What GPU for future proofing(ish) around £300

[matt101]

Ok guys, just a quick question. Basically I just bought a new pc, and I have to say i prefer the PC over my xbox 360. So I have decided I want to sell it. With all the parts, games and things I have for it and considering it is new (2 months old) . I will get around £200 for that, then i have a xfx hd 5770 xxx editon which is literally 5 days old so it will sell for probably £90-100 (i hope). So i have around £300 to spend on a new graphics card!!

Now this needs to be a future proof(ish) card, I can spend more than my budget but just not crazy amounts over it. So what card would you guys reccomend?

I want to max all the latest games such as Just Cause 2- I can max the demo at the moment but i get 25-30 fps with vsync on at 1440x900 with 4gb of ddr3 ram and a phenom II x4 955. Also if you think i should keep my card and save my money for a while just say, because i have no idea what to do at the moment.

Also I was wondering whether Just Cause 2- the full game, is more optimized than the demo?

 

[jryan388]

SLI GTX 460(1GB)s if your computer can handle it... that would be the best bang for the buck. If you want a single card, a GTX 470 or Radeon 5870.

 

[bystander]

1st off, there is no such thing as future proofing. All we can do is make a good choice for today that will hopefully last a couple years.

Anyways, there are a couple ways to go here:
1) Go with a single powerfull card. This prevents you from needing a CF/SLI motherboard and some of the draw backs of two card setup.

A Nvidia GTX470 or HD Radeon 5850 would probably be good choices for a single powerful card and work well at your given resolution. A single GTX460 wouldn't be bad either, but it won't survive as long.

2) Go with an SLI/CF setup. For the moment, your best option for an SLI setup would be GTX460's. This would most definately be more powerful, but there are times you'll regret the choice. Some times SLI/CF doesn't work, sometimes they disable themselves and you don't even know it, and other times you experience an occational glitch.

I lean towards a single GTX470 myself. If you like ATI, an HD Radeon 5850 would be about the same cost for about the same performance.

 

[17seconds]

For "future proofing" the best choice at this time is a single GTX470 (check out the Gigabyte Superoverclock). A single card gives you the option to add another in the future for SLI.

The GTX470 is better at DirectX 11 than the AMD 5850 or 5870. As more games begin to use DirectX 11, you would already be covered. With a 5850 or 5870, you might feel compelled to upgrade to a 6000 series card to improve your DirectX 11 performance.

 

[eyefinity]

Wait 2 weeks max and you'll see what the 6000 series is like. Buying a "future proof" graphics card right now is a bad idea because we simply don't know how the 6000's will change the scene.