Best PCI Express (PCIe) Card For ~$330:
Inroduced with an MSRP below $350, the GeForce GTX 970 is a disruptive force in the graphics card market, bringing Radeon R9 290X-class frame rates to a much lower price bracket. It should be no surprise that this card is our new price/performance favorite. Read the Full Review
GeForce GTX 970
High-End Value Leader
Best PCI Express (PCIe) Card For ~$440:
While Nvidia's GeForce GTX Titan Black is still the fastest single-GPU graphics card available, the company's GeForce GTX 780 Ti should match its gaming performance at all but the highest resolutions, where its 3 GB of GDDR5 falls peters out. GeForce GTX 780 Ti
Fastest Single-GPU Gaming Card
Introduced shortly after AMD's Radeon R9 290X, the flagship GeForce features a fully-enabled GK110 GPU with all 2880 of its CUDA cores enabled and backed by 1750 MHz memory. The 780 Ti is deliberately hobbled in double-precision math, but that's inconsequential in games. A relatively high price tag prevents this board from becoming a value leader, but we're giving the GeForce GTX 780 Ti a recommendation for its blazing-fast performance. Read the Full Review
Honorable Mention:
It's undeniable that Nvidia's new GeForce GTX 980 offers some of the highest frame rates we've seen from any single-GPU graphics card. And it's definitely the most efficient flagship we've ever tested. GeForce GTX 980
Very High Performance And Efficiency
A $550 price tag is fairly reasonable when you consider that the GeForce GTX 780 Ti used to sell for $660, too. But now that the 780 Ti is heavily discounted, the 980 isn't quite as attractive. Until the 780 Ti disappears, we have to give it the respect it deserves.
Only when that board sells out will we turn our attention (and a full recommendation) to the GeForce GTX 980. Read the Full Review
- Best Graphics Cards for the Money, October Updates
- Best Entry-Level Graphics Cards: $130 and Under
- Best Mid-Range Graphics Cards: $140 to $200
- Best Enthusiast Graphics Cards: $210 to $300
- Best High-End Graphics Cards: $300 to $800
- Best Extreme Graphics Cards: Over $800 and Multi-Card Configurations
- Graphics Card Performance Hierarchy Chart
- Conclusion: Performance Per Dollar
You have the GTX970 below GTX780ti and the GTX980 in the same level with GTX780ti, while the real performance at page 8 clearly shows GTX970 on par with GTX780ti and GTX980 one level (at least) ahead.
Your own benchmark results are not on par with your hierarchy chart. Isn't the hierarchy chart based on Tom's Hardware benchmarks?
Only regular retail prices are considered for the chart so you are not going to see those included until the retail price drop to integrate the discounts.
Little nuances like that are what clearly illustrate that as useful as the chart is, it is not a be-all/end-all. Consider it a substantial data point, but don't forget to consider others, such as benchmarks of the specific games you want to play.
It seems like it hasn't been updated in years (HD 4000 was Q2 '12).
At least their inclusion into the hierarchy chart as a base of comparison.
The reference 780 ti clocks are low compared to the 900 series cards. The gap in performance between the 980 and 780 ti is probably at stock. I know you can overclock the 900 series to over 1400 and what not but if you compare the out of box overclocks on, for example, the MSI 780 ti gaming and MSI 970 Gaming, you will see the 780 ti pulls ahead by quite a bit and in fact produces the same performance as an MSI 980 gaming. Don't take my word for it, here are the benchmarks...
MSI 980 Gaming - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_980_Gaming/6.html
Asus Strix 970 - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_970_STRIX_OC/6.html
MSI 780 Ti Gaming- http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_780_Ti_Gaming/6.html
I was forced to buy a Radeon 280 and guess what? I spent 2 hours trying to get the damned card to accept the newest Catalyst drivers - install kept crashing. What the F is wrong with AMD and their drivers?
Including rebates isn't a good idea because...
Rebates are like letting a friend borrow money, you just have to accept you may never get it back.
With high quality comes a price. Or so I'm led to believe. Even with people complaining about AMD's drivers (with a few in the camp who say they've never had a problem), I still question their hardware engineering sometimes.
to keep the hierarchy list short and neat
its good idea to cut the table from bottom up to at least DX 10 capable card
because its not making any sense to keep such ancient card in the list
and there is no way to play nowadays games...
Yeah well you can get a more powerful R9 280 for 170 bucks, so the GTX 760 is just not a good buy at the moment.