In the Video Card Market again.

[Witt78]

I currently have a random cooling fan super glued to the heat sink of my Radeon R6750 Core Edition.

Time to replace it. However, when I bought this card, I just picked it up at Best Buy without research. The card before that was years ago, so the moral of the story is that I know nothing about the modern cards on the market today.

Let me keep this short by making a couple stipulations as to the card I'm looking for, and then ask a few questions.

Stipulations.

I'm looking for a middle of the road card. I don't want to break the bank, but I'm prepared to spend more than $85, as I did my last card.

As I've had several Radeons, I'm leaning towards an NVidia card this time. (Unless I'm advised otherwise)

Straight out of the box, the primary use for this card will be a modded copy of Skyrim. (I'm thinking 2GB'ish V Ram is a must)

Questions.

Other than price, what is the major difference between Radeon and NVidia cards these days?

Can you list me off the three to five most recent GPU chipsets for both brands, to save me from having to read a dozen 800 word fluff reviews just to find this basic information?

If I wanted to spend between $150 and $300, which cards/chipsets are going to give me the best bang for the buck.

Are their any particular brands these days putting out bunk cards that die in 6 months? Steer me away from them and towards the well built brands.

How many plugs do you have to plug into modern cards, from the power supply? My current card only requires one plug, jacked into the card. My previous crossfire setup required two jacks in each of the two cards. (And blew up a 1000W power supply frying my computer) (I have one available jack unless I buy an adapter/new power supply)

Thanks guys...

PS - The system this card will be placed in is nothing special. Here is a link to the spec sheet.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2394490,00.asp?tab=Specs

 

[Flightsimluke]

I currently have a random cooling fan super glued to the heat sink of my Radeon R6750 Core Edition.

Time to replace it. However, when I bought this card, I just picked it up at Best Buy without research. The card before that was years ago, so the moral of the story is that I know nothing about the modern cards on the market today.

Let me keep this short by making a couple stipulations as to the card I'm looking for, and then ask a few questions.

Stipulations.

I'm looking for a middle of the road card. I don't want to break the bank, but I'm prepared to spend more than $85, as I did my last card.

As I've had several Radeons, I'm leaning towards an NVidia card this time. (Unless I'm advised otherwise)

Straight out of the box, the primary use for this card will be a modded copy of Skyrim. (I'm thinking 2GB'ish V Ram is a must)

Questions.

Other than price, what is the major difference between Radeon and NVidia cards these days?

Can you list me off the three to five most recent GPU chipsets for both brands, to save me from having to read a dozen 800 word fluff reviews just to find this basic information?

If I wanted to spend between $150 and $300, which cards/chipsets are going to give me the best bang for the buck.

Are their any particular brands these days putting out bunk cards that die in 6 months? Steer me away from them and towards the well built brands.

How many plugs do you have to plug into modern cards, from the power supply? My current card only requires one plug, jacked into the card. My previous crossfire setup required two jacks in each of the two cards. (And blew up a 1000W power supply frying my computer) (I have one available jack unless I buy an adapter/new power supply)

Thanks guys...

PS - The system this card will be placed in is nothing special. Here is a link to the spec sheet.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2394490,00.asp?tab=Specs

Right, there's a lot of information there so all I'm going to do is recommend a GPU for each price point between $100 and $300. Here goes:

$100: AMD Radeon HD7750 2GB. This is NOT a hardcore gaming GPU in any way, shape or form. It will be a small improvement over your HD6750, but only a little better. If you are looking for a cheap multimedia GPU, or simply gaming with medium settings on 1600x900, this is your card.

$150: AMD Radeon HD7790 OC 1GB. This is where the budget GPU class merges with the gaming GPU class. This would be a pretty noticeable improvement over your HD6750, and would allow you to game with ultra settings at 1600x900 or medium settings at 1920x1080, with framerates staying north of 30fps.

$200: nVidia GTX660 2GB. This card is a great all-rounder. It outperforms the similarly priced HD7850 in most games, and has a lower power consumption under full load. This card should allow you to play almost every game with high-ultra settings at 1920x1080, keeping above 30fps even on games like FarCry3 and Crysis 3.

$250: HD7870 2GB GHZ Edition: This card is a small improvement over the GTX660. It will play any game on 1920x1080 at above 40fps, so if you're looking for smooth gaming on the most hardware hungry games, this is your card.

$300: HD7950 3GB - This card is designed for gaming. It should easily be able to take every game on the market and play it on ultra settings at 1920x1080 at 60fps or more. Ideal if you are planning on recording games with fraps, as there is plenty of headroom for framerate drops.


At the end of the day, it's up to you to decide what you need, and your PC should be able to handle any of these cards, thanks to it's Intel i5 CPU and 8GB of RAM. I hope this has helped, and if you have any other questions please feel free to PM me!

Best Regards
Luke