 and gets 643 fps which works out to $0.51 per frame
660 Ti PE costs $300 and gets 749 fps which works out to $0.40 per frame

Different sites w/ different tests will produce different results.

Here's more data w/ much more detailed results .... it's a 660 Ti review but the comparisons are for all current cards:

http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/3026/nvidia-geforce-gtx-660-ti-review---3-way-sli-included

 

[blazorthon]

For being well-rounded, I'd recommend the 7950. The 7950 overclocks about equally to a 7970 with the same cooler and that's pretty far. The 7950 also has very high AA, tessellation, and DirectC efficiency. Nvidia's GTX 600 cards aren't so well-rounded, but that doesn't mean that you can't be happy with them.

 

[fallen17754]

id go with a gtx 580 for around $300 used on amazon/ebay. i just recently bought one off amazon for $306 from their warehouse deals and it came great, completely repackaged and everything with and it runs like new, if there is a problem with it you can always send it back for a full refund and they even pay for return shipping. also you can get a gtx 670 for $350 on amazon. paying new retail prices for expensive graphics cards that drop value sort of fast isnt worth it in my opinion

 

[blazorthon]

You'll pay over $300 for a 580 when the 7950 can be haf for about the same price and is a much better card, especially in power efficiency and overclocking? That doesn't make sense. The 580 is a pretty well-rounded card, but it sucks power in comparison to newer cards that simply sip power.

 

[kokines]

Thanks for all the information guys, I think I am going to go with 600 series nVidia

 

[kokines]

Best answer selected by kokines.